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 From: neonixie-l@googlegroups.com [mailto:neonixie-l@googlegroups.com] On Behalf Of gregebert Sent: Friday, 3 May 2019 14:32 To: neonixie-l Subject: [neonixie-l] OT: LED light bulb teardown 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 ??? IMG_0212.JPG 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. IMG_0213.JPG 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 . IMG_0214.JPG 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. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/76aa6c59-3c9a-4e28-9915-fe06bf1707ac%40googlegroups.com <https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/76aa6c59-3c9a-4e28-9915-fe06bf1707ac%40googlegroups.com?utm_medium=email&utm_source=footer> . For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout. -- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "neonixie-l" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to neonixie-l+unsubscr...@googlegroups.com. To post to this group, send an email to neonixie-l@googlegroups.com. To view this discussion on the web, visit https://groups.google.com/d/msgid/neonixie-l/000901d50179%247ab46150%24701d23f0%24%40internode.on.net. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
