Thinking Outside The Box Following on from its appearance at [d]arc room last month, David Morgan delves into the TLS portfolio, examining its flexible backlighting systems and light boxes.
L
ighting companies come in many forms and
develop from a variety of starting points. In the case of TLS, its parent company Media Graph, a printing company, identified the need for a
flexible backlighting system to work with the
large-scale fabric printed graphics it produced for its retail and advertising customers.
From an early stage in its history, Media Graph – a 25-year-old
company based in Montreal with more than 50 staff – had started
to develop and market non-LED backlighting systems and extruded frame systems. The company founders David Sellam and Orit
Toledano identified the need for more flexible systems to create light boxes in a range of sizes and spotted the potential in using LED light sources. The TLS system was first introduced in 2008 and has been continuously developed since then. In 2010, TLS was spun off as a
separate company in order to develop other markets beyond retail and advertising display.
The core of the TLS business is its innovative, patented lighting
system which is used to create light boxes in a wide variety of sizes. TLS stands for Tension Lighting Systems, which describes exactly how the system works. The key innovative design feature of the
TLS system is the way the light engines are mounted into the light boxes onto tensioned stainless steel wires, which carry power and
data to the LED boards. This wire suspension system can be used in conjunction with one of the TLS extruded housings, in other frame systems or fixed direct to the building surfaces. A neatly designed
mechanism allows the wires to be easily tensioned after installation in the housing, while a series of anchor components support and fix
the tensioners to the mounting structure and provide connections to the low voltage power source and dimming system.
The LED light engine boards snap onto lockable holders mounted
on the suspension wires with an ingenious series of cut-outs along
the side of the boards, which ensure the correct polarity connections are made. Because the wire suspension system does not block light output in any direction, the TLS system can be used to create both single and double-sided light boxes.
Standard LED pitch on the light engine board is 60mm for the fixed white and RGBW light engines. For the digital control pixel system
four spacings are available from 40mm up to 150mm. TLS offer two different light engine spacings on the suspension wires; premium David Morgan Associates, a Londonbased international design consultancy specialising in luminaire design and development and is also MD of Radiant Architectural Lighting. Email: david@dmadesign.co.uk Web: www.dmadesign.co.uk
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configuration with boards spaced 60mm apart and standard
configuration with boards spaced 120mm apart. The light engine
boards are segmented and can be cut to length on site to fit any size of light box.
The standard distance from the light engines to the lit diffuser