3 ms·
From my experience this is not quite correct. About half of them seem to die because of the power supply and the other half because of problems with the LEDs th
by _Microft 6y ago
From my experience this is not quite correct. About half of them seem to die because of the power supply and the other half because of problems with the LEDs themselves. This surprised me a lot because it seems to mean that the lifetime of both the transformer and the LEDs is pretty similar.
The failure of the LED element itself (in the model that I put under a microscope) was an internal wire burning through. The LED elements actually contained two LEDs in series connected by a tiny wire.
I assembled a working LED bulb from two broken ones that had failed in different ways. Not that I would ever dare to use such a thing in normal operations.
- baybal2 6y agoThat's definitely not normal. Normally, the current needed to fry the lead will be many times the current needed for the diode junction to short.
- _Microft 6y agoI guess I didn’t explain well enough: it aren’t ‚huge‘ external leads (if you meant these) that fry but a minuscule wire internal to the SMD LED element that houses two junctions in series, connected by said wire. Here is a bad picture of an undamaged wire, diagonally at the center. The image shows approximately 1.5x1.5mm. https://i.imgur.com/4olUBvd.jpg https://i.imgur.com/4olUBvd.jpg
- baybal2 6y agoUh! So tiny! Effectively, they ship an LED with a free fuse! Buyers can be sure they will never burn the junction.