This is a superior video, with good editing, no awful music, intelligent analysis and an interesting topic (at least to me). I will look for more of his videos.
I reverse engineered this same circuit a few years ago. The controller is a triac, and it fires on each half of the power cycle (hence the bulb flashes at 120Hz). The bad thing about this circuit is that current is not constant, it is instead a very large discharge current for a short period of time. The average current is within the spec of the LEDs. However, the peak current spec is being exceeded by a large amount. By continuously blasting large currents through the LEDs, the weakest LEDs get overstressed and die. Since the LEDs are wired in series, it's the old Christmas tree lights syndrome where if one lamp fails, the entire strings goes down. It's a very lousy design which is why these lamps fail repeatedly. They are junk. Toss the entire lamp and get something more modern.
@@siriusleto3758 buy a good quality bulb. The best ones come from reputable brands and while still low in cost, are around $10 -$20 per box at my local big box store. Additionally, look at technical TH-cam videos where they tear them down.
You seem knowledgeable, can you design a light bulb that isn’t design to fail after a certain amount of time? Planned obsolescence should be a crime against humanity.
After having an impressive number of these bulbs suddenly stop working, including one about 15 minutes ago, I decided to search and see if anybody had determined the most common cause. Your video nailed it down. Thank you. I had incandescents last years for me. I can't seem to even get a year out of these LEDs today. Hate 'em.
Yeah, the situation is really bad. You could buy any incandescent bulb from any company and they all would last about the same, but with LEDs, it's all so wild - it could serve years (if you are lucky) or it could fail in a week or a month.
Thanks John for this display as these lamps seem to fail alot. From U.K and they are swapping to these to save cost..You went in detail and showed the problems with these lamps. Thanks Buddy
It started in the 1920s I believe, when tungsten bulb manufacturers all followed a secret rule to keep light bulb life at a profitable point. This was discovered when documents came to light after East Germany united with West Germany. The Light Bulb Conspiracy - Extended Version th-cam.com/video/kdHIqa53-tY/w-d-xo.html This one has subtitles for for the non-English interviews th-cam.com/video/zdh7_PA8GZU/w-d-xo.html
@@DataWaveTaGo get a copi of the resit and go bak to the store and get a new one on waranty.It is electronics pcb etc in it so the waranty should be the same as for a dvd player.To few are making use of the waranty.One reson they produce garbage straigth from factory
@@leohobbleohobb3781 Right. My Philips "20 year" LED failed after 4 years. I checked the warranty, it was not covered beyond 3 years. Great company, Philips, just great...
@@DataWaveTaGo Philips products made in Holland(Belgium? has had a much higher standard on components etc.If i se philips made in China or other very lowcost places that meke stuff for philips is not real philips we used to say back when people cared more about what they buy and it,s quality.
These are likely heat cycling failures. They run them pretty hard with very little cooling and when turned on and off regularly the bond wires eventually break. We had a few Feit bulbs fail in our outside motion lights. I set them to dusk to dawn with the replacements and have not had any more failures for the past couple years. Many of the more expensive name brands like Philips and Feit tend to use higher binned LED chips and run them under spec to help make them last longer while producing less heat per chip and providing better cooling.
I noticed the LED disk only contacts the heat sink on the edges. Some of the better designs have the heat generating power components mounted in Epoxy inside the base.
Yeah, many LED seems to have a similar issue - overheating and horrible thermal paste. The LED are just driven too high, coupled with bad thermal dissipation. I was surprised by the super simple electronics on this one (i.e. 3 pin voltage reg) - what I have found is more like: BP2832K with an extra coil and diode.
You should put the product name in the description so this video can be more easily accessible to people looking for a review on these particular LED bulbs. Also, it's valuable LED information promoting how important that LED s that fail can and should be recycled. Most of the parts can be in good working order and it be a small failure and for pennies fixable. In the right hand, this is reused, repurposed, &/ or recyclables materials that shouldn't be thrown away! Thanks for taking the time to share your experience and savviness on the matter!
agree, I bought the product although there is a bad review but the price is really really nice, i try to buy it , and it very surprise to me, The quality is really good. Luckily amzn.to/2Nz4IHe
With critical analyses of bad products-- with actual evidence of brand failure-- TH-cam offers the video equivalent of Consumer Reports, a publication famous for naming bad products. That, alone, makes this video worthwhile, but it is also a logical presentation, with good audio and well-positioned camera views. For anybody with a curious nature, this strongly merits a subscription.
Thanks for the video, does seem like a failure trend at this point. One of the big marketing strategies is that LED bulbs are going to last a lot longer. Guess they mean in a landfill.
The leDs fail because they run too much current through them, which makes no extra light, it just cooks them. Solution is to replace the current-setting cap with one 1/2 to 1/3 the capacity - uF-age.
As always it is down to production quality, of course cheap bulbs will not last. And sadly as time goes on companies know you are used to buying a certain type of bulb and they can just make them fail quicker. I have a bunch od old Phillips CFLs, some over 10 years, and a whole stack of one year old Phillips CFLs that are about to crap out... they know how to play this game.
Actually, at least to a point, increasing the current DOES increase the brightness. However, that reduces the life. Some LED systems have lives rated at 50K hours or 100K hours.@@GerardVaughan-qe7ml
Some fixtures are enclosed. It is necessary to put some sort of light emitter into them. In enclosed fixtures, incandescent lights can get to hot and damage the insulation on the wires unless there is an over-heat device to shut off the power. The life of CFLs and LEDs will be reduced, sometimes excessively so. So what are people supposed to do?@Klaa2
Excellent failure analysis! I agree with your assessment - that brand is crap. But being the kind of guy who never likes to throw something away when it can be made to work a little longer, I'd jumper around the bad LED and put the bulb back together. It would also be a good experiment, seeing how long it takes for another to go bad.
@@roderickyoung1243 ya - forgot that - in india we have capacitor dropper type. And constant current types just hit the market. In case of constant current source, adding resistor won't help.
Only traitors disrespect our president, whoever she/she happens to be in office. Merely bringing up the president of the United States in a light-bulb video, is not the *brightest* thing to do, ya know.
Cause...the American people freely elected him to office in a stunning and unexpected huge electoral victory. But you already knew that. Maybe the real question should have been..."please explain why Pres. Trump's victory was such a surprise in the world that I operate in...". The answer to THAT question is really what you are seeking.
I love them....had 1 on my porch for almost 5 years.....no problem....was going through 2 regular bulbs a year before. Every bulb in my house except fridge and stove are leds. Never a problem
I've been using the $2.67 Walmart LED bulbs for a few years now and several of them being on 18-20 hours per day still work like new. So far only had one die after nearly 2 years and that is likely because it is outside where it gets the heat+humidity and sometimes below freezing, but still lasted longer than any other incandescent or CFL bulbs do outside. The constant Florida heat and/or humidity for 9 months of the year is the most likely culprit.
It's four years later... Are they still working? And do you use any of them in fully enclosed light fixtures? I'm just curious. ;-) I have some early Walmart "Great Value" bulbs that were more expensive. I think they were made by a company called TCL or TPA -- something like that. Anyway, they've been working for so long now that I can't remember how old they are. LOL! Only the cheap Walmart bulbs have failed for me.
One thing I've not heard anyone mention; these LEDs, due to their shell, only project light in about 120-160 degree direction, similar to a floodlight. While the old incandescent projected about 270-330 degrees and the flourescent tubes about 270-300 degrees.
Anyone who even remotely believe that is totally ignorant how life span is/was calculated/represented. Even with the incandescent lamps life span was listed as so many hours of operation per day, not 24/7/365 continuous operation. Often people can understand what's clearly printed on the packaging. When I install the newer types of lamps I write the date on the base. I have had CFLs fail in three years and had some last over five years. I haven't been using LEDS long enough to get a date yet.. I do have one LED lamp that has become intermittent. Unless is starts to sound like it's arcing or smell I'm going to use it until it fails completely. Although I have confirmed it's still firmly screwed into the socket. Incandescent and old school florescent lamps seemed never to last as long as promised, but I never bothered to date record installation. That only became practical with the cooler operating CFL and LED lamps.
They are not claiming 8 years, in my experience, the average is about 8 months, about half are out in less than 4 months. Haven't had one make it to 2 years yet.
@@douglaspage2398 my ikea one is 4+ now, first one I bought. My Philips led bulb is 3+ years. Led bulbs are rated for hours and how often you can turn them on. All subject to environmental heat.
These LED- energy-saver-bulbs are generally overdriven, so they are brighter and last shorter. They also overheat quickly in that airtight plastic enclosure.
I flipped the switch in my workshop recently and one of the LED lamps was just flashing at a really high rate. This is a supposedly 'quality' LED lamp made by Osram. It has been in service for less than a year, and isn't used every day. The crazy thing is that the 'el cheapo' LED lamps that I have in other parts of the house are still going strong, and they were less than half the price of the Osrams.
I bought about 30 LED bulbs for my house 4 years ago and have only had one fail. It also said "not for use in enclosed space" and I had it in a sealed hallway light so no blame there. The electricity savings is huge, especially in the summer when the AC doesn't have to work as hard to get rid of all that waste heat. LED bulbs are also subsidized in my state, so I pay about $1.50 for them to knock $10-20 off my monthly power bill. Absolute no-brainer.
Yeah, over the last 10 years, I’ve not yet thrown out a single led bulb. The older ones, that have dimmed over time (from being left on 24/7) have gone on to second lives as rarely used closet lights and such). I’ve not had a single outright failure (in contrast to the awful CFL’s which, while lasting longer than incandescent bulbs, seem to quit at the 4 year mark - I now have a pile of them awaiting proper disposal). As for LED versus incandescent, it’s no contest, LED bulbs are just better.
Oh definitely. And RF, too. I have a scar on my finger where I held the sharpened end of a pencil while pointing out problem areas to a tech I was teaching to repair diathermy units. Got a little too close to an unshielded RF field and it burned a neat little oval where the lead was touching my skin. Never went anywhere without my pocket protector including an all plastic coil adjuster from that point forward.
Pencil 'lead' is actually graphite. So conductive that early radio repair guys used to temporarily fix resistors by scribbling on them with a pencil. You're right: Not a wise choice for a pointer.
sam steel - ha! Maybe. I suppose, in an emergency, you could sharpen both ends, cut out the bad section of wire, shove the pencil into the composition and duct tape them. Might work. Sounds like that would be one of those 'life hacks' YT channels. Might even work as somewhat of an anti radio noise piece?
mc3lizard - Correct. It was just an unconscious choice of pointers at the moment, and I was using it when the unit was off, at first. My momentary lapse into idiocy. But the tech never forgot it (neither did I) so he never made that mistake, and that was the important part, b/c there were a lot of high voltage points in the power supply as well as the RF oscillator section. I'm glad those things are not in production anymore, never liked the idea of an untrained nurse just cooking muscle with what was essentially an open-air microwave oven just b/c a doctor prescribed it.
I believe the LED's are being purposely overpowered and that is what causes them to fail. The math doesn't lie. Find and open bulbs from several manufacturers and compare the circuits. I think we'll find that some of them are better designed.
Ron I agree, they don’t like the fact they can last a very long time. The heat off of these bulbs alone have been questionable. I have a 100w for the garage, Lowe’s bought, and it has to be 200f after 30min on.
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There are approximately a thousand people who actually gave this video a thumbs-down. That proves to me that the Lightning Science company had most of their employees deliberately give this video a thumbs-down out of anger for exposing the truth of their fraudulent business practices. I attempted to contact their company via their email address located on their website at lsgc.com My email was instantly returned to me as being undeliverable.
Gábriel Priòre it could also just be people working the algorithm to improve their recommendations by telling TH-cam I don’t like this content as I did... It was informative and I now know why the one bulb in the kitchen flickers but this was a strange recommendation that I want less off (plus creator get interaction points on his content)
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@@Magtranya Are you kidding me?!? Is that actually the reason videos have thumbs-downs? That is not the proper way to change your video recommendations. When I see a video that I am not interested in, I click the small dots on the side, then click not-interested. I have never needed to give any video a thumbs-down to change my video recommendations!
@ I have not thumbed down the video, but I guess some people did that because of the picture quality. Only 720p and not the cleanest 720p I've seen either, if you're sitting 50cm from a 43'' 2160p screen, it's just not pretty. There are other channels that dismember/analyse failed Led bulbs, eg. BigClive, his vid's are of much better picture quality.
I own a former elementary school and installed 40 Uniden 60 eq bulbs from Lowe's that run just above $1/bulb in multipacks and have had a total of ZERO failures in 4 years now.
I also do this just for the fun and heck of it. If I may suggest, you can use an analogue ohmmeter to check each led if you set it on RX1ohms range. The voltage on the tester prods from the battery inside is just about sufficient to test an LED or a small CD motor. And by experience, damaged LED's in this kind of lamps, most of the time, very small black dots can be visible on the insides.
Oddly enough, I just had my first LED bulb fail in my house this morning, 14 December 2017. It was installed March 2014, and was the old style with the large, finned metal heat sink between the base and the plastic globe. It also had all the circuitry inside potting material in the heat sink base, as opposed to directly on the board like newer bulbs, and it weighs at least twice as much as newer bulbs. I think the likely cause of failure was the fact that I had it installed inside an enclosed globe ceiling fixture, which they tell you not to do. I need to replace the whole fixture with an actual LED ceiling fixture, one of these days.
As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. Buy shitty LEDs and get a shitty lifespan. I've had full Philips LEDs for ~3 years, no issues. They cost 3x what a chinesium bulb costs though
same here, the LED life expectancies are generally overrated, but you cant stop what's coming. we'll never go back to the edison bulb- it's way too wasteful, all that heat is wasted, plus it adds to Air cond. loads.
Before LED bulbs became available, I installed CFLs for security lighting outside my house. They are on for an average of about 12 hours per day. This is 9 years later and MOST of them still work. So, that's 12 hours x 365 days per year x 9 years = 39,420 hours! Not bad. The reason they've lasted so much longer than their rated life is that they are turned on and off only one time per day. Cycling CFLs on and off shortens their life. That is not true of LEDs.@@marmars1081
Jubeidono2012 yep it takes cock and balls to stick a screwdriver through the genie’s lamp, for fear of the giant deadly charged capacitor and Hg fumes hiding inside.
Unfortunately, no one can claim 22 years of service, when the technology, didn't really exist 22 years ago. Most plastics start to break down in 10 years and become brittle. The 22 year mark may have been loosely based off the actual LED element. Who knows how the cheap plastic, glue, and cardboard that compromises the rest of it is really going to last.
Exactly! I have built-in LED lights in my RV, which is only a year old. There were two puck-style lights on the underside of a cabinet that overhangs the head of the bed, for reading. A push-in style switch in the center of the light turns them on and off. A few months ago the switch on one started acting up and had to be fiddled with to get it to work correctly. I got curious and pulled the cover off the light and tried to figure out what was going on. The small plastic base/housing of the switch where it mounts onto the circuit board had cracked and would not stay in place anymore, presumably due to heat, hence not allowing the switch to function properly. Eventually the switch fell apart right in my face. I replaced these lights with a different style quality light that won't fail due to design flaw and poor crappy plastic components.
The technology for LED's have been around since 1962, invented by GE and used as indicator light on numerous applications. GE has held the patent on incandescent bulbs since almost day 1; their patent is a "broad scope" patent that is restrictive to any "downstream development". For instance, if you wanted to make a light bulb it cannot be the same basic bulb "shape", they own that. It cannot use a filament, even if it's not Tungsten; they own the idea of ANY "filament". It cannot have a screw shaped attachment method, they own that. It cannot utilize any contact wires that come up and through a glass support inside the bulb, they own that. The only way to get into the light bulb market was to purchase the rights from GE and build it to their specifications. That's why the only other successful consumer light design has been Flourescent, because it incorporates none of those elements. Neon is impractical for homeowner consumer use. We could have had LED lights since 1970, but GE sat on the technology until they could extract every last cent out of incandescent by "planned obsolescence", i.e. making bulbs crappier so you'll buy more, and by announcing the roll-out of LED and eventual phasing out of incandescent years ahead of time to get consumers to "panic buy" in huge quantities in order to stockpile ahead of the changeout. Never buy "Utilitech" brand....they and other companies purposely use inferior components to raise the failure rate and increase revenue. I use Phillips and so far they seem to be good quality, no failure at all in 10+ years. And Yep, they cost more....but if they charged quadruple what I paid, it'd still be worth it.
I have a LED nightlight and after 5 years the plastic has turned brown in one spot. It’s on almost 13 hours a day and only shuts off on sunny days. I can foresee plastic cover failure long before the light source fails.
Adam Savage likes to say that often times the only difference between screwing around and Science is writing stuff down. Nicely documented experiment. I've had some LED bulbs fail as well, And they were all from failed singular LED's inside the bulb. (several different brands). interestingly I have one Cree bulb that I can see a failed LED inside it but the light otherwise works fine.
efficiency is not the main factor if they are not getting enough airflow, I have made diy led lamps for 12years, Eg take a cheap 1$ brand overdriven led lamp and put a fan on them then, take a 4x priced brand one and I assure you the 1$ one will last longer
I had a similar experience with some store branded bulbs a few years ago when the LED craze was just taking off, when testing with low currents like a 9v battery and 1k resistor they all lit up fine (but dim). But when the driver tried sending the full operating current through them a bond wire would thermally expand and they would give that dim flickering effect. Since they were the larger round type of LED I ended up desoldering the bad ones and putting working LED's there from another dead lamp to create a working lamp, I did this until there wasn't enough working LED's left just to get my moneys worth.
Thanks dude. I have had a Cree and GE LED fail, taken them apart but wasn't sure how to test. I'm a mechanical engineer and about all I remember from my one electrical physics and one EE classes are P=IV, V-IR, V/F=K, Ploss=I^2R and Vtotal = (Vleg)^1/3 !
I've had LED bulbs mysteriously got out far too soon and wondered what the problem was. They are too expensive to keep replacing like the incandescent bulbs. Thanks for the video.
I had 3 fail after 2-3 days operation each. The bulbs were screwed into one of those photocell adapters that screw in place of the bulb.. and then you screw the actual bulb into the photocell. I noticed with an incandescent bulb, the bulb would begin to glow as night approached and got to full brightness once it became dark. I replaced the incandescent with an LED and noticed that the bulbs would not to the low glow light the original.. but would turn on fully a little later than when the original started to glow. I noticed all night a burning plastic smell. I thought it was the "new electronic" smell one usually detects when first turning on a new device. The first bulb lasted 2 nights. I figured I got a bad one so I replaced it with #2.. same thing.. then that was replaced with #3 and it also lasted only 3 nights. Each bulb had a burnt smell to it. I had put some of the same batch (same box) at another location controlled with a normal toggle switch. I never had trouble with those. I think the photocell is partially turning on and feeding low voltage to the bulbs.. and that may be what is causing the LED bulbs to burn out.
They were not dimmable. This led me to wonder how a photocell (really) worked. I thought they snapped off and on. The incandescent used prior would softly glow as evening approached.. that told me that the photocell was turning on gradually. Maybe I have a bad photocell and the combination with the LED's was not good. I never got around to putting a voltmeter on it so see.
Those older dusk to dawn things were able to only to shed their 5 watts in series with a 100watt bulb not a similar 5 watt load. The undimable LED's are subject to this. I damaged a LED on a socket of a double arm lamp with poor connections to the shell from years of getting cooked to a crisp.
"Non-dim-able" because dimmers involve sharp switching at 100c/s, and most led lamps use a capacitor to set the current, assuming a Sinusoidal voltage. The sharp switching will put huge current pulses through the leds at 100 ppsecond.
I diagnosed a failed eggshell once. Turned out to be a slight inconsistency in the calcite matrix, probably due to a genetic mutation. I had the calcite analyzed in a lab and found it to be 17% deficient of normal hydrogen bonding at the atomic level. The store refunded my 15 cents.
Excellent Video! Although some LED's maybe substandardly built, the ones that I have purchased have performed great. Having a small apartment complex I have switched every bulb to LEDs, and what a tremendous time saver.
Well yes al Gore owns the new bulb factory I'm sure you did pay 69 or 99 cents for a bulb would go got every year, but let be progressivism at all cost! Now you pay 6 to 9 bucks for a bulb says lasts 5 years but only last 9 months and has mercury in them to boot better for the environment my ass libtards think backwards!
very well described on the problem. Some LEDs are SMD component where the solder leads are at the bottom which is not accessible from the top. Also, most reputable bulb manufacturers sand off the IC label marking so that you will not be able to find the replace parts.
Another guy said they get too hot so he either drilled holes or left the globes off. He put a glob of black window sealant across the bad led to bypass it as the sealant was conductive.
I've used a bunch of different brands and designs of LED bulbs over the past three or so years. And almost all of my failures were sylvania bulbs. These look similar, not sure if that's what they are or not. But my sylvania bulbs all start flashing after a year or two, switching between normal brightness and maybe half brightness. I've had countless warranty replacements but the replacements start flickering too. I've probably had at least 10 sylvania light bulbs go bad. But every other brand I've used has been great.
I saw that too about the light bulbs. Dirty bastards!!!!! Our Consumer economy means no quality products, they have to wear out so new ones can be sold
The ones i've tested are all running with the MCPCB at about 100-120C (in an open fixture, base up). If you're familiar with the junction-case thermal resistance of these packages, you'll know how far beyond absolute maximum the LED's are running. The ones in which i bothered to put a thermocouple on the caps had them at 90-100C or so. I have yet to find any consumer market LED lamps that I wouldn't expect early failure from.
Tech has moved quite a bit. Now you can get LED bulbs with chip on ceramic heatsink and the power regulator is segregated from the rest, stays cool. They are even rated for enclosed luminaries
I have had to replace a few and same failures. I am glad they have a failure mode it stops a potential fire but at the same time this is all intentional. The lighting mafia group that formed around the time of when incandecents were taking off in popularity heavily regulate this as well and ensure failures.
They always pass higher current in order to make them bright which just making them pack up . If you limit the current by 50% they would last posibly 200% longer
Recently I was building something that used two led bulbs and I removed the covers to fit them into the space I had. Because it was covered it was fairly safe. I noticed one of the bulbs was a bit dimmer and soon realized that a number of the leds were missing, quite a few in fact, and the circuit board just had empty spaces. I assume it was bad quality control or deliberate cost cutting. I wouldn't be surprised by anything, these days.
I found this video interesting, as I had about 3x LED bulbs 'blow' several years ago. Without any expertise in electronics knowledge I was unable to determine the exact cause. Like several previous commenters here I was not happy that they failed after only a few months of use, but had been advertised as having a lifespan of 50,000+ hours of use & I do not like wasting money. Now I have solar PV panels on my house (ummm…. what does this have to do with it say you - ha ha). The consequence is that the grid-tied inverter has to raise the voltage from the PV system to get the current to flow for export to the external grid. I live in the UK where the nominal grid voltage should be about 230v 50hz, but my inverter raises the voltage to as high as 248v. So my guess is that the voltage is way too high for the LEDs & caused them to run hot & fail prematurely. Add to this that many items sold in the UK are actually only designed to run on 220v European voltage & I'm guessing that my LEDs were. (Now guess how I fixed this). I simply rewired my LEDs with each two in series. This shares the voltage between them, thus massively reducing the voltage each LED has to use. The result; no further failures of LEDs at all. Success. Further reasoning: Does anyone here recollect that one of the original Edison light bulbs is still functioning within a US Fire Station. I was amazed at this. However the reason of its longevity appeared to be that the voltage across the vintage Edison light bulb was significantly reduced, thus reducing the heat stresses. So I applied the same principle of voltage reduction (via wiring two LEDs in series) to achieve a similar result. Before any wise spark states the obvious; the LEDs wired in series do not glow quite as brightly. However they are more than adequate for me & the hoped for improvement in reliability should be worth the hassle of my little experiment. Regards to all, Johnnyk. PS. Please comment on this, as I would like to learn more.
@@nobody46820 Sorry no can do; I don't own or have access to a light meter. All I can say is to repeat my original comment, that 2x LEDs wired in series are a little dimmer, but not much, & hopefully they will outlast my lifetime. You don't get ought for nought; there's always a trade-off.
@@nobody46820 Go for it. Measure before & after with a multi-meter & check using Ohm's Law. You'll find that the total combined power drawn is half what either of the two identical LEDs draw individually. So the by-product is that it saves money & the environment also. I have a fixed version of this (2x LEDs in series) & a portable version. As my older incandescent & CFL bulbs end their natural lives, I'll be replacing most with my 2x LEDs in series setup throughout the house & garage. It works for me very nicely. If everyone in the country did this, it would potentially save millions of pounds every year in electricity costs, massively extending the life of bulbs & thus reducing pollution & refuse. Tell me how you get on. Regards JohnnyK.
Noticed a Radio Shack meter. I remember the days when they sold "Archer" kits and you could actually get parts to fix things. Then they went crazy trying to sell phones and R/C cheap cars .
I bought three Phillips branded LED bulbs, that were on closeout. They were the equivalent to 100watt incandescent, but in the daylight color spectrum. After a month of use, they started flickering and failing. I removed them, from wall sconces, and found the bases oof every bulb cracked. I contacted the manufacturer about the issue and emailed them pictures of all three. They sent me replacements, which I've had for three years now, and they are still functioning normally. The large hardware store, Menards, sells a brand called FEIT. They have been very unreliable with their CFL's, but the LED's have done pretty well. They still have an above average failure rate, but they are quite inexpensive. I bought a bucket, of 24, for $29.99. Two years in, only two have failed. One of which was constantly on.
Reliable products from brands with a reputation to protect cost more. People who buy the cheapest bulb they can find are likely getting components that have outright failed quality control in a higher-grade production facility before being sold to lower tier producers. 21st Century Chinese factories will deliver any quality level that buyers are willing to pay for, including the lowest.
And in the case of these bulbs, it was less than a week for one I bought. That brand is now off any buy list. Walmart sells them under the " Great Value" label but it is the same bulb.
Right on. Bought a No-Name LED 60 watt (8.5 W) to try it out. 11,000 hour rating !! Gone in a couple of weeks. But, hey, it was only a dollar. Where have we heard that before?
Keep in mind most electronic components in consumer goods are only tested to 1000 hrs at 2.5x rated voltage. with 1-2% failures allowed. This is about a month. If you have 6 or 8 components in addition to the LEDs Expect 1 - 2 x6 failures even if the LEDs are good.
Manufacturers will design failure rates into most all products. They will run the LED components at or above their rated operating parameters which causes component failure. I made an AC powered LED cluster, an them below their max rating and 13 years later, still working. Make it strong and it will last.
I was an EE and did new product design for 40 years and NEVER would have considered building in intentional failures. I never heard of anyone else doing it either, too much pride. But it makes a great story.
dboy6400 Hello. I won't try to sell you on the idea however: A fella worked at a marine repair shop. The outboard ignition modules failed a lot. The young man was able to unpot the modules and discovered inferior components being used. He reverse engineered the modules, started selling them and was able to start his own business. It is not the first time things like this has taken place. I'm glad you took pride in what you did, that is rare. Let me ask you this, are we not in a throw-away society? Do house fans have bearings or bushings? Some Chinese products may work for a week then stop. I could go on about cheep products but you already have your mind made up. The video clearly shows crap products, you decide.
Thanks Dave. My post was only based on my personal experience from the mid 70s til I retired 2 years ago. There was never anything said by anybody about 'building in obsolescence or early failure'. But there was almost constant pressure during a development cycle to do it quickly and make it cheap to manufacture. Ease of assembly went into designs. It's the cost control and sometimes being limited to cheap components that IMHO led to failure rates. Bushings vs bearings is a good example but I don't think it's for achieving early failure. Back to my experience, once a product was released any evidence of early failures always prompted corrective design changes. One of my career chapters involved manufacturing in China at two different companies. I made several trips there and quite frankly and honestly I was impressed with their skill and diligence. Making assembled pc boards and injection molded plastic parts were done very well, back in the US we never had any complaints. My only real point is questioning whether or not early failures come from intention (I don't think so) or from the fast'n'cheap pressure during the design stage (I definitely think so).
Dave G Exactly. And that's theft. It's cashing in on someone else's scam. Maybe it's not as bad as stealing from a casino or from a church, but it's still a filthy thing to do.
I've replaced most of the bulbs in three homes in the last few years with LEDs and basically no problems. Make sure you use bulbs with the 3000 kelvin scale for the best natural color.
Many thanks - told me what I suspected! Now here's a thought. Don't bin them. Cannibalise a good LED, resolder it and get one good lamp - but put a bigger resistor in and drive them less hard. It will be dimmer, but I wonder by how much..... Slightly off topic is how annoying the so-called dimmable ones are - they don't dim much! I always thought it would be possible to have a sort off coiled bar-LED that reacted to voltage. The more you inputted, more of the LEDs would light up, rather than the 25% (I guess) difference that occurs with each LED being underdriven.
You either get a good one or a bad one. I have two chinese corn bulb LED's out on my porch. They have been subjected to cold NE winters for 5 years now and they still work perfectly. I think it all comes down to the soldering skills of the workers .
Interesting info! Always wondered what was inside one of those bulbs. Looks like you could steal good LEDs from a bulb to fix other ones. Of course, if the LEDs are substandard that repair would only last until another LED popped.
As an aside, does anyone remember the round wafer type capacitors they used to sell for incandescent bulbs? They went in the bottom of the socket and were to supposedly smooth out the current and prevent surge which was the reason for premature failure (Hard on the filaments). I have to believe they worked because I still have some of the old filament type and the filaments look beat before they ever blow.
Engineering: "We can build lights that can last up to 10,000 hours and use up to 5 times less power". Management: "Great, but who's going to pay for my Yacht? Call in the boys from Accounting, Sales and Legal" Accounting: "We can sell this light bulb 10 times more and people will still buy it because they'll be saving hundreds of dollars over its lifespan" Sales: "This light bulb uses 5 times less power over its 10 year lifespan, you'll be saving hundreds of dollars and save the environment in the process" Legal: "Make sure to put in 'warranty one year' in the smallest type legally allowed and make sure warranty claims are sent by registered mail to some dead-end third party with proof of purchase and allow 120 days processing"
Holy shit!! Last night an LED bulb failed in my bathroom light fixture, and I unscrewed it and threw it away, saying nothing to anybody. Now TH-cam recommends this video clip to me, the very next morning -- how does Google know what I'm thinking? Does it have a camera in my house? This is getting creepy - But more seriously, a pleasure watching you troubleshoot, and I learned some useful facts
I'm surprised, Thought it was the capacitor. Easiest fix, is to solder a resistor in parallel with the LED, or just another LED on top of the broken one.
I see some of the comments saying dont buy cheap Chinese brands, what do you expect from Americans that dont support local manufacturers because they are too pricey. Buy the cheap ones because we sent all our jobs over to third world Country's or buy better American made stuff and support your American economy......................but you cant have both
You can't blame the public its the Companies who put share holders or profit over country by sending the manufacture end to other country's to increase revenue.... I worked for a alternator company in Canada. that was around for 50 or so years (they moved to mexico) at the end it was cheaper for them to buy a entire new alternator or starter from china then it was for us to rebuild a core ..or even core value of 7 dollars.. And the funny kicker is napa would fine us if we left "made in Canada stickers on our alternators and starters " all they did was put a sticker "made in the u.s.a" to claim it as made in the states... so again its your / our companies that are evil.. .. and basically its a sticker nation or co packers or assemblers .. but manufactures is pretty much gone. so yeah who would not buy the same product else where saving 90 percent of the cost for the same thing that all a local manufacture does it put a sticker on it or puts in the final screw to claim it as made in the u.s.a..?...
I'm in the UK, and have seen a Family Guy episode where they replace every item in the house with 'made in USA' goods and they all go up in smoke... I do know of quality USA items like Maglight Leatherman, and the amazing high-end HiFi equipment Martin-Logan, Krell etc but was the programme just digging at Walmart priced items?
Unfortunately, American made products have a history of being crappy too. The Big 3 Automakers built really crappy cars that got crappy fuel mileage, which allowed the Japanese to enter our market and thrive. The early Japanese cars introduced into the US in the 70s rarely broke down and could literally run a million miles and use very little gasoline. We were lucky to get much over 100K miles on any of the Big 3 US manufactured cars before the engines would blow. Chevy Vegas would fail after 30K-40K miles. Ford Pinto were death traps in rear end collisions. Even though OPEC embargoed the US and pump prices skyrocketed, The Big 3 chose to continue building gas guzzlers and muscle cars that were designed to fail early, so the Japanese gained a permanent foothold in the US market. The Big 3 attempted to peer pressure Americans into buying their crappy products rather than cheaper, more reliable, fuel efficient Japanese cars but their marketing strategy failed spectacularly. Taxpayers even had to bail out Chrysler to save those good paying jobs. Chrysler was the worst of The Big 3 and probably still is...
The only problems I've had are on the 3-Ways. Seems one or two of the wattage's stopped working quickly. I had two and put them out in the garage door opener when they failed to work as a three way. I have many others that are on 2-3 years. The ones outside on the garage were installed 2.5 years ago,use 9.5W each for a 60W illumination rating and are on 8-13 hrs per day depending on the season. With incandescent bulbs they wouldn't last six months because of weather conditions and the vibration of a garage door going up and down. Well worth the money. The only incandescents I have left are a few in very low use closet lights. When they finally shoot craps all bulbs in my home will be LED. Time to replace the Christmas lights but I still like the old style incandescent light color over LED but LED's are getting better.
What I learned is that planned obsolecense is a problem, and don't throw them away if you are a hobby electrician etc. that's perfectly fine spare parts.
Have you tried un-soldering a good LED from a bad light and soldering it into the bad spot on the other bulb? I think that may be interesting to see if a light can be recovered and for how long. :-) On another note I have quite a few LED's around the house that are years old, some of the first ones that came out, back when they were still pretty spendy.
really?but I bought the product , although there is a bad review but it cheap , i try to buy it , and it very surprise to me, The quality is really good.amzn.to/2Nz4IHe ,I think i can use it for many years !
Well, I may keep on buying, but certainly not theirs. Where’s the motivation to sell poor product? Roll the lamps off the production line for cheap, with minimal QA and bottom feeder (like me 😀) will scoop them up (once!) and move on.
@@4lifejeph actually. in USA, simply call the mfg and tell them they quit working and they'll send ya free replacements.
5 ปีที่แล้ว +2
There actually is no warranty on the Lightning Science brand of bulbs. That entire company is a fraud. There are approximately a thousand people who actually gave this video a thumbs-down. That proves to me that the Lightning Science company had most of their employees deliberately give this video a thumbs-down out of anger for exposing the truth of their fraudulent business practices. I attempted to contact their company via their email address located on their website at lsgc.com My email was instantly returned to me as being undeliverable.
I've read through most of the comments on this thread and like many of you, find it disappointing when an LED which we thought might last 15 years fails much sooner than that. HOWEVER, do the math! It is quite common in 2018 to find 60 watt equivalent LED's (which use about 9 watts) for $1 or less on sale with energy rebate coupons. That is when you stock up! 100 watt equivalents have been significantly more expensive but just recently, in Canada at least, Costco had 3 packs on sale for less than $9. These are the FEIT brand (and yes I've seen an earlier FEIT fail but rarely). Anyway, these 100 Watt equivalent bulbs use 15 watts and they are "rated for use in enclosed fixtures" which is pretty uncommon for LED's. So for every hour of operation, these bulbs reduce electricity consumption but 85 watt hours. Therefore it takes 1000/85 = 11.76 hours to save 1 Kilowatt hour of electricity. Let's just round it to 12 hours of use. So at 3 hours per day of use it will take 4 days to save a Kilowatt hour. 365/4 = 91.25 Kilowatt hours per year. Where I live, my "All In Electricity Cost" is 13 cents per kilowatt hour. So that single bulb will save 91.25 x .13 = $11.87 in a year. That's not a bad return on a $3 investment. While I've certainly experienced a few LED failures (my entire house has been converted), it's definitely not a 100% failure rate and I have several which have been in operation for years including the lamp at the end of my driveway which operates an average of 13 hours per day. That single bulb saves over 1 Kilowatt Hour per night or about $52 per year. I'll accept that trade-off. So go ahead, get mad as hell and trash all your damned LED's. Then go find some good old black-market incandescent bulbs. Just don't complain when your hydro bill goes up! Sadly MOST people also don't understand color temperature so they complain that they don't like the light quality of LED's. So here goes: Incandescent light bulbs operate in the color spectrum around 2700 Kelvin. There are LED's which approximate this level and they are labeled as Warm White. There are also a lot of "Warm White" labeled LED's which operate in the 3000 Kelvin range (my personal preference for areas like kitchens). LED Bulbs labelled as Daylight or "Cool White" are generally up in the "Bluer" 5000 Kelvin range. These are good for lighting a garage or workshop but for most interior use, the preference seems to be for Warm White as it more closely resembles what we remember from incandescents. Again, MOST people don't realize that when you dim an incandescent bulb, such as in a chandelier, the color temperature also goes down as you dim it. Full intensity might be around 2700 Kelvin and when dimmed down it will be around 2200 Kelvin. This DOES NOT happen with MOST LED's. They just get dimmer but the color temperature remains the same. For fixtures where you want nice dimming results, Phillips makes a series of LED Bulbs called "Warm Glow". These clever bulbs have an Amber LED in the center. As the dimming slider is decreased, the whiter LED's around the periphery get duller and the amber LED increases in intensity. The result is pretty remarkable for maintaining ambiance in desired locations so Bravo Phillips for this innovation. By the way, I still have my parent's 85 year old coal oil lamp which works perfectly. Just have to find the coal oil and trim the wick everyday. Then I get this dull orange glow. Yeah!
I have some from the dollar tree, whole house full of them, over two years not a single one has burnt out. 1$ a piece. And they are bright as hell and good color temp. Bought a pack of 100w replacements from home depot, the dollar tree 60 watt replacements are just as bright. Couldn't be happier Greenlite is the brand. They are perfect.
Great video! I don't think it will change anything I do with LEDs, but your expert analysis was not only entertaining but welcome knowledge. I think that many "Made in China" issues really come down to contract issues with the U.S. firms that place the orders. In setting up any production assembly line, there are going to be mistakes that lead to product quality variations in the statistical aggregate. Tightly run corporations write their specifications to include quality control analysis and remediation as part of the contract package. Those that don't, end up with runs that have a higher percentage of faulty product, because the manufacturing company will do only what is necessary to fulfill the contract. Essentially, that is how Apple can use China to make tons of complex iPhones with very little quality backlash, while relatively simple light bulbs utilizing LED technology might have a failure rate approaching 10%.
Herbert A lot of the Chinese companies are deceptive when it comes to quality. I retired from a company that wanted to lower our costs so we began trying various Chinese suppliers for our raw materials. We gave them our specs for particle sizing and chemical analysis. We requested a C.of C. along with a sample of each lot we were buying for testing and trials. Their certs met our specs and when we tested the sample in our labs it verified the certification papers. We instructed the company to send us the 10,000 lb lot. Upon receiving the material we sampled and tested the shipment. This time it failed chemical analysis so we sampled another container and retested plus we sent a sample to an independent lab. Again the material failed both labs. We were able to make the material work and we contacted the supplier. They were apologetic and promised it wouldn't happen again. We placed a second order expecting things to be different. They sent us a cert and sample from the new production lot. Oddly the test results reported on the cert were identical to the previous cert. The only difference was the lot number and date. We tested the pre-shipment sample and it met our specs but the main shipment failed our tests. This happened with each shipment they sent us. We came to the conclusion the Chinese company was sending samples from the same supply of material that met our specs along with a copy of the original cert but they assigned a new lot number and date matching the new shipment. This happened with several other Chinese suppliers so needless to say we continued buying raw materials from our European supplier.
I worked for a company that manufactured a component for a Chain Saw manufacture. We supplied it at $.07 each. They wanted us to cut the price more. So we did. We just sold them the test reject lots. What ever happened to McCullough chain saws anyway?
In the future it will become impossible to use a light bulb as a current limiting device. The reason? Incandescent light bulbs will no longer be available.
And remember they have mercury and you have to go to extreme lengths to dispose of them? Lets see: originally very expensive, very short life, horrible for the environment and expensive to dispose of. Another wonderful idea brought to you by the ignorati of the left.
Thanks great info. I have a box full of Osram LED falures. Just one thing. Be careful with graphite pencils and electricity. I know of someone who died using it as a pointer. Much higher voltage though but still...
I think in 2015, I bought my first Cree (label as Assembly in the U.S.) Bulb for my business. Months later of having LED of kinds failing on me, I replaced all the bulbs over time with Cree. Also one of the home improvement stores were selling these Cree bulbs that were assembled in the U.S. for 4 dollars per bulb; good deal. I bought over 50 bulbs but I only needed 16. The automatic lights turn on and stays on for 10 hours everyday for the past close to three years now on my first Creed bulb. It is an equal 60 watt bulb and the darn thing still is bright as new, even with the outdoor elements. I am impressed but not anymore. Two month ago, I bought a cree bulb that is made in China for comparison; ok, I was bored that day. And that Chinese made bulb with crooked label of Cree just died few days ago... I have used bulbs from so many different manufacturers and they all sucked, most of these LED bulbs are junk. But than, it depends how lucky one can be.
I haven't lost an LED bulb yet but I have only been using them for a couple of years. The cheapest I have were $0.50 each, clearance at Kroger's - Greenlite 11w, 1100 lumens, 75w replacement, which are no longer manufactured. I bought all they had - 20 bulbs. These are my favorite. I'm using 12 currently, 6 are in enclosed luminaries which the bulbs say are suitable. They look like the bulbs in this teardown. I wonder if they're the same.
I've had some fall like this too. But never had any philips or panasonic bulbs fail, and I have been using them since 2012. The old ones used to be really heavy, but the new ones are really lightweight. The ones that fail are also really lightweight.
I was going to say you should just bridge the bad LEDs, but I think that would be worse because it would raise even more the current on the remaining LEDs. Also, the circuit on these lamps already has a bridge, and of all things, it's a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!
No, it would not raise the current, because the current is regulated by the integrated circuit. However, it WOULD raise the voltage being dropped across the IC (marked as U1 on the board), and therefore more power wasted and more heat generated on the IC alone, since it's a linear regulator (acting like a variable resistance). Also, the LEDs are connected in SERIES, meaning the current is the same through all of them. You would have been right if they were connected in parallel. He COULD drop in a replacement LED instead of a bad one, provided it is rated for that current and UP TO that voltage.
If they are in series the voltage increase for the remaining working leds,multiply by the same current for every led,the result is the remaining led works at increase power in watts
I keep having this issue with my LEDs from many different manufacturers. The failures range from burn out bases to not handling voltage. My latest is a batch of 20000 hour LEDs that have lasted 600 hours max. I've been going back to old style filament bulbs.
But it's how most if not all LED lighting works. You need the voltage to drop by chaining many LEDs. Otherwise, you need a beefy power supply to handle a high current/low voltage output to parallel LEDs. It's more energy efficient and cost efficient to use a lot of LEDs in series to drop the hundreds of volts.
They could make the bulbs so the individual LEDs were replaceable. If one fails just plug in a new one. You would only need a handful of light bulbs ever.
Therefore the culprit is... series assembling, ha ha ! You wouldn't have said that for tungsten filament bulbs. Why haven't they paralled many tungsten filaments with a higher resistance to prevent a totally unusable bulb if one filament passed away ? This they could have done easier than with 3v/9v LED chips. Then what if someday they'll make a 110v/230v LED chip ? No more need of regulator components, but....
Because they are a pain to open and might be a pain to put together too (espexcially after you've stuck a screwdriver through the bulb :D ) But of course that would give you a bit more lifetime until the next bum LED blows and then you have to do it again... not really worth it. I'd just desolder the LEDs and keep them for low current applications somewhere later.
That is what they count on, that you will by these Chinese junk LED bulbs over and over. The end result is you pay a lot more for a single bulb by buying it multiple times
These operate at high temperature, and are therefore more difficult to unsolder/solder vs. regular components. Not sure what formulation of solder is used, but I was not able to reattach an LED on another brand bulb myself.
Carl Mueller: It is the same solder, the issue is a giant heatsink in the back of the board that is sucking all the heat away from soldering equipment.
I've had multiple failures. Most caused by confining in an unventilated enclosure which the package said not to do (one or two bulbs just plain failed, however). Mostly I've had problems with LED flashlights. These things go bad at an alarming rate so make sure to buy with a lifetime guarantee if possible and be sure to save the receipt.
All but under 60 watt bulbs are banned from sale in california. You can use what you got but not many are for sale except specitlaty bulbs like the fridge and oven replacement
![ร้อยพ่อพันแม่ - WanMai [Official MV]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/XY2pNYASEbg/mqdefault.jpg)
This is a superior video, with good editing, no awful music, intelligent analysis and an interesting topic (at least to me). I will look for more of his videos.
Yea it was.
Fully agree. Adding he used very good deal of knowledge and IQ as well.
And it’s narrated by Tobey Maguire’s Spiderman! 😜
Lol. Superior video. Haha. Never heard that before
The light
I reverse engineered this same circuit a few years ago. The controller is a triac, and it fires on each half of the power cycle (hence the bulb flashes at 120Hz). The bad thing about this circuit is that current is not constant, it is instead a very large discharge current for a short period of time. The average current is within the spec of the LEDs. However, the peak current spec is being exceeded by a large amount. By continuously blasting large currents through the LEDs, the weakest LEDs get overstressed and die. Since the LEDs are wired in series, it's the old Christmas tree lights syndrome where if one lamp fails, the entire strings goes down. It's a very lousy design which is why these lamps fail repeatedly. They are junk. Toss the entire lamp and get something more modern.
How can a layman recognize and get a good quality circuit?
@@siriusleto3758 buy a good quality bulb. The best ones come from reputable brands and while still low in cost, are around $10 -$20 per box at my local big box store. Additionally, look at technical TH-cam videos where they tear them down.
Purchase CFLs online your welcome.
@@brianfitch5469 I agree cfls last way longer they’re my favorite
You seem knowledgeable, can you design a light bulb that isn’t design to fail after a certain amount of time?
Planned obsolescence should be a crime against humanity.
They Are Made To Fail So U Keep Buying Them
Anka Best Planned Obsolescence I believe is the term.
@@capper6100 yeah xd
Also known as TAMTFSUKBT
@@YoStu242 xd
@@YoStu242 what do you mean?
After having an impressive number of these bulbs suddenly stop working, including one about 15 minutes ago, I decided to search and see if anybody had determined the most common cause. Your video nailed it down. Thank you. I had incandescents last years for me. I can't seem to even get a year out of these LEDs today. Hate 'em.
Yeah, the situation is really bad. You could buy any incandescent bulb from any company and they all would last about the same, but with LEDs, it's all so wild - it could serve years (if you are lucky) or it could fail in a week or a month.
Thanks John for this display as these lamps seem to fail alot. From U.K and they are swapping to these to save cost..You went in detail and showed the problems with these lamps. Thanks Buddy
Built-in obsolescence (designed to fail)... in everything you buy since the 1960s.......
It started in the 1920s I believe, when tungsten bulb manufacturers all followed a secret rule to keep light bulb life at a profitable point. This was discovered when documents came to light after East Germany united with West Germany.
The Light Bulb Conspiracy - Extended Version
th-cam.com/video/kdHIqa53-tY/w-d-xo.html
This one has subtitles for for the non-English interviews
th-cam.com/video/zdh7_PA8GZU/w-d-xo.html
@@DataWaveTaGo get a copi of the resit and go bak to the store and get a new one on waranty.It is electronics pcb etc in it so the waranty should be the same as for a dvd player.To few are making use of the waranty.One reson they produce garbage straigth from factory
@@leohobbleohobb3781 Right. My Philips "20 year" LED failed after 4 years. I checked the warranty, it was not covered beyond 3 years. Great company, Philips, just great...
@@DataWaveTaGo Philips products made in Holland(Belgium? has had a much higher standard on components etc.If i se philips made in China or other very lowcost places that meke stuff for philips is not real philips we used to say back when people cared more about what they buy and it,s quality.
Was this led bulb made in belgium?.To claim 20 years on the product like a led bulb is a clear "lie" the way they are usualy are build today.
These are likely heat cycling failures. They run them pretty hard with very little cooling and when turned on and off regularly the bond wires eventually break. We had a few Feit bulbs fail in our outside motion lights. I set them to dusk to dawn with the replacements and have not had any more failures for the past couple years. Many of the more expensive name brands like Philips and Feit tend to use higher binned LED chips and run them under spec to help make them last longer while producing less heat per chip and providing better cooling.
I noticed the LED disk only contacts the heat sink on the edges. Some of the better designs have the heat generating power components mounted in Epoxy inside the base.
Yeah, many LED seems to have a similar issue - overheating and horrible thermal paste. The LED are just driven too high, coupled with bad thermal dissipation.
I was surprised by the super simple electronics on this one (i.e. 3 pin voltage reg) - what I have found is more like: BP2832K with an extra coil and diode.
I am so glad that someone has the time and inclination to take these things apart. Thank you for the upload.
You should put the product name in the description so this video can be more easily accessible to people looking for a review on these particular LED bulbs.
Also, it's valuable LED information promoting how important that LED s that fail can and should be recycled. Most of the parts can be in good working order and it be a small failure and for pennies fixable. In the right hand, this is reused, repurposed, &/ or recyclables materials that shouldn't be thrown away!
Thanks for taking the time to share your experience and savviness on the matter!
agree, I bought the product although there is a bad review but the price is really really nice, i try to buy it , and it very surprise to me, The quality is really good. Luckily
amzn.to/2Nz4IHe
Would be nice if the companies could put in a little effort to actually make them last though
@@Nikkk6969 and... maybe make an accessible way to send defective or burnt out bulbs back to them for a coupon or discount on future replacements.
With critical analyses of bad products-- with actual evidence of brand failure-- TH-cam offers the video equivalent of Consumer Reports, a publication famous for naming bad products. That, alone, makes this video worthwhile, but it is also a logical presentation, with good audio and well-positioned camera views. For anybody with a curious nature, this strongly merits a subscription.
Thanks for the video, does seem like a failure trend at this point. One of the big marketing strategies is that LED bulbs are going to last a lot longer. Guess they mean in a landfill.
I have LED bulbs that have been running for 5 years. The ones in the video are $1.75 per 2-pack cheap crap.
The leDs fail because they run too much current through them, which makes no extra light, it just cooks them. Solution is to replace the current-setting cap with one 1/2 to 1/3 the capacity - uF-age.
As always it is down to production quality, of course cheap bulbs will not last.
And sadly as time goes on companies know you are used to buying a certain type of bulb and they can just make them fail quicker. I have a bunch od old Phillips CFLs, some over 10 years, and a whole stack of one year old Phillips CFLs that are about to crap out... they know how to play this game.
Actually, at least to a point, increasing the current DOES increase the brightness. However, that reduces the life. Some LED systems have lives rated at 50K hours or 100K hours.@@GerardVaughan-qe7ml
Some fixtures are enclosed. It is necessary to put some sort of light emitter into them. In enclosed fixtures, incandescent lights can get to hot and damage the insulation on the wires unless there is an over-heat device to shut off the power. The life of CFLs and LEDs will be reduced, sometimes excessively so. So what are people supposed to do?@Klaa2
Excellent failure analysis! I agree with your assessment - that brand is crap. But being the kind of guy who never likes to throw something away when it can be made to work a little longer, I'd jumper around the bad LED and put the bulb back together. It would also be a good experiment, seeing how long it takes for another to go bad.
Don't do that - add a resistor to decrease the current
@@debmalya6144 Now that's next level! I assume that the supply isn't constant current?
@@roderickyoung1243 ya - forgot that - in india we have capacitor dropper type. And constant current types just hit the market. In case of constant current source, adding resistor won't help.
In case of constant current source i change the current to be arround 20mA.
nothing is better than knowng why. excellet video
It is better to have an unanswerable question as opposed to an unquestionable answer.
I’m the same I’ll tear some things apart to discover the weak link.
yes... please explain why Trump in President?
Only traitors disrespect our president, whoever she/she happens to be in office. Merely bringing up the president of the United States in a light-bulb video, is not the *brightest* thing to do, ya know.
Cause...the American people freely elected him to office in a stunning and unexpected huge electoral victory. But you already knew that.
Maybe the real question should have been..."please explain why Pres. Trump's victory was such a surprise in the world that I operate in...".
The answer to THAT question is really what you are seeking.
I love them....had 1 on my porch for almost 5 years.....no problem....was going through 2 regular bulbs a year before. Every bulb in my house except fridge and stove are leds. Never a problem
I've been using the $2.67 Walmart LED bulbs for a few years now and several of them being on 18-20 hours per day still work like new. So far only had one die after nearly 2 years and that is likely because it is outside where it gets the heat+humidity and sometimes below freezing, but still lasted longer than any other incandescent or CFL bulbs do outside. The constant Florida heat and/or humidity for 9 months of the year is the most likely culprit.
It's four years later... Are they still working? And do you use any of them in fully enclosed light fixtures? I'm just curious. ;-)
I have some early Walmart "Great Value" bulbs that were more expensive. I think they were made by a company called TCL or TPA -- something like that. Anyway, they've been working for so long now that I can't remember how old they are. LOL! Only the cheap Walmart bulbs have failed for me.
One thing I've not heard anyone mention; these LEDs, due to their shell, only project light in about 120-160 degree direction, similar to a floodlight. While the old incandescent projected about 270-330 degrees and the flourescent tubes about 270-300 degrees.
well i usually dont have the need to light a lot the ceiling
@@gamanyme it's called ambience, you want to feel like you live in a prison camp with harsh digital light bearing down on you that's fine.
That's why they gave a diffuser rather than a clear cover. They spread well enough
Remember when we got rid of incandescent bulbs because this crap was supposed to last for 15 years?
Greg Steele i still use the old style eff this money grabing thiefs.
Anyone who even remotely believe that is totally ignorant how life span is/was calculated/represented. Even with the incandescent lamps life span was listed as so many hours of operation per day, not 24/7/365 continuous operation. Often people can understand what's clearly printed on the packaging. When I install the newer types of lamps I write the date on the base. I have had CFLs fail in three years and had some last over five years. I haven't been using LEDS long enough to get a date yet.. I do have one LED lamp that has become intermittent. Unless is starts to sound like it's arcing or smell I'm going to use it until it fails completely. Although I have confirmed it's still firmly screwed into the socket. Incandescent and old school florescent lamps seemed never to last as long as promised, but I never bothered to date record installation. That only became practical with the cooler operating CFL and LED lamps.
They are not claiming 8 years, in my experience, the average is about 8 months, about half are out in less than 4 months. Haven't had one make it to 2 years yet.
@@douglaspage2398 my ikea one is 4+ now, first one I bought.
My Philips led bulb is 3+ years.
Led bulbs are rated for hours and how often you can turn them on.
All subject to environmental heat.
Greg Steele Yes! What a load of B S!
These LED- energy-saver-bulbs are generally overdriven, so they are brighter and last shorter. They also overheat quickly in that airtight plastic enclosure.
I chop the tops of my cheap Feit bulbs with a bandsaw before I install them to see if it helps them last longer.
The ones I have barely get warm.
Moderate Fkr ... on the outside...
Markus lol
the IKEA 1$ ones are great if you open them, you can short as many leds as you want to get less heat as well(non-isolated buck driver)
I flipped the switch in my workshop recently and one of the LED lamps was just flashing at a really high rate. This is a supposedly 'quality' LED lamp made by Osram. It has been in service for less than a year, and isn't used every day. The crazy thing is that the 'el cheapo' LED lamps that I have in other parts of the house are still going strong, and they were less than half the price of the Osrams.
Cool, nice to see how these bulbs work. Certainly more complex than incandescent bulbs.
I bought about 30 LED bulbs for my house 4 years ago and have only had one fail. It also said "not for use in enclosed space" and I had it in a sealed hallway light so no blame there.
The electricity savings is huge, especially in the summer when the AC doesn't have to work as hard to get rid of all that waste heat.
LED bulbs are also subsidized in my state, so I pay about $1.50 for them to knock $10-20 off my monthly power bill. Absolute no-brainer.
Yeah, over the last 10 years, I’ve not yet thrown out a single led bulb. The older ones, that have dimmed over time (from being left on 24/7) have gone on to second lives as rarely used closet lights and such). I’ve not had a single outright failure (in contrast to the awful CFL’s which, while lasting longer than incandescent bulbs, seem to quit at the 4 year mark - I now have a pile of them awaiting proper disposal).
As for LED versus incandescent, it’s no contest, LED bulbs are just better.
Just a note to say that the carbon in pencils can conduct electricity, so best not to use as a pointer in live circuits.
Oh definitely. And RF, too. I have a scar on my finger where I held the sharpened end of a pencil while pointing out problem areas to a tech I was teaching to repair diathermy units. Got a little too close to an unshielded RF field and it burned a neat little oval where the lead was touching my skin. Never went anywhere without my pocket protector including an all plastic coil adjuster from that point forward.
Hey good point. That just gave me the idea that a pencil could b used in lou of a bad spark plug wire lol
Pencil 'lead' is actually graphite. So conductive that early radio repair guys used to temporarily fix resistors by scribbling on them with a pencil. You're right: Not a wise choice for a pointer.
sam steel - ha! Maybe. I suppose, in an emergency, you could sharpen both ends, cut out the bad section of wire, shove the pencil into the composition and duct tape them. Might work. Sounds like that would be one of those 'life hacks' YT channels. Might even work as somewhat of an anti radio noise piece?
mc3lizard - Correct. It was just an unconscious choice of pointers at the moment, and I was using it when the unit was off, at first. My momentary lapse into idiocy. But the tech never forgot it (neither did I) so he never made that mistake, and that was the important part, b/c there were a lot of high voltage points in the power supply as well as the RF oscillator section. I'm glad those things are not in production anymore, never liked the idea of an untrained nurse just cooking muscle with what was essentially an open-air microwave oven just b/c a doctor prescribed it.
I believe the LED's are being purposely overpowered and that is what causes them to fail.
The math doesn't lie.
Find and open bulbs from several manufacturers and compare the circuits.
I think we'll find that some of them are better designed.
Ron I agree, they don’t like the fact they can last a very long time. The heat off of these bulbs alone have been questionable. I have a 100w for the garage, Lowe’s bought, and it has to be 200f after 30min on.
There are approximately a thousand people who actually gave this video a thumbs-down. That proves to me that the Lightning Science company had most of their employees deliberately give this video a thumbs-down out of anger for exposing the truth of their fraudulent business practices. I attempted to contact their company via their email address located on their website at lsgc.com
My email was instantly returned to me as being undeliverable.
Gábriel Priòre it could also just be people working the algorithm to improve their recommendations by telling TH-cam I don’t like this content as I did...
It was informative and I now know why the one bulb in the kitchen flickers but this was a strange recommendation that I want less off (plus creator get interaction points on his content)
@@Magtranya Are you kidding me?!? Is that actually the reason videos have thumbs-downs? That is not the proper way to change your video recommendations. When I see a video that I am not interested in, I click the small dots on the side, then click not-interested. I have never needed to give any video a thumbs-down to change my video recommendations!
@ I have not thumbed down the video, but I guess some people did that because of the picture quality. Only 720p and not the cleanest 720p I've seen either, if you're sitting 50cm from a 43'' 2160p screen, it's just not pretty.
There are other channels that dismember/analyse failed Led bulbs, eg. BigClive, his vid's are of much better picture quality.
I own a former elementary school and installed 40 Uniden 60 eq bulbs from Lowe's that run just above $1/bulb in multipacks and have had a total of ZERO failures in 4 years now.
Must be the earlier version of the bulb - LOL
I also do this just for the fun and heck of it. If I may suggest, you can use an analogue ohmmeter to check each led if you set it on RX1ohms range. The voltage on the tester prods from the battery inside is just about sufficient to test an LED or a small CD motor. And by experience, damaged LED's in this kind of lamps, most of the time, very small black dots can be visible on the insides.
Oddly enough, I just had my first LED bulb fail in my house this morning, 14 December 2017. It was installed March 2014, and was the old style with the large, finned metal heat sink between the base and the plastic globe. It also had all the circuitry inside potting material in the heat sink base, as opposed to directly on the board like newer bulbs, and it weighs at least twice as much as newer bulbs. I think the likely cause of failure was the fact that I had it installed inside an enclosed globe ceiling fixture, which they tell you not to do. I need to replace the whole fixture with an actual LED ceiling fixture, one of these days.
Hate these things. The LED will technically last forever and is supposed to be cheaper than traditional but they die twice as often.
That seemed to be the way at first, but of the sixty that I put into my new house in the last five years, only one has failed.
As with most things in life, you get what you pay for. Buy shitty LEDs and get a shitty lifespan. I've had full Philips LEDs for ~3 years, no issues. They cost 3x what a chinesium bulb costs though
@@XlordslaughterX Where were the Phillips LED bulbs made? It wouldn't surprise me if they were also made in China.
@@lfewell2161 Phillips makes their Hue bulbs in Mexico
Sylvania’s LED bulbs are pretty much on par for a 3-4 year life span. At least, that’s my experience with them.
I’ve gone with pretty much all LED bulbs in my house, only one bad one. Pay the extra $2-3 more for the better brands.
same here, the LED life expectancies are generally overrated, but you cant stop what's coming. we'll never go back to the edison bulb- it's way too wasteful, all that heat is wasted, plus it adds to Air cond. loads.
Heat is not wasted. In summer, I do not need light. In winter, the heat produced is taken off my heating bill.
I pay 48 cents per LED bulb, look for them in the clearance aisle of your local hardware store. Mine have lasted 2 years, running 9 hours at night.
And you saved .27 cents
Before LED bulbs became available, I installed CFLs for security lighting outside my house. They are on for an average of about 12 hours per day. This is 9 years later and MOST of them still work. So, that's 12 hours x 365 days per year x 9 years = 39,420 hours! Not bad. The reason they've lasted so much longer than their rated life is that they are turned on and off only one time per day. Cycling CFLs on and off shortens their life. That is not true of LEDs.@@marmars1081
My diagnosis is they are made of Chinesium 😁
It would be better if they were made of vibranium.
You made me spit my drink out! LOL!
@Chen Lee Douglas Adams would approve of Chinesium.
They just don’t chooch.
Keep your stick on the ice
Great video. I bought these before and was wondering why they crapped out so quickly.
Jubeidono2012 yep it takes cock and balls to stick a screwdriver through the genie’s lamp, for fear of the giant deadly charged capacitor and Hg fumes hiding inside.
Unfortunately, no one can claim 22 years of service, when the technology, didn't really exist 22 years ago. Most plastics start to break down in 10 years and become brittle. The 22 year mark may have been loosely based off the actual LED element. Who knows how the cheap plastic, glue, and cardboard that compromises the rest of it is really going to last.
Exactly! I have built-in LED lights in my RV, which is only a year old. There were two puck-style lights on the underside of a cabinet that overhangs the head of the bed, for reading. A push-in style switch in the center of the light turns them on and off. A few months ago the switch on one started acting up and had to be fiddled with to get it to work correctly. I got curious and pulled the cover off the light and tried to figure out what was going on. The small plastic base/housing of the switch where it mounts onto the circuit board had cracked and would not stay in place anymore, presumably due to heat, hence not allowing the switch to function properly. Eventually the switch fell apart right in my face. I replaced these lights with a different style quality light that won't fail due to design flaw and poor crappy plastic components.
The technology for LED's have been around since 1962, invented by GE and used as indicator light on numerous applications. GE has held the patent on incandescent bulbs since almost day 1; their patent is a "broad scope" patent that is restrictive to any "downstream development". For instance, if you wanted to make a light bulb it cannot be the same basic bulb "shape", they own that. It cannot use a filament, even if it's not Tungsten; they own the idea of ANY "filament". It cannot have a screw shaped attachment method, they own that. It cannot utilize any contact wires that come up and through a glass support inside the bulb, they own that. The only way to get into the light bulb market was to purchase the rights from GE and build it to their specifications.
That's why the only other successful consumer light design has been Flourescent, because it incorporates none of those elements. Neon is impractical for homeowner consumer use.
We could have had LED lights since 1970, but GE sat on the technology until they could extract every last cent out of incandescent by "planned obsolescence", i.e. making bulbs crappier so you'll buy more, and by announcing the roll-out of LED and eventual phasing out of incandescent years ahead of time to get consumers to "panic buy" in huge quantities in order to stockpile ahead of the changeout.
Never buy "Utilitech" brand....they and other companies purposely use inferior components to raise the failure rate and increase revenue. I use Phillips and so far they seem to be good quality, no failure at all in 10+ years. And Yep, they cost more....but if they charged quadruple what I paid, it'd still be worth it.
and that's why smart countries like China just ignore that patent crap and make stuff everyone can afford :)
I have a LED nightlight and after 5 years the plastic has turned brown in one spot. It’s on almost 13 hours a day and only shuts off on sunny days. I can foresee plastic cover failure long before the light source fails.
les bowes also pollute the whole world with their shitty factory goup
Adam Savage likes to say that often times the only difference between screwing around and Science is writing stuff down. Nicely documented experiment. I've had some LED bulbs fail as well, And they were all from failed singular LED's inside the bulb. (several different brands). interestingly I have one Cree bulb that I can see a failed LED inside it but the light otherwise works fine.
Shane Singleton my Cree’s haven’t been reliable, but my Philips have been
it's impossible to make a competitive bulb that doesn't overheat ;( (our capitalism isn't exactly perfect yet)
a proper heatsink would double both size and cost of the bulb
but you would get around 12X longer life
efficiency is not the main factor if they are not getting enough airflow, I have made diy led lamps for 12years,
Eg take a cheap 1$ brand overdriven led lamp and put a fan on them then, take a 4x priced brand one and I assure you the 1$ one will last longer
I had a similar experience with some store branded bulbs a few years ago when the LED craze was just taking off, when testing with low currents like a 9v battery and 1k resistor they all lit up fine (but dim). But when the driver tried sending the full operating current through them a bond wire would thermally expand and they would give that dim flickering effect.
Since they were the larger round type of LED I ended up desoldering the bad ones and putting working LED's there from another dead lamp to create a working lamp, I did this until there wasn't enough working LED's left just to get my moneys worth.
Thanks dude. I have had a Cree and GE LED fail, taken them apart but wasn't sure how to test. I'm a mechanical engineer and about all I remember from my one electrical physics and one EE classes are P=IV, V-IR, V/F=K, Ploss=I^2R and Vtotal = (Vleg)^1/3 !
I've had LED bulbs mysteriously got out far too soon and wondered what the problem was. They are too expensive to keep replacing like the incandescent bulbs. Thanks for the video.
I would investigate supply voltage stability/transient surges. Another cause could be aging switch contacts not allowing a clean switch action.
I had 3 fail after 2-3 days operation each. The bulbs were screwed into one of those photocell adapters that screw in place of the bulb.. and then you screw the actual bulb into the photocell. I noticed with an incandescent bulb, the bulb would begin to glow as night approached and got to full brightness once it became dark. I replaced the incandescent with an LED and noticed that the bulbs would not to the low glow light the original.. but would turn on fully a little later than when the original started to glow. I noticed all night a burning plastic smell. I thought it was the "new electronic" smell one usually detects when first turning on a new device. The first bulb lasted 2 nights. I figured I got a bad one so I replaced it with #2.. same thing.. then that was replaced with #3 and it also lasted only 3 nights. Each bulb had a burnt smell to it. I had put some of the same batch (same box) at another location controlled with a normal toggle switch. I never had trouble with those. I think the photocell is partially turning on and feeding low voltage to the bulbs.. and that may be what is causing the LED bulbs to burn out.
obsolete, were you using dimmable or non-dimmable bulbs? Make sure they are dimmable and the problem will probably go away.
They were not dimmable. This led me to wonder how a photocell (really) worked. I thought they snapped off and on. The incandescent used prior would softly glow as evening approached.. that told me that the photocell was turning on gradually. Maybe I have a bad photocell and the combination with the LED's was not good. I never got around to putting a voltmeter on it so see.
Those older dusk to dawn things were able to only to shed their 5 watts in series with a 100watt bulb not a similar 5 watt load. The undimable LED's are subject to this. I damaged a LED on a socket of a double arm lamp with poor connections to the shell from years of getting cooked to a crisp.
Thank you all for your comments.. always something new to learn.
"Non-dim-able" because dimmers involve sharp switching at 100c/s, and most led lamps use a capacitor to set the current, assuming a Sinusoidal voltage. The sharp switching will put huge current pulses through the leds at 100 ppsecond.
Maybe LED means "light emitting diode" but I've found "life endurance dubious" would not be incorrect!
I diagnosed a failed eggshell once. Turned out to be a slight inconsistency in the calcite matrix, probably due to a genetic mutation. I had the calcite analyzed in a lab and found it to be 17% deficient of normal hydrogen bonding at the atomic level. The store refunded my 15 cents.
worth it
Cost of lab work $75
nope. $350
Behold, we are in the presence of a comedy genius.
Excellent Video! Although some LED's maybe substandardly built, the ones that I have purchased have performed great. Having a small apartment complex I have switched every bulb to LEDs, and what a tremendous time saver.
And those lamps assembled like "You can't get inside of it, and you can't reassemble it, if you got inside"
I've bought a pile of LED bulbs from Aldi and NEVER had 1 fail! They've been GREAT lights!
Same here. Had lots of compact fluorescents fail quickly (Remember when they were going to save the world?).
Very suprised
I watched at 2x, which is the perfect speed. Awesome info!
I cant watch any yt vids w dialogue at less than 1.5x any more...
@@cmill8465 same.
@@cmill8465 same same
let me guess - planned obsolescence?
chinesium shit more than anything
is that a command?
planned incandescence?
No, made in China. Even worse
Well yes al Gore owns the new bulb factory I'm sure you did pay 69 or 99 cents for a bulb would go got every year, but let be progressivism at all cost! Now you pay 6 to 9 bucks for a bulb says lasts 5 years but only last 9 months and has mercury in them to boot better for the environment my ass libtards think backwards!
very well described on the problem. Some LEDs are SMD component where the solder leads are at the bottom which is not accessible from the top. Also, most reputable bulb manufacturers sand off the IC label marking so that you will not be able to find the replace parts.
Another guy said they get too hot so he either drilled holes or left the globes off. He put a glob of black window sealant across the bad led to bypass it as the sealant was conductive.
I've used a bunch of different brands and designs of LED bulbs over the past three or so years. And almost all of my failures were sylvania bulbs. These look similar, not sure if that's what they are or not. But my sylvania bulbs all start flashing after a year or two, switching between normal brightness and maybe half brightness. I've had countless warranty replacements but the replacements start flickering too. I've probably had at least 10 sylvania light bulbs go bad. But every other brand I've used has been great.
*_“Planned Obsolescence”_* ring any bells?
Richard WILSON u sound like Scotty Kilmer...hahahaha
Recently viewed a documentary about that....started with lightbulb factories agreeing on the maximum hours a bulb might glow
I saw that too about the light bulbs. Dirty bastards!!!!! Our Consumer economy means no quality products, they have to wear out so new ones can be sold
@@logankincade661 why blame bastards if you can make a bulb serving 10 times for the same price? go make it and get your millions...
Cell phones are definitely built with planned obsolescence. That's why your battery starts to fail at 1 year 11 months.
The ones i've tested are all running with the MCPCB at about 100-120C (in an open fixture, base up). If you're familiar with the junction-case thermal resistance of these packages, you'll know how far beyond absolute maximum the LED's are running. The ones in which i bothered to put a thermocouple on the caps had them at 90-100C or so. I have yet to find any consumer market LED lamps that I wouldn't expect early failure from.
Tech has moved quite a bit. Now you can get LED bulbs with chip on ceramic heatsink and the power regulator is segregated from the rest, stays cool. They are even rated for enclosed luminaries
@@videosuperhighway7655 When the thermal path is dominated by resistances close to the source, it's trivial to make something that "stays cool".
I have had to replace a few and same failures. I am glad they have a failure mode it stops a potential fire but at the same time this is all intentional. The lighting mafia group that formed around the time of when incandecents were taking off in popularity heavily regulate this as well and ensure failures.
They always pass higher current in order to make them bright which just making them pack up . If you limit the current by 50% they would last posibly 200% longer
Recently I was building something that used two led bulbs and I removed the covers to fit them into the space I had. Because it was covered it was fairly safe. I noticed one of the bulbs was a bit dimmer and soon realized that a number of the leds were missing, quite a few in fact, and the circuit board just had empty spaces. I assume it was bad quality control or deliberate cost cutting. I wouldn't be surprised by anything, these days.
That's wild!
@@TheRamsberg Think that's wild? How about self assembling nano tech? That's what I call wild.
@@TheRamsberg Particularly in vaccines. There. I said it.
@@chuffpup That is wild! It'd be even more so if two thirds of the self assembling nanos that were supposed to exist, didn't!
I found this video interesting, as I had about 3x LED bulbs 'blow' several years ago. Without any expertise in electronics knowledge I was unable to determine the exact cause. Like several previous commenters here I was not happy that they failed after only a few months of use, but had been advertised as having a lifespan of 50,000+ hours of use & I do not like wasting money.
Now I have solar PV panels on my house (ummm…. what does this have to do with it say you - ha ha). The consequence is that the grid-tied inverter has to raise the voltage from the PV system to get the current to flow for export to the external grid. I live in the UK where the nominal grid voltage should be about 230v 50hz, but my inverter raises the voltage to as high as 248v. So my guess is that the voltage is way too high for the LEDs & caused them to run hot & fail prematurely. Add to this that many items sold in the UK are actually only designed to run on 220v European voltage & I'm guessing that my LEDs were. (Now guess how I fixed this).
I simply rewired my LEDs with each two in series. This shares the voltage between them, thus massively reducing the voltage each LED has to use. The result; no further failures of LEDs at all. Success.
Further reasoning: Does anyone here recollect that one of the original Edison light bulbs is still functioning within a US Fire Station. I was amazed at this. However the reason of its longevity appeared to be that the voltage across the vintage Edison light bulb was significantly reduced, thus reducing the heat stresses. So I applied the same principle of voltage reduction (via wiring two LEDs in series) to achieve a similar result.
Before any wise spark states the obvious; the LEDs wired in series do not glow quite as brightly. However they are more than adequate for me & the hoped for improvement in reliability should be worth the hassle of my little experiment.
Regards to all, Johnnyk. PS. Please comment on this, as I would like to learn more.
Would you please put a light meter before and after?
@@nobody46820 Sorry no can do; I don't own or have access to a light meter. All I can say is to repeat my original comment, that 2x LEDs wired in series are a little dimmer, but not much, & hopefully they will outlast my lifetime. You don't get ought for nought; there's always a trade-off.
@@johnkay4701 I like your idea, I'm going to give it a try.
@@nobody46820 Go for it. Measure before & after with a multi-meter & check using Ohm's Law. You'll find that the total combined power drawn is half what either of the two identical LEDs draw individually. So the by-product is that it saves money & the environment also. I have a fixed version of this (2x LEDs in series) & a portable version. As my older incandescent & CFL bulbs end their natural lives, I'll be replacing most with my 2x LEDs in series setup throughout the house & garage. It works for me very nicely. If everyone in the country did this, it would potentially save millions of pounds every year in electricity costs, massively extending the life of bulbs & thus reducing pollution & refuse. Tell me how you get on. Regards JohnnyK.
@@johnkay4701 Thanks, will do! I'd be curious to see what wattage of LED's with what voltage and amps in regard to how many I can rig in series.
Noticed a Radio Shack meter. I remember the days when they sold "Archer" kits and you could actually get parts to fix things. Then they went crazy trying to sell phones and R/C cheap cars .
Went to Home Depot to get a replacement indoor 120W flood lamp. No go. All LED and the highest wattage was 65W. And all so frigging expensive!
I bought three Phillips branded LED bulbs, that were on closeout. They were the equivalent to 100watt incandescent, but in the daylight color spectrum. After a month of use, they started flickering and failing. I removed them, from wall sconces, and found the bases oof every bulb cracked. I contacted the manufacturer about the issue and emailed them pictures of all three. They sent me replacements, which I've had for three years now, and they are still functioning normally. The large hardware store, Menards, sells a brand called FEIT. They have been very unreliable with their CFL's, but the LED's have done pretty well. They still have an above average failure rate, but they are quite inexpensive. I bought a bucket, of 24, for $29.99. Two years in, only two have failed. One of which was constantly on.
Yea that the catch ,the leds last many many hours but the components don't.
Until we finally have a base driver for entire buildings
ElevatorMan5482 ElevExperiencing Productions
Until that fails then the entire building is in darkness, yeah no ty...
Reliable products from brands with a reputation to protect cost more. People who buy the cheapest bulb they can find are likely getting components that have outright failed quality control in a higher-grade production facility before being sold to lower tier producers. 21st Century Chinese factories will deliver any quality level that buyers are willing to pay for, including the lowest.
And in the case of these bulbs, it was less than a week for one I bought. That brand is now off any buy list. Walmart sells them under the " Great Value" label but it is the same bulb.
Right on. Bought a No-Name LED 60 watt (8.5 W) to try it out. 11,000 hour rating !! Gone in a couple of weeks.
But, hey, it was only a dollar. Where have we heard that before?
...Great Value, alright...for the Wal Mart Execs... likely paid the Factory 8 Cents per Light...
Thankz4sharing And sell all that cheap junk in walfart
Keep in mind most electronic components in consumer goods are only tested to 1000 hrs at 2.5x rated voltage. with 1-2% failures allowed. This is about a month. If you have 6 or 8 components in addition to the LEDs Expect 1 - 2 x6 failures even if the LEDs are good.
Manufacturers will design failure rates into most all products. They will run the LED components at or above their rated operating parameters which causes component failure. I made an AC powered LED cluster, an them below their max rating and 13 years later, still working. Make it strong and it will last.
I was an EE and did new product design for 40 years and NEVER would have considered building in intentional failures. I never heard of anyone else doing it either, too much pride. But it makes a great story.
dboy6400
Hello. I won't try to sell you on the idea however: A fella worked at a marine repair shop. The outboard ignition modules failed a lot. The young man was able to unpot the modules and discovered inferior components being used. He reverse engineered the modules, started selling them and was able to start his own business. It is not the first time things like this has taken place. I'm glad you took pride in what you did, that is rare. Let me ask you this, are we not in a throw-away society? Do house fans have bearings or bushings? Some Chinese products may work for a week then stop. I could go on about cheep products but you already have your mind made up. The video clearly shows crap products, you decide.
Thanks Dave. My post was only based on my personal experience from the mid 70s til I retired 2 years ago. There was never anything said by anybody about 'building in obsolescence or early failure'. But there was almost constant pressure during a development cycle to do it quickly and make it cheap to manufacture. Ease of assembly went into designs. It's the cost control and sometimes being limited to cheap components that IMHO led to failure rates. Bushings vs bearings is a good example but I don't think it's for achieving early failure. Back to my experience, once a product was released any evidence of early failures always prompted corrective design changes.
One of my career chapters involved manufacturing in China at two different companies. I made several trips there and quite frankly and honestly I was impressed with their skill and diligence. Making assembled pc boards and injection molded plastic parts were done very well, back in the US we never had any complaints.
My only real point is questioning whether or not early failures come from intention (I don't think so) or from the fast'n'cheap pressure during the design stage (I definitely think so).
Dave G Exactly. And that's theft. It's cashing in on someone else's scam. Maybe it's not as bad as stealing from a casino or from a church, but it's still a filthy thing to do.
I've replaced most of the bulbs in three homes in the last few years with LEDs and basically no problems. Make sure you use bulbs with the 3000 kelvin scale for the best natural color.
Natural color depends on the owner. Those who work in morgue are used to 6000K)
Thanks man! I consume a fair number of led strips and bulbs and have often wondered much of what you have taken the time to document. Wonderful. BZ!
Many thanks - told me what I suspected! Now here's a thought. Don't bin them. Cannibalise a good LED, resolder it and get one good lamp - but put a bigger resistor in and drive them less hard. It will be dimmer, but I wonder by how much..... Slightly off topic is how annoying the so-called dimmable ones are - they don't dim much! I always thought it would be possible to have a sort off coiled bar-LED that reacted to voltage. The more you inputted, more of the LEDs would light up, rather than the 25% (I guess) difference that occurs with each LED being underdriven.
It would be interesting to do the same experiment with "higher quality" LED bulbs.
Thanks for sharing your expertise I disliked LED since day one
You either get a good one or a bad one. I have two chinese corn bulb LED's out on my porch. They have been subjected to cold NE winters for 5 years now and they still work perfectly. I think it all comes down to the soldering skills of the workers .
Interesting info! Always wondered what was inside one of those bulbs. Looks like you could steal good LEDs from a bulb to fix other ones. Of course, if the LEDs are substandard that repair would only last until another LED popped.
As an aside, does anyone remember the round wafer type capacitors they used to sell for incandescent bulbs? They went in the bottom of the socket and were to supposedly smooth out the current and prevent surge which was the reason for premature failure (Hard on the filaments). I have to believe they worked because I still have some of the old filament type and the filaments look beat before they ever blow.
May have been diodes, I don't remember. I just remember a bulb would last years. You can't get them anymore :(
Bob Bastion
I'd rather watch paint drying than this " lamp tutorial"zzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I am so concerned about your amusement. You know, there are a few more things to watch on here. May I recommend Worldstar for you?
Bob, that age dates you if you remember those. Haven't seen those since 1970?.
I suppose but isn't strange how they just disappeared as if they'd invented a car that could run on water? I can't find anything about em on the net.
Engineering: "We can build lights that can last up to 10,000 hours and use up to 5 times less power".
Management: "Great, but who's going to pay for my Yacht? Call in the boys from Accounting, Sales and Legal"
Accounting: "We can sell this light bulb 10 times more and people will still buy it because they'll be saving hundreds of dollars over its lifespan"
Sales: "This light bulb uses 5 times less power over its 10 year lifespan, you'll be saving hundreds of dollars and save the environment in the process"
Legal: "Make sure to put in 'warranty one year' in the smallest type legally allowed and make sure warranty claims are sent by registered mail to some dead-end third party with proof of purchase and allow 120 days processing"
So accountant firm are doing the market research..then who make the financial report?
Amazing demonstration. Thank you.
Holy shit!! Last night an LED bulb failed in my bathroom light fixture, and I unscrewed it and threw it away, saying nothing to anybody. Now TH-cam recommends this video clip to me, the very next morning -- how does Google know what I'm thinking? Does it have a camera in my house? This is getting creepy - But more seriously, a pleasure watching you troubleshoot, and I learned some useful facts
bad electrolytic capasitors and bad cooling of the led so the bounding wires burn off
I'm surprised,
Thought it was the capacitor.
Easiest fix, is to solder a resistor in parallel with the LED, or just another LED on top of the broken one.
True but you can't reassemble a lightbulb.
I see some of the comments saying dont buy cheap Chinese brands, what do you expect from Americans that dont support local manufacturers because they are too pricey. Buy the cheap ones because we sent all our jobs over to third world Country's or buy better American made stuff and support your American economy......................but you cant have both
Often times there are no USA made comparable products available to purchase. In other words, sometimes it's all made overseas.
You can't blame the public its the Companies who put share holders or profit over country by sending the manufacture end to other country's to increase revenue.... I worked for a alternator company in Canada. that was around for 50 or so years (they moved to mexico) at the end it was cheaper for them to buy a entire new alternator or starter from china then it was for us to rebuild a core ..or even core value of 7 dollars.. And the funny kicker is napa would fine us if we left "made in Canada stickers on our alternators and starters " all they did was put a sticker "made in the u.s.a" to claim it as made in the states... so again its your / our companies that are evil..
..
and basically its a sticker nation or co packers or assemblers .. but manufactures is pretty much gone.
so yeah who would not buy the same product else where saving 90 percent of the cost for the same thing that all a local manufacture does it put a sticker on it or puts in the final screw to claim it as made in the u.s.a..?...
I'm in the UK, and have seen a Family Guy episode where they replace every item in the house with 'made in USA' goods and they all go up in smoke... I do know of quality USA items like Maglight Leatherman, and the amazing high-end HiFi equipment Martin-Logan, Krell etc but was the programme just digging at Walmart priced items?
Unfortunately, American made products have a history of being crappy too. The Big 3 Automakers built really crappy cars that got crappy fuel mileage, which allowed the Japanese to enter our market and thrive. The early Japanese cars introduced into the US in the 70s rarely broke down and could literally run a million miles and use very little gasoline. We were lucky to get much over 100K miles on any of the Big 3 US manufactured cars before the engines would blow. Chevy Vegas would fail after 30K-40K miles. Ford Pinto were death traps in rear end collisions. Even though OPEC embargoed the US and pump prices skyrocketed, The Big 3 chose to continue building gas guzzlers and muscle cars that were designed to fail early, so the Japanese gained a permanent foothold in the US market. The Big 3 attempted to peer pressure Americans into buying their crappy products rather than cheaper, more reliable, fuel efficient Japanese cars but their marketing strategy failed spectacularly. Taxpayers even had to bail out Chrysler to save those good paying jobs. Chrysler was the worst of The Big 3 and probably still is...
There are NO LED bulbs made in the US. All made in China now even Cree and Phillips!
LEDs are generally reliable. The more you have the greater the probability of one failing.
That is true. More current results in more heat. And heat is a major factor in electronic components failing.
lol this is the dumbest statement i’ve heard all day
The only problems I've had are on the 3-Ways. Seems one or two of the wattage's stopped working quickly. I had two and put them out in the garage door opener when they failed to work as a three way. I have many others that are on 2-3 years. The ones outside on the garage were installed 2.5 years ago,use 9.5W each for a 60W illumination rating and are on 8-13 hrs per day depending on the season. With incandescent bulbs they wouldn't last six months because of weather conditions and the vibration of a garage door going up and down. Well worth the money. The only incandescents I have left are a few in very low use closet lights. When they finally shoot craps all bulbs in my home will be LED. Time to replace the Christmas lights but I still like the old style incandescent light color over LED but LED's are getting better.
What I learned is that planned obsolecense is a problem, and don't throw them away if you are a hobby electrician etc. that's perfectly fine spare parts.
Have you tried un-soldering a good LED from a bad light and soldering it into the bad spot on the other bulb? I think that may be interesting to see if a light can be recovered and for how long. :-)
On another note I have quite a few LED's around the house that are years old, some of the first ones that came out, back when they were still pretty spendy.
They make this on purpose.
This way you will keep on buying.
I have had only problem with E27 sockets. But other sockets more common for spotlights, have been working for years.
really?but I bought the product , although there is a bad review but it cheap , i try to buy it , and it very surprise to me, The quality is really good.amzn.to/2Nz4IHe
,I think i can use it for many years !
Well, I may keep on buying, but certainly not theirs. Where’s the motivation to sell poor product? Roll the lamps off the production line for cheap, with minimal QA and bottom feeder (like me 😀) will scoop them up (once!) and move on.
I think you voided out the warranty
He should send them back to the manufacturer just the way it is for a warranty claim and post the results.
@@4lifejeph Or just replace the bad diodes.
@@4lifejeph actually. in USA, simply call the mfg and tell them they quit working and they'll send ya free replacements.
There actually is no warranty on the Lightning Science brand of bulbs. That entire company is a fraud. There are approximately a thousand people who actually gave this video a thumbs-down. That proves to me that the Lightning Science company had most of their employees deliberately give this video a thumbs-down out of anger for exposing the truth of their fraudulent business practices. I attempted to contact their company via their email address located on their website at lsgc.com
My email was instantly returned to me as being undeliverable.
Rohan Zener what’s a diode?
I've read through most of the comments on this thread and like many of you, find it disappointing when an LED which we thought might last 15 years fails much sooner than that.
HOWEVER, do the math! It is quite common in 2018 to find 60 watt equivalent LED's (which use about 9 watts) for $1 or less on sale with energy rebate coupons. That is when you stock up! 100 watt equivalents have been significantly more expensive but just recently, in Canada at least, Costco had 3 packs on sale for less than $9. These are the FEIT brand (and yes I've seen an earlier FEIT fail but rarely). Anyway, these 100 Watt equivalent bulbs use 15 watts and they are "rated for use in enclosed fixtures" which is pretty uncommon for LED's. So for every hour of operation, these bulbs reduce electricity consumption but 85 watt hours. Therefore it takes 1000/85 = 11.76 hours to save 1 Kilowatt hour of electricity. Let's just round it to 12 hours of use. So at 3 hours per day of use it will take 4 days to save a Kilowatt hour. 365/4 = 91.25 Kilowatt hours per year. Where I live, my "All In Electricity Cost" is 13 cents per kilowatt hour. So that single bulb will save 91.25 x .13 = $11.87 in a year. That's not a bad return on a $3 investment. While I've certainly experienced a few LED failures (my entire house has been converted), it's definitely not a 100% failure rate and I have several which have been in operation for years including the lamp at the end of my driveway which operates an average of 13 hours per day. That single bulb saves over 1 Kilowatt Hour per night or about $52 per year. I'll accept that trade-off.
So go ahead, get mad as hell and trash all your damned LED's. Then go find some good old black-market incandescent bulbs. Just don't complain when your hydro bill goes up!
Sadly MOST people also don't understand color temperature so they complain that they don't like the light quality of LED's. So here goes: Incandescent light bulbs operate in the color spectrum around 2700 Kelvin. There are LED's which approximate this level and they are labeled as Warm White. There are also a lot of "Warm White" labeled LED's which operate in the 3000 Kelvin range (my personal preference for areas like kitchens). LED Bulbs labelled as Daylight or "Cool White" are generally up in the "Bluer" 5000 Kelvin range. These are good for lighting a garage or workshop but for most interior use, the preference seems to be for Warm White as it more closely resembles what we remember from incandescents. Again, MOST people don't realize that when you dim an incandescent bulb, such as in a chandelier, the color temperature also goes down as you dim it. Full intensity might be around 2700 Kelvin and when dimmed down it will be around 2200 Kelvin. This DOES NOT happen with MOST LED's. They just get dimmer but the color temperature remains the same. For fixtures where you want nice dimming results, Phillips makes a series of LED Bulbs called "Warm Glow". These clever bulbs have an Amber LED in the center. As the dimming slider is decreased, the whiter LED's around the periphery get duller and the amber LED increases in intensity. The result is pretty remarkable for maintaining ambiance in desired locations so Bravo Phillips for this innovation.
By the way, I still have my parent's 85 year old coal oil lamp which works perfectly. Just have to find the coal oil and trim the wick everyday. Then I get this dull orange glow. Yeah!
I have some from the dollar tree, whole house full of them, over two years not a single one has burnt out. 1$ a piece. And they are bright as hell and good color temp. Bought a pack of 100w replacements from home depot, the dollar tree 60 watt replacements are just as bright. Couldn't be happier
Greenlite is the brand. They are perfect.
Great video! I don't think it will change anything I do with LEDs, but your expert analysis was not only entertaining but welcome knowledge.
I think that many "Made in China" issues really come down to contract issues with the U.S. firms that place the orders. In setting up any production assembly line, there are going to be mistakes that lead to product quality variations in the statistical aggregate. Tightly run corporations write their specifications to include quality control analysis and remediation as part of the contract package. Those that don't, end up with runs that have a higher percentage of faulty product, because the manufacturing company will do only what is necessary to fulfill the contract.
Essentially, that is how Apple can use China to make tons of complex iPhones with very little quality backlash, while relatively simple light bulbs utilizing LED technology might have a failure rate approaching 10%.
Herbert, "Expert analysis" ... no, not even remotely.
Herbert A lot of the Chinese companies are deceptive when it comes to quality. I retired from a company that wanted to lower our costs so we began trying various Chinese suppliers for our raw materials. We gave them our specs for particle sizing and chemical analysis. We requested a C.of C. along with a sample of each lot we were buying for testing and trials. Their certs met our specs and when we tested the sample in our labs it verified the certification papers. We instructed the company to send us the 10,000 lb lot. Upon receiving the material we sampled and tested the shipment. This time it failed chemical analysis so we sampled another container and retested plus we sent a sample to an independent lab. Again the material failed both labs. We were able to make the material work and we contacted the supplier. They were apologetic and promised it wouldn't happen again. We placed a second order expecting things to be different. They sent us a cert and sample from the new production lot. Oddly the test results reported on the cert were identical to the previous cert. The only difference was the lot number and date. We tested the pre-shipment sample and it met our specs but the main shipment failed our tests. This happened with each shipment they sent us. We came to the conclusion the Chinese company was sending samples from the same supply of material that met our specs along with a copy of the original cert but they assigned a new lot number and date matching the new shipment. This happened with several other Chinese suppliers so needless to say we continued buying raw materials from our European supplier.
....I can hear the Boss; "They no check up on this, they rely on compliance Papers" It's more common practice than most ppl realise.
I worked for a company that manufactured a component for a Chain Saw manufacture. We supplied it at $.07 each. They wanted us to cut the price more. So we did. We just sold them the test reject lots. What ever happened to McCullough chain saws anyway?
In the future it will become impossible to use a light bulb as a current limiting device. The reason? Incandescent light bulbs will no longer be available.
They already are in the UK and Europe they banned incandescent bulbs years ago
That’s why I laid in a small stash of the incandescent units years ago when I heard they were being fazed out.
Remember compact fluorescent bulbs and how they were supposed to last 10 years? I couldn't get them to even last 1 year.
And remember they have mercury and you have to go to extreme lengths to dispose of them? Lets see: originally very expensive, very short life, horrible for the environment and expensive to dispose of. Another wonderful idea brought to you by the ignorati of the left.
That is weird, we have CFL in the porch lamps 100w and they have been on for 8 years
Crazy, Ive had crappy led bulbs (12 total) in my house for over a year and have had 0 problems.
Thanks great info. I have a box full of Osram LED falures. Just one thing. Be careful with graphite pencils and electricity. I know of someone who died using it as a pointer. Much higher voltage though but still...
It's acting like a fuse bulb like on a Christmas tree
swansealoaf1999
Christmas lights wired in series piss me off!! ;-)
I think in 2015, I bought my first Cree (label as Assembly in the U.S.) Bulb for my business. Months later of having LED of kinds failing on me, I replaced all the bulbs over time with Cree. Also one of the home improvement stores were selling these Cree bulbs that were assembled in the U.S. for 4 dollars per bulb; good deal. I bought over 50 bulbs but I only needed 16. The automatic lights turn on and stays on for 10 hours everyday for the past close to three years now on my first Creed bulb. It is an equal 60 watt bulb and the darn thing still is bright as new, even with the outdoor elements. I am impressed but not anymore.
Two month ago, I bought a cree bulb that is made in China for comparison; ok, I was bored that day. And that Chinese made bulb with crooked label of Cree just died few days ago... I have used bulbs from so many different manufacturers and they all sucked, most of these LED bulbs are junk. But than, it depends how lucky one can be.
The light bulb conspiracy.
Recommend everyone to watch this documentary.
miroslav miric look up 5G conspiracy and yeah that’s worse then the led bulb cancer theory
I haven't lost an LED bulb yet but I have only been using them for a couple of years. The cheapest I have were $0.50 each, clearance at Kroger's - Greenlite 11w, 1100 lumens, 75w replacement, which are no longer manufactured. I bought all they had - 20 bulbs. These are my favorite. I'm using 12 currently, 6 are in enclosed luminaries which the bulbs say are suitable. They look like the bulbs in this teardown. I wonder if they're the same.
I've had some fall like this too. But never had any philips or panasonic bulbs fail, and I have been using them since 2012. The old ones used to be really heavy, but the new ones are really lightweight. The ones that fail are also really lightweight.
NICE TROUBLESHOOTING PARDNER'. WISH I HAD THE ELECTRONIC KNOWLEDGE. GOOD WORK.
YOUR CAPS LOCK KEY IS BROKEN MIGHT WANT TO GET THAT CHECKED
I was going to say you should just bridge the bad LEDs, but I think that would be worse because it would raise even more the current on the remaining LEDs. Also, the circuit on these lamps already has a bridge, and of all things, it's a FULL BRIDGE RECTIFIER!!!
If short of the necessary LED, then replace it with a resistor to keep the current the same.
ElectroBOOM quote, if was a AvE quote would be a "FULL BRIDGE RECTUMFRIER"
Okay, that made me laugh.
No, it would not raise the current, because the current is regulated by the integrated circuit. However, it WOULD raise the voltage being dropped across the IC (marked as U1 on the board), and therefore more power wasted and more heat generated on the IC alone, since it's a linear regulator (acting like a variable resistance).
Also, the LEDs are connected in SERIES, meaning the current is the same through all of them. You would have been right if they were connected in parallel.
He COULD drop in a replacement LED instead of a bad one, provided it is rated for that current and UP TO that voltage.
If they are in series the voltage increase for the remaining working leds,multiply by the same current for every led,the result is the remaining led works at increase power in watts
Good video. I have wondered why I have had to replace a number of LED bulbs when they always advertise how much longer the life is supposed to be.
I keep having this issue with my LEDs from many different manufacturers. The failures range from burn out bases to not handling voltage.
My latest is a batch of 20000 hour LEDs that have lasted 600 hours max. I've been going back to old style filament bulbs.
In-series just like Christmas lights.. definitely asking for failure
But it's how most if not all LED lighting works. You need the voltage to drop by chaining many LEDs. Otherwise, you need a beefy power supply to handle a high current/low voltage output to parallel LEDs. It's more energy efficient and cost efficient to use a lot of LEDs in series to drop the hundreds of volts.
Jason Wilson, virtually every LED light made with the exception of flashlights is like this, so your comment is rather pointless.
They could make the bulbs so the individual LEDs were replaceable. If one fails just plug in a new one. You would only need a handful of light bulbs ever.
Therefore the culprit is... series assembling, ha ha ! You wouldn't have said that for tungsten filament bulbs.
Why haven't they paralled many tungsten filaments with a higher resistance to prevent a totally unusable bulb if one filament passed away ?
This they could have done easier than with 3v/9v LED chips. Then what if someday they'll make a 110v/230v LED chip ? No more need of regulator components, but....
MatBlythe .... that makes no sense. There are many different components that could fail. Are you going to make them all swappable? They are
Planned obsolescence in full effect here.
Since you have a number of partially functioning LED boards, why not unsolder a good LED from one board and solder/replace the bad ones?
kw0s, I was going to say the same thing. you beat me by 7 hours. LOL
I bet it won't fix it.
Because they are a pain to open and might be a pain to put together too (espexcially after you've stuck a screwdriver through the bulb :D ) But of course that would give you a bit more lifetime until the next bum LED blows and then you have to do it again... not really worth it. I'd just desolder the LEDs and keep them for low current applications somewhere later.
That is what they count on, that you will by these Chinese junk LED bulbs over and over. The end result is you pay a lot more for a single bulb by buying it multiple times
These operate at high temperature, and are therefore more difficult to unsolder/solder vs. regular components. Not sure what formulation of solder is used, but I was not able to reattach an LED on another brand bulb myself.
Carl Mueller: It is the same solder, the issue is a giant heatsink in the back of the board that is sucking all the heat away from soldering equipment.
Cool. Knowing that you can make two good bulbs by transferring good LED packages from the third donor board.
I've had multiple failures. Most caused by confining in an unventilated enclosure which the package said not to do (one or two bulbs just plain failed, however). Mostly I've had problems with LED flashlights. These things go bad at an alarming rate so make sure to buy with a lifetime guarantee if possible and be sure to save the receipt.
Get good ones with T6 LEDs powered by 18650 rechargeble batteries; 2 for $11 on AMAZON. They are fucking amazing.
Thank god they never outlawed incandescent bulbs.
J0074 yes thank god They let the market decide.
All but under 60 watt bulbs are banned from sale in california. You can use what you got but not many are for sale except specitlaty bulbs like the fridge and oven replacement