Led Lights For Next Grow

I've never used them, but I have used Top LED and Intelligent Gro. They both are good, Top LED is the entry level LED, but does produce good results. Intelligent Gro is much better, more features and much more intense lighting, also great results.

 

Icemud, per your experience which American LED manufacturer provides the strongest penetration through modest canopy foliage? Think between a lollipop and a jungle.

 

I honestly don't know of any LED grow lights that are manufacturered in the US other than maybe california light works and Area 51??
 
almost all of the LED panels are made in China, shipped here and resold. I think there may be a few very small entry level companies offering led's made in the US. Its interesting how these companies word their websites too to make people think they are US built... they will say things like "make with USA components" or "A USA company" or things like "our own proprietary blend" or "designed in the USA" which none of these remarks actually say they are manufactured in the USA...
 
Now I don't want to make it seem like all imported lights are bad, matter of fact both LED's I use (top led and Intelligent Gro) are both made in china, and so far work very well.
 
Penetration has not much as to do with which light...but more of how many lights you are using... Its a widely misunderstood term in used in the plant lighting world.... its like this.... 2x 400w HID lights will have better penetration vs 1x 600w HID, even though the 600w has more lumen output... the 2 lights vs 1 have better penetration because the angles at which they are mounted above the lights and witth light coming from multiple sources this reduces shadowing vs 1 single light point source...
 
The best is to look at what Umol or PPFD that the lights are outputting....how many photons are available for a plant....

 

Point taken (well taken) on what is American in a global economy.
 
Using Kickstarter, the worldwide crowdfunding platform, Advanced LED Lights has been working on a new LED platform that they've coined the ARC Series.  They're targeting October 01, 2014 as its launch date. Advanced Lights claims a deeper, more intense penetration via patent pending "compound beam technology" which sounds much like what you described with discreet angles and focal points:  a geometric topography that orients the 4 50W Cree modules to intersect at a point in space deep in one's canopy.  The spectra is proprietary but the blogs love using the phrase "imitates the sun".  Does it mimic a McCree Curve?  PPFD = PAR vs wavelength?  I don't know.  The Kickstarter link (above) has a 2 minute video that's fairly painless.
 
Are you at all  familiar with the engineering of the ARC Series stuff hyper-linked above and if so, does it ring true with your sense of grow logic?

 

 
Looks interesting, however I don't know if it is going to blow other lights out of the water, since Cree warm white LED's fall short in the 660nm+ range, as well as have poor covereage in the 460-520 range, and very little coverage in the 440nm and under catigory. Also I see they used COB design which generally is made for the benefit of profit, easy manufacturing, cheaper cost as well as most COB's have extremely poor heat dissapation.
 
Also with the use of the COB's and lenses, I would think this light is very intense, but I wonder how good of a lighting footprint it offers, being that the light is so focused... it seems like one would need a whole lot of these lights to propertly illuminate a decent garden...
 
To me before I was interested, I would want to know what the Umol readings per area/footprint are  for this light as well as a spectroradiometer reading of the output. I also would want to know what the operating temps are of the units because in my experience, most LED's actually have increased my grow area temps due to now direct heat evacuation/ducting abilities.
 
The ARC series look interesting though, and if Advanced  was interested in letting me try/test one of their units I would gladly accept. But not going to pay for a LED with no documented results though... 
 
 
These are just my thoughts on the lights though, they may kick serious butt in the garden, with LED's I hardely ever go off of advertisement claims because the industry is full of snakes. I'd rather test them myself and go off other respected growers results Hopefully Advanced sees this and offers me a test unit.