Heat and Duty Cycles in High-Power LED Moving Head Fixtures
Introduction: Multi-head LED fixtures concentrate hundreds of watts of emitters, drivers and motors into a housing that also has to pan, tilt and hang from a truss, so heat becomes a question of airflow and show rhythm rather than a single number on a spec sheet. Engineers who came up through halogen and discharge fixtures often assume that moving to LED removed the heat problem. It reduced part of it and moved the rest. A five-head fixture running 5x120W RGBW emitters is a 600W-class light engine before anyone counts the drivers, power supplies, pan and tilt motors, fans and control electronics, and all of that has to live inside a product that swings, tilts and flies above a stage. What follows is a working model of why that matters in a long show: where the heat actually goes, how rigging and cueing change the load a fixture sees, and how to read absolute phrases such as zero light decay or maintenance-free operation without either believing them literally or dismissing the hardwa...