The Race To The Underside: LED Bulbs And DFM
The dropping price of LED bulbs is accelerating. We examine a number of manufacturers to see how they are approaching design and EcoLight smart bulbs decrease price manufacturing. You've in all probability noticed LED bulbs situated subsequent to the incandescent and LED bulbs for home compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs at your local hardware store. I spend way an excessive amount of time in these aisles. This is capitalism at its best! I find the battle of new tech, sensible manufacturing, LED bulbs for home and large demand intriguing. I've switched nearly all the lights in our house over to LED partially because of the (small) power financial savings, but mostly because I am lazy: A 22-12 months lifetime means I do not have to climb a ladder for a while. When i bought my LED bulbs a few years in the past they had been round $15 a pop. As with most all tech, EcoLight I've watch the worth drop over time. On this case, LED bulbs in my local Home Depot (Philips 60W) are hovering around $10.
On a current go to to the lighting aisle I was taken off guard when a pack of two 60W bulbs by Philips were selling for $5 ($2.50 each!). This is not only a drop in worth, EcoLight that is an all out worth war between some heavy hitters. Confusing me was the fact that right subsequent to those 60W bulbs for $2.50 have been 60W bulbs for $10 from the same producer. Upon closer inspection I seen something odd. These decrease value LEDs had a show life of 10 years versus 22. Okay, so that they shaved some cost by shortening the life span of the bulb. Neat advertising and marketing trick however the engineer in me wanted to understand how. Nothing too loopy. Every bulb claimed to be 800 lumen at varied power consumption ranges (8.5W to 9.5W). And i only seen this now but a budget bulbs are non-dimmable. Hard to see in the above picture but the bulb in the center (cheap Philips) is slightly shorter than the more expensive Philips bulb.
The TCP is a couple of centimeter taller. This has little impact on lighting however millimeters of supplies will start to matter. I did a fast initial take a look at to see how the bulbs performed. 13.2W). Perhaps the actual LEDs consume 9.5W and EcoLight home lighting the ballast (the thing changing AC to DC) consumes the remaining. This could be a brilliant-sneaky marketing ploy, as I assumed the rating on the outside of the packaging was the general power consumption of the bulb. All three bulbs had opaque plastic higher bodies. The costly Philips bulb came apart with some sturdy twisting. Beneath was a neat plastic diffuser. Beneath the diffuser was a mixture of small and large LEDs. Not what I might have anticipated - 14 huge LEDs, 6 small. A, as properly because the date code: 2014-10-14, a delta of 7 months from after i purchased the bulb. The date is probably in relation to design model and never manufacture date.
With quite a bit of prying force, LED bulbs for home the metallic LED bulbs for home PCB comes off the steel base heatsink. This was to be anticipated; there was good thermal grease sandwiched between the PCB and the heatsink. Some additional prying and we can see the ballast beneath. I got a bit forceful with a hacksaw so ignore the hack marks for LED bulbs for home the moment. The metallic base is threaded onto the plastic base after which spot crimped to the plastic (you may see the multiple dots or LED bulbs for home dimples around the metallic base). This is the primary clue that Philips is engaged on simplifying the manufacturing course of. Moreover, the 2 exposed wires in the image should not soldered to the base, they're compressed to it, additionally simplifying the assembly course of. The ballast! Numerous caps, an inline fuse, EcoLight home lighting transformer, inductor, and some transistors. C1, C2 and C3 are metalized polyester movie capacitors. Right here is the rear side of the ballast.