Don’t just take our word for it, Australian-made matters. The team at 4WDTV know more than a thing or two about what really counts when purchasing 4WD accessories and parts. They recently came to our Swan Hill HQ to talk all things LED, learn more about our lights and how, thanks to our Aussie manufacturing, we create the best lights on the market. Read on as we take you through each stage of production, detail what goes into making our Ultra Vision LED driving lights and light bars and how we test them for real-world conditions.
Inside Ultra Vision Lighting HQ in Swan Hill, Victoria
We’ve been manufacturing LED lights in Victoria since 2004. With over 20 years of delivering great products across Australia, we’ve learnt exactly what our customers want, and what it takes to create LED lights that can withstand the harsh conditions Aussie drivers face. Our Swan Hill HQ is where all the action happens. At our factory, we store all the bulk raw materials we use to manufacture LED lights, and we handle all the R&D, assembly and dispatch with our growing team of hands-on engineers and technicians who are involved at every stage of production.
Why Ultra Vision Builds Electronics In-House
At Ultra Vision Lighting, we maintain rigorous quality control and deliver high-quality LEDs by building our printed circuit boards (PCBs) in-house. PCB production begins with just a few elements: raw boards, exposed tracks and pads. Throughout the surprisingly fast process, our speciality screen-printing machine applies lead paste to produce a full pad of completed PCBs. At Ultra Vision Lighting, we produce modular PCBs, allowing us to arrange them in any configuration to create light bars of almost any length.
Precision at Scale
Our pick-and-place machines use camera-based alignment to ensure the 10 high-speed heads pick up each component precisely before being automatically placed on the PCB substrate in their exact location. Our machines then place LED chips onto the PCB before it’s passed through a reflow oven where the elements are soldered permanently. While all of this sounds like a long, complex process, it takes only 40-50 seconds per PCB board, meaning Paul and the team have the capacity to build over 42,000 PCBs each year.
LED Selection and Colour Temperature
Singular LEDs are made in the millions, and each one is tested for quality and performance. We only purchase the highest quality LEDs, which are added to our PCB boards to make our powerful driving lights and light bars. For most of our lights, we choose the 5700K colour temperature LEDs (although 3000k & 4000K are also available on most of our range), 5700K is popular for its superior clarity and definition. Lights in 4000k can improve your driving experience by providing greater detail without causing excess glare from road signs or reflective surfaces, making them ideal for long nighttime drives and highway journeys.
Assembly, Optics and Housing
Once we’ve selected the right LEDs, it’s off to the assembly line! Taking the completed PCB boards, our highly skilled team install reflectors for beam control and fit lenses and rims to complete the casing of each light. This process is faster than you think, with it only taking a few minutes to complete one of our popular Raptor 120w driving lights. Rigorous testing is conducted at every stage of production, including assembly, where each light is ‘earth tested’ to ensure that no components are touching any of the internal surfaces, and final QC on the hardware & casing is done to ensure they are free from scratches and marks.
Pressure Testing, IP Ratings and Durability Testing
The testing of our LED lights continues in the next stage, where we pressure test the light casing to ensure there are 0 leaks. This strict control is how we can guarantee a Waterproof IP rating of IP68 & IP69 on each and every one of our LED lights. That means that they would be functional up to 1.5 metres underwater (not that we can guarantee your vehicle would be.) Our high IP rating is just one of the reasons why our LED lights are suited to any environment. You can take them in and under water, across dusty roads, and they will endure vibrations from corrugated roads and trails.
Quality Control Before Dispatch
We test every Ultra Vision light a total of 3 times before they’re sent out of our warehouse to customers and stockists around the country. Our testing process begins with functional testing of the PCBs with an additional 2 tests during the manufacturing stage. This is then followed by visual inspections for imperfections and damage, and a final verification before it’s packaged and moved to the next stage of the production line.
Built for Industry, Trusted by 4WDers
In addition to our LED driving lights and light bars, we also stock a range of LED work lamps which we introduced for the WA mining sector in 2010. Creating lights for the harsh environments found in mining sites, as well as the durability and reliability needed to perform every day, sets us an incredibly high benchmark of durability for all of our LED lighting products.
Lighting a Touring Truck for Australia
Putting all our expertise and engineering to work, we recently had the opportunity to upgrade the 4WDTV touring truck, which has seen its fair share of adventures. Not ones to skimp on upgrades, we packed the Iveco big rig with a full set of Ultra Vision LEDs, including 3 driving lights, 2 single-row light bars on the roof rack, and rear-mounted work lamps, totalling a massive 120,000 effective lumens… You can probably see this thing from space.
Why Australian Manufacturing Still Sets Ultra Vision Lighting Apart
Our Australian-based manufacturing gives us incredible control over the quality and power output of our LED lights. With all of our research, development and manufacturing taking place under one roof, we can turn out new products with impressive speed and you can be assured of our quality as we conduct testing and quality assurance at every stage of production.
Australian-made also means we can provide generous after-sales care, including 5-year warranty on our Raptor and Nitro Maxx range as well as a lifetime warranty on our mounting brackets.
To us, Australian-made means Aussie jobs and expert craftsmanship. It also means we know that your LED lights are built for the conditions you’re most likely to experience on Aussie roads.
