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Cavemen discovering fire; the English popularizing gas lighting; Thomas Edison commercializing the light bulb; Joshua Cohen and Paul Boyer inventing flash photography; and of course the invention of the blue (and therefore white) LED. To this list of historic lighting accomplishments we can now add the advent of the fully flexible WAVE light strip, which provides unparalleled flexibility (ahem) in light strip installation.
While LED light strips were always flexible, the WAVE light strip takes this flexibility to the next level, allowing the strip to be bent both vertically and horizontally, twisted around its axis, and even folded over itself. Additionally, the modular design of the LED sections means that you can also increase and decrease the distance between LEDs.
|
WAVE Strip |
Regular Strip |
|
|
Bend any angle ‘vertically’ |
Yes |
Yes |
|
Bend any angle ‘horizontally’ |
Yes |
No |
|
Twist strip |
Yes |
No |
|
‘Shrink’ or ‘extend’ strip length |
Yes |
No |
So how does the WAVE strip work? Instead of a relatively broad and stiff ‘full thickness’ PCB board (the ‘strip’ part of an LED light strip), the WAVE strip does away with excess rigidity by routing the conductive elements of the strip in such a way that unnecessary segments of PCB board can be eliminated entirely.
(Note that the term ‘PCB board’, while an industry standard, is somewhat of a misnomer, as the ‘PCB’ part of the term itself stands for ‘Printed Circuit Board’. Since the term has stuck, we continue to use it - we guarantee we’re referring to the PCB itself, not some mythical board made of printed circuit boards - a Printed Circuit Board Board, if you will…)
This change in design means the now narrower (and specially cut) sections of strip between LEDs can now be manipulated in new and interesting ways. Best of all, this flexibility comes without sacrificing durability, as the amount of conductive material is retained. To top it all off, this additional flexibility is supported by our high performance heat induction (HIT) tape, which is significantly stronger than most similar tapes, and which actually adheres better as it heats up (more on that in a future blog…)
So forgive us for exaggerating slightly, as we’ll admit that the feats of those lighting pioneers mentioned earlier are clearly more significant than the creation of our WAVE light strip. But also consider, below, the list of lighting possibilities that were difficult or impossible before the WAVE strip.
Any LED strip installation with horizontal right angles and more complicated shapes like circles, bends or curves.
The HitLights WAVE strip comes in a crisp 6,500K color temperature, and pairs extremely well with our Dimmable Drivers or EZDim dimmer switch due to its relatively high 400 lumen per foot output.
What will you accomplish with the HitLights WAVE strip?