Odeli Case Study: Solution Required; Yesterday, or Ideally Last Week!

Written by Electrolube’s French Technical Sales Engineer:

The ‘phone call came through during the first week of March. The caller, Alexandre Boullot, Managing Director of Odeli – On Demand Lighting (French LED specialist responsible for designing bespoke lighting solutions).

A young and energetic company, Odeli have three bywords for success: Quality, Innovation and Reactivity. The reason for their call? They had just won an urgent contract, and needed an immediate solution – yesterday, if possible.

Odeli needed to encapsulate an LED system with resin and immediately thought of Electrolube with our extensive range of solutions for the LED market including conformal coatings, encapsulation resins and thermal management products. Our mantra of ‘let’s talk solutions and we love problems’ was about to be put to the test in spectacular style and with my customer… no pressure whatsoever then!

My first priority is always to understand the individual customer needs and work out a specification list taking into consideration all aspects of the environment, application process and product characteristics.

Odeli required a resin with 3 key characteristics:

Protection

Absolutely the primary issue; the nature of the environment (outdoor stadium) meant that the potted LED systems needed to protect to the electronic device from the weather and also dust and sand particles etc.

Light dispersion

The light dispersion factor is also critical for the end use. An amazing quality of light dispersion is achievable by use of a hazy resin solution. The light can pass through, but is also dispersed rather than emitting a harsh beam.

Aesthetics

Last, but not least, aesthetics. Gone are the days when a potting compound is merely functional. The exponential growth and drive in the LED market requires aesthetic solutions combining function with design. Fortunately the development chemists at Electrolube had already planned ahead for this trend and could offer a drop-in solution.

Electrolube’s UR5635 proved to be the perfect solution for this project and combined to satisfy the 3 main objectives.

The final hurdle however, still remained; the solution has to be tested, approved, manufactured and delivered within 4 weeks.

Mr Boullot thankfully is a realist and aware that this is an almost impossible timescale, especially with a qualification process in the middle, but the contract had to be delivered on time. The application was actually for the main stadium of the European Games taking place in Baku, Azerbaijan. 6,000 athletes from 50 countries competing in 20 sports. On hearing this, we literally picked up the challenge and ran with it. Protection of LED’s, an International event, short time scale – it had our name all over it.

We started the ball rolling with samples of the resin being sent the very next day followed by an ambitious plan of action. Odeli worked on testing the resin, insuring all criteria was being met whilst Electrolube’s team worked with a three week delivery target, poised to spring into action as soon as approval received.

As soon as we received the nod from Odeli, all was in place for a successful project, and we actually managed to deliver earlier than required. The reactivity and flexibility of Electrolube’s process is one of our strengths, and sets us apart from our competitors. With our international distribution, and three manufacturing sites, we are perfectly set up to solve solutions, even on such a short time frame.

The success of this project is due to a great capacity of adaptation from Electrolube and fast turnaround from both companies. Odeli have found a reliable and reactive partner, and they are now looking into the rest of the LED range to qualify more of our solutions.