About Us
Koba Concepts, LLC was founded in July 2022 by Alejandro Vazquez and Joaquin Martinez to provide a focused service to the film and television lighting industries that is much needed, and no other local company is currently providing. We have been directly involved in the development of many of the most iconic lighting fixtures, lighting controls, and lighting accessories used in cinema, television, and photography.
Co-Founder
Alejandro Vazquez is a mechanical engineer that graduated from California State Polytechnic University, Pomona in 1995, and has been actively working in the lighting industry since 1986. He started his career designing lighting fixtures and accessories as a draftsperson for Mole-Richardson Co. where he received a very comprehensive introduction to the manufacturing process. After receiving his engineering degree, he continued his career at Cinemills Corporation™, where he, along with its founder Wally Mills, developed the upgraded 12/18k Silver Bullet™ to be able to handle the newly released 18kW HMI double ended light bulb.
Alejandro also worked at Kino Flo Lighting Systems™ for several years, where he designed the enclosure for the Celeb 200™, and he worked at LiteGear™, for approximately 10 years, where he helped design the LiteMat™ family of LED fixtures and led the engineering team to develop the Auroris™ X lighting system.
Alejandro’s experience in mechanical design includes extensive knowledge of sheet metal fabrication, to create housings for lighting fixtures or enclosures for electronic controls. A good understanding of thermal management to maintain the various components inside the high-power fixtures from being affected by the high temperatures generated. Experience designing aluminum castings, injection molded components, and aluminum and plastic extrusions. In his 30+ years of experience in this industry, he has firsthand seen the many changes in technology to light up a film or T.V. scene
Co-Founder
Joaquin Martinez received his electrical engineering degree from San Diego State University in 2008. In the fall of 2008, Joaquin joined Kino Flo Lighting Systems as a Junior Electrical Engineer, where he was introduced to the film and television lighting industry. He served many roles during his 10 years at Kino Flo and was instrumental in many of the new products the company introduced at the time such as VistaBeam®, ParaBeam®, Tegra®, Image®, and Celeb® product lines. He conducted functional investigations to evaluate and correct electrical prototypes of switch mode power supplies that ultimately were adopted into production as product improvement changes. He also developed subassembly test equipment to improve yield and overall first time quality of various product lines. Led the design and supporting activities of model-based engineering projects using industry leading electronic computer-aided design Altium Designer® software, which increased printed circuit board (PCB) design accuracy and decreased iteration costs. Using DFM and engineering-best practice approach, he first led the development of an off-line low-power electronic ballast design, with universal-input SMPS with power factor correction and high efficiency. This DMX controlled switch-mode power supply ballast design served as the basis for all new electronic ballasts used in the company’s lighting fixture product line. As the film industry started requiring more LED Lighting solutions, Joaquin helped design a mid-power highly efficient new generation set of LED DC/DC drivers that were utilized across the companies iconic LED lighting fixtures such as the Celeb®, Diva-Lite® and FreeStyle® lighting fixtures.
In 2018, Joaquin joined Spectrolab Inc., a Boeing subsidiary, as an Electrical Systems Design Engineer and quickly impacted their Illumination Lighting Systems product line. As part of the group that design and developed the iconic Nightsun® XP IR LED high-intensity searchlight, which serves as a critical light component for various first-responders, search and rescue, and law enforcement groups, Joaquin helped finalize a military rated version that was successfully qualified to MIL-STD-461 requirements; this standard provides the requirements for the control of electromagnetic interference (EMI) emissions and susceptibility characteristics of electronic equipment designed for use by agencies of the Department of Defense (DoD). Aside from the electronic design responsibilities while at Spectrolab, Joaquin also served as the Program Manager for a laser power converter product line which recorded back-to-back multi-year profit margins under his lead; a feat not matched before in the history of the program. In his most recent project, Joaquin led as the Program Manager and lead Electronic Design Engineer, the redesign and successful qualification to RTCA-DO160G standard requirements for a key digital control linking-system product that enables legacy searchlights products synchronize to other onboard systems, such as infrared-cameras and helicopter navigational systems.
In his 15+ years of experience, across multiple industries, Joaquin has been able to acquire multiple design strategies and developed skills that has benefitted not only his professional growth, but most importantly, has translated to directly impact first-time quality product design and first-class level support to a wide range of customers across different sector industries.