LED Lighting Woes - Suggestions?

C

Chip Monkey

Registered
Registered
Joined
Nov 17, 2021
Messages
63
I'm getting tired of buying one or another $40 LED "shop light" (using term loosely...) when it seems like 20% of them soil the sheets within a year.

Does anyone have any experience with a specific type or brand better than the typical junk found in all the usual places? Looking for 4' strips. I'm tired of crap no matter how little it costs ;-(
 
I've been buying the 4' led lights from Walmart... about $20 each. I have several that have been going strong for 4-5 years.

I haven't had any problems with them at all.

Walmart carries a cheaper version for around $17 that work just as well, but don't have an on/off switch... I don't buy those.

-Bear

Edit: actually, I just counted back... my oldest Walmart LED's are 7 years old and still going...
 
I bought 6 of them from Costco about 8 years ago, all but one are still working fine and the one with issues only has ¼ of one "bulb" out. Maybe something else is causing the early failures, voltage spikes or dips, condensation, dust, temperature, vibration, etc?
 
Last edited:
This is one of my 4 gang from HD with only a few years on the clock.
 
I make my own.

I have 5 years of operating the LED lights I have made.

Average build cost is about 1.00 per watt.

Pretty much any LED supply company has everything you need to assemble a light.

1681202584462.png
 
I have about 20 of these in my shop from HF and none have failed yet (3-4 years?). They are having a Spring Black Friday sale where they are $16.99.
 
Quality LED Chips ( light emitting diodes) now are made with a electro gold plating.
The technology shift from All LED lighting requiring fans to now which is passive cooling.
LED lighting that have fans in them are using yesterdays technology. and use about 30% more energy then quality LED's

Allot of LED light makers are claiming they use certain quality brand names LED's and they are lying ...
Your not going to buy a LED light out of China that has genuine Samsung or Bridgelux Diodes. The Chinese LED light makers will make copies before paying 17% import tax to bring in Bridgelux or Samsung LEDS ,, Make the light and export it with a profit. PS Samsung is Korean ...
Pretty much all quality LED lighting is using variation of COB technology COB< CHIP ON BOARD technology. and the name of a company.

One chip with many LED's inside ,, kind of like flies eye.

1681211926375.png
1681211990385.png

Most LED Lighting supply houses will assemble you quality LED light in any color spectrum you want.
IF the light has a fan don't buy .........
 
A lot of the led light bulbs seem to dim over time. By that I mean within 3-4 years. I bought a three way bulb, allegedly 50/100/150W equivalent, it's probably putting out 60W equivalent on high now. Doesn't seem to matter what brand. Last night I walked into the room and thought, is the light on low? No, it wasn't. Just another day in the life of the new light bulb cartel.

How many useful hours of illumination are you getting per bulb? At what intensity? The light in the paragraph above is on 5 hours per day on average (comes on at sunset, goes off at 10pm). How long should it last at 80% intensity? I'm thinking these bulbs are being over driven, and are baking to death. (So we get to buy more bulbs! Just like the old bulb cartel did.)
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top