The latest light buzz is wrapped around the Light & Motion’s Seca which will be releasing later this year. If you go to their Seca website you can sign up for their newsletter that slowly is trickling out information about this light. The latest is a piece on the engineering and engineers behind the new light.

Engineering Seca:
Behind the Scenes at Light & Motion
by Jason Lombard
While we at Light & Motion are very proud of the products which we produce, we’re even more proud of the people that function as part of our team. We took a few minutes to sit down with Damon Campbell, our Design Engineer responsible for the Seca and Stella models.

Check out the gallery of images below to see the Light & Motion production team in action:

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JL: Thanks for joining me Damon. In order to give our readers some insight into Seca’s development process, I have a few questions for you.

DC: My pleasure.

JL: Let’s talk about Seca. What was Light & Motion’s reason for launching Seca? And why the move to an entire line of LED products?

DC: Well, though our ARC light system was soldiering on—still one of the brightest light systems on the market—we felt the time was finally right to leverage LED technology. LED’s have been around for quite a while, but only recently have they reached a place where there was enough punch to be considered for serious high-output applications. Going 100% LED was a bit of a step for us. Never before in our company’s history have we re-engineered 100% of our product line in a single year. But we’d been watching technological developments within the LED sector over the last few years and decided to make the commitment. It’s important to us that we’re on the cutting edge of what technology offers. In addition, we launched our Stella LED light systems last year, which sold extremely well and garnered some great reviews in the process. Stella encapsulates a few of our favorite things about LED; lightweight, efficiency and durable solid-state construction. LED really is ideal for outdoor recreational lighting.

JL: Getting back to product development; how long is a product like Seca in development before it’s launched into the market?

DC: While the ideas typically fly around for some time, once we decide on a project and start to run with it, it’s usually about one year from the start of design to a finished product. Six or seven months of that are pure engineering, meaning some late nights for me—but in the end it is definitely worth it.

JL: How many people are involved with the design process from start to finish?

DC: For Seca we had about 20 people involved. While I’m the primary design engineer, I couldn’t do it without the other people that are involved. We have internal resources for electronics, external resources for electronics, specialists in parabolic beam optimization, industrial designers, graphics and marketing—even our sales department has input. Each product is very much a team effort.

JL: How much of the modeling and analysis is done on computer vs. real world testing?

DC: Almost all of the modeling is done on computer. However, there’s no substitute for real-world testing and analysis. The computer can generate all of the theoretical models, but until you get out there and test, you don’t have the full picture of what is possible and what the product’s capabilities are. So, I’d say that the process is very much 50/50—with both halves necessary for a successful product.

JL: Describe the prototyping process within the facility at Light & Motion? How much of it is done in house?

DC: Light & Motion has some great tooling and machinery right here in house, which is great for prototyping. With a full machine shop, CNC mills, injection molding machines and two FDM rapid prototyping ‘printers’. We have the ability to physically produce about 90% of the parts necessary for the prototype process within our facility here in Monterey, CA.

JL: So prototyping is an in-house affair. What about production? How much of the production work is done on site?

100% of the production for the bike lights is done right here in house. Sure, there are some parts that we have to source externally, but when it comes to building the final product—that’s all done right here. This allows for really tight quality controls— my desk is only 30 feet away from the production assembly area. All of the engineers are really involved in the pre-production builds, which ensures that production quality stays high. As a result, Light & Motion has an unbelievably low failure rate. The marketing people tell me that’s one of the main reasons that our professional athletes and customers both like our products so much.

JL: That segues into my next question rather well; Are the Light & Motion’s professional athletes involved in the development process? Do you have a group of regular riders testing the products as well?

DC: Our pros are definitely involved. Their feedback is continuously sought and incorporated in order to continue to make our products better. We value the input that we get from all sources. The pros are definitely part of that. We also have a team of local test riders who test product for us—and we get feedback from consumers too. It’s all considered when we sit down to design or revise our systems.

JL: How conscious are you of being “green” when designing products for Light & Motion?

Extremely conscious. Our products are inherently fairly green. We adopted the European RoHS environmental standard for reduced heavy metal content a few years ago, and we make a pointed effort to avoid toxic processes wherever possible. We use local vendors to source parts wherever possible to minimize the transportation of materials as well.

Almost everyone is familiar with the “Reduce, Reuse, Recycle” mantra. By spending a little extra time and money on the front end, we’re able to focus on the “reduce” message by designing high-quality, durable products that will stand the test of time—we use rechargeable batteries, solid state electronics—components designed for a long service life. A longer service life means less waste, fewer products going to the landfills, etc. It’s the way that we’ve done it since our inception, and frankly, we can’t imagine doing it any other way.

Next Month: Seca Tech Specs

Basics on the Seca from their website :

The Seca (starting at $369) sets a new standard for high-performance bike lights. With output to 700 lumens, Seca delivers higher quantity and quality of light than the top performing HID systems. Seca is designed to address bike specific lighting needs both on the road and on the trail. This means not only more light, but more light where you want it. Seca’s beam pattern offers an abundance of light in front of your wheel, powerful light down the trail (piercing the darkness up to 200 ft in front of you) and plenty of ‘spill’ light for enhanced peripheral vision. To top it all off, Seca is less expensive than most HID systems.

Seca will be available for sale on August 15th, 2008.