Hector Fratty

By Daniel Stern 

J.W. Speaker, a 50-year-old manufacturer based in Germantown, Wisconsin, USA, have introduced a multiple-optic full-LED high/low beam headlamp designed to the standard SAE 7-inch (180mm) round dimensions used on numerous passenger, cargo, military, and off-road vehicles as well as motorcycles in North America, Great Britain, Australia, Japan, and elsewhere. It has a heat sinking die cast aluminum housing, a hardened glass front cover lens, a built-in fan for thermal management, and four optical elements visible from the front giving a highly technical appearance. The large upper projector lens handles output from a 1×4 emitter array equipped with a stair step “Z-beam” cutoff shield. This optical stack produces the high-intensity hot spot and forms the low beam cutoff. The D-shaped edgewise cylindrical lamps, each in front of its own emitter, provide beam width and homogeneity. The lower projector is for the high beam hot spot, and has a 1×4 emitter without cutoff shield. One optical version of the lamp is certified as complying with SAE requirements for the NAFTA market and is also type approved to ECE regulations for use throughout the rest of the world in right-hand traffic. A second optical version of the lamp has a mirror-image cutoff shield in the low beam optical stack, to produce a left-traffic beam; it is type approved to ECE regulations. 12v and 24v operation is possible.