Well I've had a look round and asked Vipar, it does meet this definition of a cob package unit;
"COB LED means chip on board LED, it’s one of bare chip technologies, which interconnect bare chip to substrate by conductive or non-conductive adhesive, and then wire bonding to achieve its electrical connection. COB package is attach number of chips directly to the substrate, then packaged together by silica gel, epoxy resin or other materials".
There's probably a million reasons it isn't or is a cob but whatever it is it feels brilliant and I'll be using it as the primary lights from seed on my Sweet Seeds Dark Devil Auto next grow along with two V series panels as sidelights. Overkill!
That's a pretty broad explanation from them AFAIC. I guess it does meet their definition of a COB, (not surprising
), but it doesn't mine. Or a few others.
http://www.hitlights.com/blog/comparison-and-differences-between-led-technologies-dip-vs-smd-vs-cob-vs-mcob/
http://ledlights-reviews.com/led-lighting-evolution
http://www.cob-led.com/What-is-cob-LED-chips-on-board.html
Those are multis and that's important to me at least. COBs have much better efficiencies because they are basically small die sliced thin and wired tightly in series. Multis are bigger chips wired any way one can, though they do have the advantage if a die fails it may only take out a section of the mult-chip. One chip on a COB fails and it's over for the whole COB but since they don't generate the heat multis do, this tends not to happen. Now when a company tells me one thing and I think another I start to look closer and so I ask; How come CREE, Bridgelux, Nichia, Samsung, Panasonic, Philips, Citizen don't make any multi spectrum COBs? And the answer to that is they have better solutions. Why is VIPAR saying they use "128 x3w Bridgelux Leds" when B-lux doesn't make red or green die? And how come they aren't advertising the LED's beam angle but the angle of the reflector instead? Am I lighting my reflector or my plants? I can go on but you get the idea.
But again, you get the weight one produces with 600 watts of HPS with even less heat, who gives a fuck, right
? LOL Still you gotta think twice when someone's not being forthright with you. My problem really is with China nowadays. Look what they're doing to Korea in the LED market. Just flooding the market with LEDs and basically choking domestic businesses which can affect a nations own economy. Even the article notes how China's government is completely behind the LED industry. Makes you think they're fighting their own little economic Cold War with everyone as a long term economic policy or worse knowing the little that I do know about their military. It really is time to start thinking twice about buying budget panels from China and what it truly means.
“As the Chinese government picked LED lighting as an item it will intensively develop in the future, it is actively supporting related companies,” said industry experts. “We must also urgently find ways to enhance the competitiveness of the LED industry at the national level.”
