OT: LED Failure Poll

I've had circuitry failures in LED flashlights but I'm pretty sure the LED is fine. Usually flashing or dimming. Karl

I have not experiencd LED failure, but I had numerous compact fluorescent lights die on me way ahead of claimed lifespan. Many of those came from Wal-Mat.

i

I have, several. But on boat interior lighting and all appeared to be over voltage problems. But if you are talking about flashlights they likely will go the distance as every one I have encountered is substantially under powered. A 3 watt LED, for example, running at a measured 1.75 watts, using the flashlight case as a heatsink.

-- John B.

LED traffic lights develop many failures.

jsw

None of my LED flashlights has lost any LEDs yet, but I seldom use them, and even then, seldom use them for more than a few minutes at a time. Even the LED book light I used for 5 hours once hasn't given me any problems. Hmm, all of my LED lights are discrete bulbed, not.

It's hard drives and CFLs which aren't living up to their MTBFs.

Most of my CFL failures came from Feit. The 23W (100w) dimmable ULA bulbs I got from an eBay vendor last years longer. I bought a few GV

25W (100w) CFLs from Walmart a couple years ago and haven't needed to change any yet. And I haven't lost any of the 17W (60w) 4100K or 5000K Satco bulbs yet this first year. In home automation, even the dimmable bulbs flash every couple seconds when off if they're on standard lamp modules. I had to switch to relayed appliance modules. They're a buck more apiece and make a noticeable racket when switched.

GE incandescent bulbs from Walmart didn't last a year. "GE, we bring good things to life, for a very short while." My MadeInChina electric tea kettle switch started dying within the first several months. I wish I had a contact burnisher pen. Have you seen what they sell for today? Crikey!

-- Live Simply. Speak Kindly. Care Deeply. Love Generously. -- anon

The LED flashlights are generally great, as long as one avoids the cheapest ones available.

You're in for a treat, as the new LED home lighting products are claiming/hyping 30 and 50 year lifetimes.. as misguided zealot environuts are strongly pushing for, and demanding incandescent lighting be banned.

So what if your new light bulbs will cost $50 each, instead of 50 cents.

We can already see how well the predicted lifetimes for CFLs equals less than half the time the packaging states, so of course the new LED versions will more than pay for themselves.

Lead free solder and the cheapest components available (like nearly all consumer electronic equipment presently manufactured) will guarantee one significant change.. separating consumers from their money at a rate never seen before, for lighting products. Many of the new LED versions don't fit in existing lighting fixtures, so be sure to replace those too.

The LEDs will make it 100K, it's the support circuitry around them.

I had a batch of landscape flood MR-16 replacements (the clustered

5mm diode style, not a single Cree) all go partially to totally out within a year, but the maker blamed it on power surges - the HOA was using the original 500W magnetic transformer.

(If your design sucks because you didn't put any voltage regulation on board to save a dime, blame it on another vendor...)

Gave us replacement lamps for free, but we had to swap out the transformer for a proper LED Driver power supply - all in all, a wash.

The lamp end of a Compact Fluorescent Lamp isn't a problem, they have the same 12,000 hour or so life as any other fluorescent lamp - It's the ballast section that almost always goes first. Surface mounted board with the cheapest components they can get away with using, and the MTBF of the components is the MTBF of the lamp.

And if you think Feit is bad, Lights Of America is worse. I've taken apart several of their fixtures that have failed, and traced out the circuits - Power to the 26W lamp channeled through a 1/8W resistor... You really do get what you pay for - and at that, only if you inspect before purchase, and really insist. Take a Sharpie or a Paint Marker and always date your lamps and ballasts, and take them back and scream at the vendor or maker if they don't make the grade. Once in a long while they'll actually give you another one.

And if you scream loud enough word might get back to the Bean Counters who specified floor sweepings for components, and the Engineering staff who designed it down to a price under orders.

If you have a choice, go for separate lamps and ballasts in the fixture. The ballasts tend to last a lot longer than the lamps then because they get better cooling away from the lamp, especially good ones like the Fulham Workhorse line.

I'd still like to get Good Old Magnetic Ballasts for 24/7/365 applications like hallway drum fixtures, but that's not happening anymore. And even certain major makers (Lithonia) are trying to use cheap imported electronic ballasts that won't take constant running usage anymore. Two to four years, and *pop* goes the ballast.

Incandescents are only going to get worse, because the US factories are long closed and they are all relegated to third world manufacture. It *is* possible to get quality still, but the US Based maker has to ride their foreign QA crews very vigilantly to keep it up. And that takes away from the profits...

-->--

Right, and boy do those little boards stink when they melt and let the magic smoke out. Whew!

Lights of America cannot possibly, under any circumstances, meet or exceed the UL listing codes. No way, no how, never in a million years. I tossed three of their pieces of shit away (back to Home Depot) back in the '80s and warned their manager that they were liable to get some lawsuits from fires caused by the blasted things if they didn't change brands. I've never considered another LOA since then and constantly warn people away from them.

Feit sent free replacements, but they failed, too. It wasn't worth the hassle.

Yeah, I do try to give the idiots feedback, but most of the time, they don't want to hear it. So much for another mfgr...

Separable lamps and ballasts in CFLs? Nevahoiduvit. Fulham = ChaCHING, oui?

Lithonia is starting to feel a lot like LOA. I haven't liked the last couple of fixtures of theirs I've put up recently.

Aren't 'they' somehow phasing out incans as early as 2012? Oh, that's China. LoCal does it by 2018.

-- Live Simply. Speak Kindly. Care Deeply. Love Generously. -- anon

Wal Mart is at best, a crapshoot.

Trust me, the engineering staff already knows. And getting screamed at by bean counters for process failures caused by the bean counters' unwillingness to appropriately staff a design project doesn't make the next product come out better, it just shortens the service life of the engineers involved.

I can't understand the attitude of folks who drive BMW's and Mercedes, and who won't listen when an engineer tells them that "quality costs money".

I used to take an ink eraser from the office stores cabinet to clean contacts. In some companies the washroom paper was rough enough.

jsw

There's a quote to keep...

The OEM was a big contributor to Obama?

In some places the Toilet Paper is rough enough to polish metal.

would be easier to use under the shelf of a workbench.

LED exit lights from the mid 90's which were billed as having a 50 year lifespan dimmed out after about 7 years.

And they get covered with snow under the right conditions.

"ATP" fired this volley in news:4eb723f2$0 $1976$ snipped-for-privacy@cv.net:

different

The big problem is that most LED lamps and flashlights are not built with premium, top-name, first-run diodes, but mostly with rejects, out-of- current-spec devices, and 'cosmetic rejects'. It takes a big search to find a currently made, reasonably-priced LED _anything_.

I bought a 4 Watt (3 C-cell) flashlight with a Sylvania 4W LED. It's a hell of a good light, and damned-near burns grass at ten yards.

It has a limited lifetime warrantee -- as follows. It is warranted for the lifetime of the original owner except it is _not_ warranted against the following: Accidental damage, water leakage (It's a "waterproof" flashlight), or LED failures.

Ray-O-Vac, "premium", Hecho in Chine

So, don't believe ANY of the lifetime claims on LEDs in consumer crap from overseas. All the LEDs are production culls. I've had numerous ones fail in the multi-LED flashlights, which I use as equipment illuminators and inspection lights.

LLoyd

there is a good article in Spectrum a few months back about LED drivers, led lighting and poisoning of the substrate at high currents - if you actually want to understand, it would be worth searching for. otherwise, suffice it to say that running a chip near its limits shortens the lifespan