TOPIC: Quad v. Tri cree LED

Hi guys, I'd like your input on something. Saberforge seems to be the only ones using quad-crees with any regularity, citing the fact that they are brighter. Outside of SF (yes I have been plumbing the depths of other forums in my quest for knowledge) Tri-crees reign supreme. The detractors cite blade flare and heat as the downsides to quad-crees, but the worst thing they can say about the brightness is that it's 'only marginally brighter'. The original art for star wars features prominenet blade flare, and a warm hilt on an energy weapon is hardly immersion breaking, so why do people steer away from them?

It also seems that most non SF boards require a dedicated die only for use for FoC. It seems better to have a blade brightness 3/4 of max than only 2/3. Is there a way to do FoC without sacrificing a die? do other boards support PWM like sabercore 3.0?


For reference the colors I'm going for are Cyan and warm white respectively. It will be a non-SF board, I will post more details if it's kosher with the mods

Simply put, the quad LEDs in any way shape and/or form are not as efficient as a tri with a proper lens. The base flare with dimmer tip is quite noticeable, as is the excess heat.

Quads are about equivalent of a "5w" LED in brightness due to the improper optic, so they'd be similar to a color/color/x tri and brighter than a single die. Where the quads reign supreme is on the 3+1 mixes like Frost (WWWB), Mint Green (GGGB), Yellow (AAAG), and Indigo (rBrBrBR). All of those mixes are brighter and more even than their X/Y tri mixed counterparts. For example, with Indigo the quad runs all 4 dies at full. On a tri, you're running the single rB at full and the one R at about 1/4 or less.

The other difference, as you mentioned, is the Flash on Clash. While you can order a custom quad LED (or at least you used to be able to) to have one die for FoC, the Tri comes out brighter single die vs single die and mixes better.

Here's a comparison between SF quad Arctic Blue (rBrBGG) and tri Arctic Blue (rB/G).
Tri is on the left, quad is on the right.



As you can see, the overall brightness (by the aura) is comparable... but the tri is more even, and the quad has more base flare.

To mimic the "McQuarrie effect", you can simply get a blade from TCSS with Corbin wrap that gives the tapered effect.

Thanks! Sounds like for a bright blade with flash effects my best be would be a tri cree with flicker on clash.
KelbornX wrote:
If the optic is the problem, it seems strange that no one has developed a better, tighter optic. You would think that because the quad crees are more concentrated on the board it would be easier to focus the light.
KelbornX wrote:
For a bright cyan that is smack in between of true green and true blue what would be my best bet?
For a warm white?

Major_Tom wrote:
The problem is that no matter what way you slice it, 4 LEDs clustered in the middle of the PCB under a single lens is never going to be as efficient as 3 LEDs spaced out around the PCB each under their own lens.

Major_Tom wrote:
For Cyan you can do either Cree XP-E2 Blue/Green both at full, or Luxeon Rebel Cyan/Cyan. True cyan is fairly "green" rather than just a "light blue" that "Arctic Blue" is, which some people try to call cyan.

Not sure what you're asking about Warm White? Mixing with RGB or ... the actual Warm White diodes? Both Cree and Rebel have PLENTY of White dies lol. Just get the one in the brightest lumens that matches the rest of the dies on your PCB. TCSS only carries one SKU, but on LEDsupply or ordering direct from Luxeon you can mix/match SKUs between several product lines. The "best" Whites are in the Cree XM-L line, but iirc they are quite the battery hog.

The lenses used rely on boundary layer reflection to concentrate the light. That requires the light to hit the outside of the lens and specific angles. When you cluster the LEDs, the angles get thrown off and a fair amount of the light escapes. That's one problem.

KelbornX wrote:
I wanted to avoid RGB lol. I've been looking at mixing W/W/Amber. I know the white will be more powerful than the amber, I was hoping to get a nice golden white color. LEDSupply offers the option to mix XP-L/XP-L/XP-E2 Amber.
Jas-Ot wrote:
Thanks! This definitely clarifies why people say that tri-cree > quad-cree. Would I be accurately summing up when I say that while 4 dice are brighter than 3, the layout of the quad doesn't allow the light to be focused down the blade resulting in a blade of similar brightness to the tri, that is less even? That's how I understood it

Major_Tom wrote:
It doesn't take much White to wash out the Amber. I have a PCA/PCA/W and even at 1023,1023,500 it's a soft "peach" color. Might get better results using warm white instead of cool white though. Or even just go with a 2700k temp Warm White and call it a day lol.

Is it possible to use quick-connects with 2 channels?

XP-Ls don't fit under the tri-lens without modification - the LED dome is larger than the other XP Crees the lens is designed for

A single XP-L should fit the standard single-LED lens and still be impressive on its own.

Kouri wrote:
Are you sure about this? LEDSupply says that the 3-up pcb is made to be compatible with carclo optics...
Would def want to be sure before i order a combined pcb!

https://www.ledsupply.com/leds/cree-xlamp-xp-l-high-density-led-star

Positive. I'd wager LEDSupply just copied the text from their other LEDs.

For clarification, the tri-PCB lines up fine. The XP package fits under the lens. But the dome of an XP-L is larger than either the XP-G or XP-E, and it won't fit inside the 10507 lens we typically use.

The short version is you'll need to either remove the dome on the XP-L or widen the opening of the Carclo lens to get the two to play nice together. Search around at specialty flashlight/torch forums for the specifics.

What would it take to develop a 4wX4 quad cree. So that 3 dies running and the fourth die activates as one of the 3 cuts off. That would allow a full12w led when effects activate?. Am I making any sense. So would a new board have to be developed to switch off 1 of the 3 main dies and activate die 4 in its place. Or is it possible to make current boards operate this way?

Kouri wrote:
Thanks for the input Kouri! As a counterpoint, I will rely not on my limited know-how, but rather will let the horse speak from its mouth

LedSupply: transcribed for clarity wrote:
You seem to be more in the know than I, could you send me any links that support your assertion? I'm afraid i'm an outsider to these flashlight forums (unless they have polycarb blades bolted on! )

Also, do you know anything of putting differing die models on a single PCB? I imagine that if this does turn out to be feasible that my best bet would be putting 1 XP-L on one channel and 2 PCA XP-E2 on another...


Edit: It occurs to me that user KelbornX recommended to me the use of XM-L as the brightest die (now succeeded by the XM-L2) and in the following post I spoke of the XP-L, without addressing the difference between the two, the XP-L is smaller than the XM-L, which would be too big for the 3-up carclo optics, as discussed here
https://www.ledsupply.com/blog/cree-xp-l-vs-cree-xm-l2-whats-the-difference/

I'm about to test one of these, very soon.

https://thesaberarmory.com/product/quad-cree-xpe-2-custom-configuration-lightsaber-led-lens/

So a newb to electronics of this variety, but if what I'm hearing is what I'm hearing, then Tri-Cree LED modules are perhaps more versatile and produce a more even light than Quad-Cree?

Vechaljian wrote: What, 4-up quad XP-E2.... I thought I was making progress in understanding these nuances.
Let me know what you find out! It looks like in the pic the heatsink is occluding part of each optic, am interested how this turns out

Of note to other noob researchers, the quad-cree featured in Vechaljian's post is a 4up quad XP-E2, which is the same LED many like to use in tri cree, and each has its own dedicated optic.

This differs from the saberforge quad-cree which are XQ-E leds, smaller, with similar performance to XP-E2 dice, but clustered together on the PCB sharing a single optic, hence the aforementioned inefficiency

Eddlyss64 wrote:
Quad and Tri-crees give at least similar brightness blades, with the saberforge quadcrees losing most of their extra light around the base of the blade.

Tri-crees are more focused and even, as well as less powerhungry. However, using 4 dice gives you access to color mixes you can't achieve using a tri-cree at full power. Cyan with quads for example would be G/G/B/B, whereas to get the same color you would have to use G/B/x or G/B/B or G/G/B, while you can tune the color by raising and lowering the intensity of each die, the overall brightness will suffer, and you can get the same color at full brightness with quad-cree.

So, to sum up, Tri-Crees are more efficient and provide a more even blade.
Saberforge Quad-Crees provide more color choice (7^4 vs 7^3).

My sources are this post, this post, and this post.

Hm, so what about the combination of a spark color 2 board and a quad cree xpe2?

Shouldn't the board run all 4 LEDs on full power?

And i think i did not understand completely how the FoC works.
So, is one LED channel on the board only for FoC so i have to chose the FoC color upfront or do i chose the FoC LED via the settings for every font seperatly so im good with a RGBW and dont have to sacrifice one LED only for FoC?

Does anyone have experiance with the quad cree xpe2?
Or maybe the combination of spark color 2 and the quad cree xpe2?
Im curious if this combo would be as bright as the tri cree on full power.

IRoninI wrote:
So, for an SC2, you can wire up to 4 channels. And as far as FOC goes, you select how the channels mix for each font. That said, I would strongly urge just using a Tri star, whether is Cree or Luxeon LEDS, it's a better light distribution than the quad, and with an RGB LED you really don't need a 4th LED in there

OK cool, thanks for the help.

I think one reason why SF uses quadcrees is because of their thin necks having the LED under the thinneck vs in the emitter. Phill said he does that to keep the emitter slim and more movie accurate.

I think if brightness is a concern get a blue quadcree and a photon blade, this would overcome the loss in brightness nicely. I do admit the raised thin neck that goes into the blade helps a bit against blade wobble on shallow emmitters on thin necks that have the LED right in the emmiter itself.