Factory Lighting Guide

Understanding the lighting that spaces like manufacturing plants, factories, and other facilities need is very crucial for the owners as well as the electricians who carry out the process.

The process gets further complicated by the high risk of accidents and other hazards that exist in these spaces.

Both things complicate each other as poor lighting increases the risk factor significantly.

The Illuminations Engineers Society and American National Standards Institute have designed factory lighting standards that have been readily adopted by OSHA.

This means that there exist penalties for factories not in compliance with these standards.

General Guidelines: ANSI / IES-RP-7-1991

The metric of measurement for light levels is called lux (one lumen per square meter) and a lux meter follows the same metric.

While the ANSI/IES guidelines set the essential conditions for lighting systems, they are also flexible enough to include all individual demands.

Like, the ANSI/IES standards recommend around 10-20 foot candle light levels in areas like lobbies or dining areas where visual clarity is not a crucial need.

At the same time, they recommend 20-50 foot candles for areas where visual clarity and high color contrast are important for the tasks.

Similarly, workstations like electronic assemblies need extremely precise visual clarity and the appropriate light levels for such areas have been recommended to be 200-500 foot candles.

What Methodology Was Used for the Standards?

The standards of the lighting and luminance levels in factory settings were determined by experts in lighting.

This is very important because not every factory has the same settings and their lighting demands are rather varied.

To satisfy these conditions, the IES/ANSI standards were devised with the ability to accommodate all kinds of lighting needs.

These standards are the essential standards that every lighting system must meet. For instance, the lighting needs of the office area and assembly area in a factory would be different.

General Bay Lights for Factory Areas

What makes lighting plans crucial? These facilitate a digital representation of lighting settings that can be viewed beforehand and modified as per the needs to be assured about the purchase. You can even test these plans with different types of lighting. The aim is to make the buyer properly informed.

This will save you money too. Just choose the ideal light!

Lighting Levels for Factories

Light level intensities are measured with a unit called Lux. One lux of light equals one lumen per square meter.

It represents the illumination level of a surface. Lux represents the light intensity that is visible to the human eye.

Sunlight has the following lux levels- 10.8 at twilight to 120000 at noontime.

Different industrial settings require different lux levels. This is assessed with the help of a lux meter that calculates the ideal illumination levels for space, affected bodies, and activities.

The table below gives the adequate lux levels suitable for various industrial settings.

Why LED Lights for Manufacturing and Factories are Lights a Better Option

1. Higher Efficiency or Lumens Per Watt

The true efficiency of any light source is denoted by its luminosity efficiency.

This is a measure of the lumens produced by the light for every watt of power it consumes, and this value can be used for the comparison of LED to other lamp types.

LEDs have far higher efficiency than every other light. The efficiency ratings are even higher for high-quality LEDs.

Look for LED fixtures with 130-200 lumen/watt ratings.

How Do Long-term Savings Make Up for the Initial Cost?

The cost of high-efficiency LEDs is higher than low-efficiency bulbs. Similarly, the savings that they generate are much higher than the initial investment they require.

We recommend you choose high-efficiency LEDs for maximum savings with LED conversion.

2. Lumen Brightness

So much goes into picking the right fixture to achieve that perfect balance of light levels and light balance. Knowing what you need can make the difference between success and failure.

How Can You Determine the Ideal Lighting System?

This can be very difficult. We can help you with our lighting software that assesses your building layout. Creating a lighting plan determines the best fixture and the right amount of lumens to get the perfect lighting solution.

3. Adapts to Different Voltages

Understanding your current voltage requirements is key to picking the right lights. For the most part, there are two ranges: 100V-277V and 277-480V. Not all lights are available with high-voltage driver options.

These drivers automatically switch to your incoming voltage supply. So as long as your lights are within the upper and lower range of the driver you select, you’re all set.

3 Phase lighting is no issue either. Understanding how to wire 3 phase lighting to an LED Driver is key, but easy to do once you understand what and how to do it.

4. Options for High Temperatures

Heating problems in certain settings can seriously damage the LED lights. Thus, you need LED fixtures that remain resistant to temperature fluctuations beyond 50 to 122 degrees Fahrenheit.

If you’re looking for high temperature LED lights, we currently offer high temperature options ranging from 158F to 302F.

We do provide high-temperature resistant fixtures, but we recommend that you never install any fixture in the direct path of gas or hot air sources.

5. Better CRI ( Light Quality )

The color of any light is denoted by the CRI or color rendering index value. This helps us differentiate the color visibility of any object under the target light and sunlight.

The poor light color quality of HID lamps makes them unsuitable for various settings. The proper visible light color makes a huge difference in factory settings.

The color contrast and clarity come out properly.

We recommend LED lights with a CRI between 70 and 85. The standard is 70, which for the most part, will be ideal for most factory lighting needs.

CRI of LEDs

CRI values of over 70 are all good. If you want lights for special spaces where fine colors and detailing are crucial, go for 80-90 CRI.