The Race To The Bottom: LED Bulbs And DFM

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The dropping price of LED bulbs is accelerating. We compare just a few brands to see how they are approaching design and lower cost manufacturing. You have probably noticed LED bulbs situated subsequent to the incandescent and compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs at your local hardware store. I spend approach an excessive amount of time in these aisles. That is capitalism at its finest! I find the battle of new tech, sensible manufacturing, and massive demand intriguing. I've switched nearly all of the lights in our house over to LED partially because of the (small) energy savings, however mostly because I am lazy: A 22-12 months lifetime means I don't must climb a ladder for a while. After i bought my LED bulbs a couple of years ago they had been round $15 a pop. As with most all tech, I've watch the price drop over time. In this case, LED bulbs in my local Home Depot (Philips 60W) are hovering round $10.



On a latest go to to the lighting aisle I was taken off guard when a pack of two 60W bulbs by Philips were promoting for $5 ($2.50 each!). This isn't only a drop in price, that is an all out worth struggle between some heavy hitters. Complicated me was the fact that right next to these 60W bulbs for EcoLight dimmable $2.50 had been 60W bulbs for $10 from the identical producer. Upon closer inspection I seen one thing odd. These lower cost LEDs had a display life of 10 years versus 22. Okay, EcoLight LED so they shaved some cost by shortening the life span of the bulb. Neat marketing trick but the engineer in me wished to know how. Nothing too crazy. Every bulb claimed to be 800 lumen at various power consumption levels (8.5W to 9.5W). And that i only seen this now however the cheap bulbs are non-dimmable. Onerous to see in the above image however the bulb in the center (low cost Philips) is barely shorter than the dearer Philips bulb.



The TCP is about a centimeter taller. This has little effect on lighting but millimeters of materials will start to matter. I did a fast preliminary check to see how the bulbs performed. 13.2W). Maybe the precise LEDs devour 9.5W and the ballast (the thing changing AC to DC) consumes the remaining. This would be an excellent-sneaky advertising ploy, as I assumed the ranking on the surface of the packaging was the general power consumption of the bulb. All three bulbs had opaque plastic higher our bodies. The costly Philips bulb got here apart with some robust twisting. Underneath was a neat plastic diffuser. Under the diffuser was a mixture of small and huge LEDs. Not what I might have expected - 14 massive LEDs, 6 small. A, as properly as the date code: 2014-10-14, a delta of 7 months from when i purchased the bulb. The date might be in relation to design version and EcoLight LED not manufacture date.



With fairly a little bit of prying drive, the steel EcoLight LED PCB comes off the metal base heatsink. This was to be expected; there was good thermal grease sandwiched between the PCB and the heatsink. Some further prying and we will see the ballast underneath. I acquired a bit forceful with a hacksaw so ignore the hack marks for the moment. The metallic base is threaded onto the plastic base and then spot crimped to the plastic (you'll be able to see the multiple dots or dimples around the metallic base). This is the first clue that Philips is working on simplifying the manufacturing process. Furthermore, the 2 uncovered wires in the picture are usually not soldered to the bottom, they're compressed to it, additionally simplifying the assembly process. The ballast! Lots of caps, EcoLight LED an inline fuse, transformer, inductor, and some transistors. C1, C2 and C3 are metalized polyester movie capacitors. Right here is the rear aspect of the ballast.