OT: LED light bulb teardown

[gregebert]

Since we all love to tinker with electronic items, I thought I should share this. Whenever an LED bulb fails, I take it apart for the LED assembly. Usually, it's the driver electronics that fails, leaving the LEDs intact. But on rare occasions an LED chip actually fails open and in 1 case I simply jumpered it across. As you can see, none of these are identical which shows there is constant redesign going on. Guess which of these was a floodlight ???

So, how efficient are these things ? Well, it takes about 50 volts to get most of these glowing. Even at 400uA (20mW) there's a decent amount of light coming out.

At about 10mA, it's so bright the photo washes-out and it's very annoying to look directly at it. Just 1/2 watt, or about the power of a larger nixie tube. Beyond that, they get so bright that you risk eye damage. One quick glance at 40mA gave me blind-spots for several minutes. Even at 40mA (2+ watts), there's not too much heat generated and it measured about 60 C .

As for reliability, this is about all that has failed over the past few years within our community, as I maintain about 200 lightbulbs in the alleyways.

I'm glad no glass is used; the easiest way to tear them down is by squashing in a bench vise, then picking out what you want with some pliers.

And no, I have absolutely no idea what I will use these for; right now they just collect in a jar.

They're just too interesting to throw out.....just like the neon bulbs and nixie tubes I started salvaging years ago.

[johnk]

They interest me too. I do troubleshooting for a mate who imports LED lights.

When you pull apart OR store the LEDs make sure that you do not put any real pressure on the soft rubbery potting/encapsulation of the LEDs.

COB LEDs are easily damaged – the bonding wires are delicate.

 

Some suppliers here are still claiming 20,000 – 50,000 hours lifetime time for the whole lamp. Sometimes even when the driver is separate, they include the driver still.

They are/will get their fingers burnt. Australian consumer laws are very good for the consumer. In general terms we get a lifetime warranty regardless of what the seller says, because things have to be fit for purpose. [It could be argued that some of those tiny low temp electrolytics are not.]

The difficulties arise with consumer goods like a TV. Even though the electronics should be expected to last for many many years, the “trade” has gradually influenced the government to believe that a TV has an accepted limited life [short] because so many new models keep coming out. The assumption is that a new model has some new benefit wished-for by the public [not so, of course.]

 

Even some large retailers don’t understand. This was underlined when a program called “Checkout” iirc ran on a government sponsored TV network here. Years ago I had an issue with a product and a BIG retailer – it was short-circuited by the fact that HP actually used the wording from our government consumer affairs law in their warranty information.

We can claim reasonable costs in returning/collecting replacements etc too.

[And Australia was in main responsible for forcing Steam to accept returns on software. I forget how many million they were fined.]

 

Any other countries with good protections?

 

[oops, sorry for the hijack of topic :-0   ]

 

John Kaesehagen

Australia

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[alb.001 alb.001]

I have some lighting strips 18-24 inches long with white LED's that were the backlight for large screen TV's. Electronics Goldmine also sells they )  I noticed that they had some small holes in the pc board material and power connections at the end. Since they are so thin and light I mounted one over my front door outside, snaked a power line 12 volts from inside my garage to it and connected the power supply to a dusk to dawn timer in the garage.  Now it is easy for us to find the keyholes in the lock and it self adjusts for seasonal daylight.  Has worked for several years so far.

Small circular LED arrays can be used as task lighting or to illuminate items in you home - they use little power and do not overheat. Since the power supply is UL rated  there are no insurance issues either.

Phil B

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