Teardown slideshow: The anatomy of the LED light bulb

5/23/2012 2:49 PM EDT

Watching this technology improve is fascinating. I find the attempt to make the bulb look very similar to the old incandescent bulb interesting. I'm not sure how much that helps sell the new bulb ( although we do, of course, need a compatible base ), but hopefully we'll see prices drop further and then see more adoption by consumers.

5/23/2012 4:32 PM EDT

The 60W LED bulb has officially arrived. It's about time. I immediately ran out and got 3 of the Philips dimmables, even though they were still $25 each, just as a show of appreciation as an early adopter for this effort. The bulbs are fantastic, and kinda look like they came from the future, but I'll wait until the prices re-enter the atmosphere before I get any more.

5/23/2012 4:52 PM EDT

$25 each if it lasts 3-5 times more than CFL, I think it is a good deal.

If heat is an issue, which piece will go away first, the power electronics or the LED? I believe it is the power electronics, isn't it?

5/23/2012 8:17 PM EDT

LED light bulbs are too recent to have much data on failure modes. Electrolytic caps are indeed vulnerable to heat. This light bulb has a nice space between the back of the LED emitters and the circuit card. That should help. Most failures I have seen in CFLs circuit cards were due to sub-standard assembly, not design.

5/23/2012 9:09 PM EDT

This is great. My only issue I have with the article is the notion, which I have seen expressed many times, that direct replacement of the light bulb should not be an important feature of these new LED "bulbs."

And while light bulbs did not directly replace candles or kerosene lamps nets (or whatever they were called), in the same sort of luminary, the electric lamps did closely emulate their forebears. And still do.

I've seen LED bulbs that do not arrange the LEDs in a plane, or at least they don't seem to. I have an LED candelabra based, for chandelier use, that emits light in all directions, every bit as much as a light bulb does, every bit as much as candles used to do in chandeliers.

Not saying that new types of lamps, with permanently installed LEDs, won't ALSO exist. But let's not be so happy to turn this into a racket for lamp makers, eh? Besides which, LED electronics may fail, for whatever reason, and LEDs tend to dim with use. So easy replacement will continue to be a good idea. For the customer, at least.

5/23/2012 9:27 PM EDT

I'll have to buy one to try it out. But I don't think I'll start replacing all of my bulbs with them, just too expensive.

5/24/2012 9:57 AM EDT

Good stuff. The CFLs are great because they produce more light then heat -efficiency! The LEDs will produce heat but seam to have the efficiency. I found it easy to replace all of my incandesent lights with CFLs and only wish they were US made. I will try a few of the LEDs as the CFL's fail. New formats like overhead lighting or panels may come with time. Remember tube circuits and how the tubes were replaceable and now we had solid state and we no longer expect to replace active circuits.

5/24/2012 10:48 AM EDT

How about we all stop using science to drive polotical agenda. This technology is wonderful, but the promises of savings to the consumer are absolute BS. see:
http://www.electroiq.com/blogs/insights_from_leading_edge/2012/04/iftle-98-lester-the-lightbulb-vs-cfl-and-led-the-saga-continues.html

5/24/2012 11:47 AM EDT

New construction should make good use of this technology. With LED lighting you can do color mixing where you can change the mood of the room for reading, watching a movie, listening to music etc.

5/24/2012 3:10 PM EDT

The quoted lifetimes are PREDICTED reliability based on specific temperatures, perfect construction with no flaws, and no temperature cycling. The usual bathtub curve applies: some will fail very soon (infant mortality) due to poor construction.

5/24/2012 3:50 PM EDT

The controller is actually an Infineon ICE1HS01G. You made a great effort to tear apart the LED, but how about a schematic of the board?

5/24/2012 4:23 PM EDT

If the power electronics is the weakest point, does it make sense for each household to have a low voltage DC circuit? Most consumer electronics only need low voltage DC power source anyway. That will be more energy efficient and save a lot of copper. NSF has a model house where there are USB wall plugs.

5/24/2012 4:29 PM EDT

In my experience with CFLs, lifetime is much, much longer than with incandescent bulbs, although I don't use CFLs in the refrigerator or in the oven.

I've found that in fixtures where incandescent bulbs were very short-lived, i.e. two lamps in particular, CFLs also fail sooner than normal, for whatever reason. But my sample size is too small to say that for sure yet. And in this involves CFLs with the small candelabra base, which most likely means that cooling of the electronics is inadequate. (I've changed the socket of one lamp to regular Edison, but still have some candelabra-to-Edison CFLs, with adpater, to use up. And these adapters look terrible for heat dissipation.)

In fixtures that use the regular Edison base, 60W or 40W equivalent CFLs, they soldier on for many years. Way longer than incandescents.

I'm sure that in time, the failure modes will be taken into consideration. Also, for oven or refrigerator use, it seems really trivial to use glass fibers to bring the light into the unfriendly environments, and locate the light source where the climate is more temperate. Otherwise, you're looking at hardening like for automobile engine electronics.

5/24/2012 4:51 PM EDT

I like LED technology. If you perform a strict cost analysis it doesn't seem to pay for itself right now, but who really knows what the cost of electricity will be several years from now.

5/24/2012 5:17 PM EDT

I love incandescant bulbs. The light can't be beat. I buy them now and I'll keep buying them until I can't. And then I'll probably go black-market if the lumo-fascists ever get their way. The last time I bought a four pack they cost me around a buck. Can you beleive that? What a deal!
And with the money I save I buy modest bottles of wine like nobodies business. Next time I'll raise my glass to all suckers.

5/24/2012 10:49 PM EDT

Soon led bulbs Will replace all the ccfl bulbs just like what happened with LCD displays.

5/25/2012 3:45 AM EDT

Drivers for the LEDs need better design for the long life of the LEDs. Today there are LED Lamps and LED fixtures available from many different manufactures, but in most of the cased due to poor designs of the drivers, driver fails before the life of LED. This makes the LED lamps costlier than CFLs.

5/25/2012 7:25 AM EDT

seems the best way around this is to have a DC circuit running around (eg for the whole ceiling of one room) with a single higher quality controller unit that is readily serviceable/replaceable without buying replacement bulbs. This unit can then support dimming etc quite easily (dimming LEDs themselves is relatively easy using simple digital PWM)
The problem is all being caused by fitting LED bulbs into existing 120-240v AC fixtures

5/25/2012 10:43 AM EDT

Do we have cost break down here? I am interested in why it is so expensive.

5/26/2012 8:22 AM EDT

I'm not seeing anything particularly revolutionary in this "me-too" snow cone design. The GE 62180 A-19 "40W" 430 lumen (9W actually) is a far superior optical design and produces more even dispersion than the "top firing" model shown here. I have reviews of several LED retrofits here: http://www.proaudiodesignforum.com/forum/php/viewtopic.php?f=11&t=408

5/26/2012 8:27 AM EDT

LG's $10 dollar pricing is highly competitive. The LED used will be a 10 watts capacity which is made to work at 7.5 watts to get the optimum light output and life.The cost of 10 watt white LED of good make will be around $5 and the rest part electronics, enclosure, profit, manufacturing cost all put together is $5.That is why i felt it is priced rightly. Soon this market also will be captured by LG and may be Samsung also.Other companies watch out.

5/30/2012 8:56 AM EDT

I treat claims of bulb lifetimes as highly suspect. I have used Quartz-Halide lamps that 'promise' 2000 hours that are failing after a few hundred, certainly no longer than the tungstan incandescents that they claim to replace!

LEDs seem to have one major benefit over CFLs - at least they switch-on at full brightness. So far they seem to have one significant drawback; they just don't have illuminating capability of the bulbs they purport to replace, whatever the figues say!

5/31/2012 4:15 PM EDT

Interesting...
there is also a dissection of the new Philips L Prize LED bulb here:
http://dunday.com/2012/04/stripping-light-fantastic.html

5/31/2012 10:30 PM EDT

"So far they seem to have one significant drawback; [LEDs] just don't have illuminating capability of the bulbs they purport to replace, whatever the figures say!"

As someone that has lived with almost total residential LED lighting every day for the last year I just haven't found that to be the case. (The only tungsten lamps in the entire house are in the stove vent hood.) You do have to pick your lamps and dimmers carefully and avoid the really cheap top-firing product. My under counter LED lamps run fully-dimmed almost continuously. I don't think I could stand running them at full brightness without shades. Most of the time my PAR and MR-16s are dimmed.

I've found that for a 12x12 room, a cluster of four of the GE62180 430 lumens in an overhead is about the equivalent of two conventional 75W incandescents. The former is 36W PF ~0.9 vs 150W PF 1.0. The LEDs look far cleaner and produce a fraction of the waste heat with attendant air conditioning load.

Ever tried to read laser-marked SMT ICs? Much easier with LEDs and I don't know why. Just better contrast.

For whatever reason LED lamps attract less bugs.

Go to Home Depot or Lowes and buy the cheapest LED you can find. You will be completely disappointed. There are (were?) quite a lot of losers and a few gems.

I've had good luck with GE A-series, Sylvania Osram PAR and MR-16, Philips A-series and Utilitech A-series. I prefer the 3000K but the 2700K Philips ambient light is gorgeous giving that Thomas Kinkade look.

5/31/2012 11:39 PM EDT

I agree with the capacitor issue, however it is probably more a problem with the smaller form factors like GU5.3 and GU10 rather than larger E27 and the like. www.liteonled.com

6/1/2012 12:04 AM EDT

There have been cases where electronic capacitors in the small MR16/GU5.3 LED bulbs have failed after prolonged use where there was an increase in heat due to the use of electronic transformers and poor convection cooling.

My reading shows that the life time of various capacitors at 45°C ranges from 32,000 hours to greater than 15 years for long life ones, e.g., NAZV series. However, at 85°C the general purpose capacitor, e.g., NACE series is rated at 2,000 hours and the long life 40,000 hours, and others in the range of 6,000 to 32,000 hours, less than the life of the LED. We have measured heat sink surface temperatures of up to 72°C using compatible electronic transformers so capacitor life is probably a significant issue with heat being the real killer for caps.

I have seen no studies as yet comparing the performance of MR16 with constant voltage driver vs. GU10 with integrated driver, which would be interesting. My theory is the GU10 LED form factor will have a shorter life span than the MR16/GU5.3 due to greater componentry and additional heat, supporting the use of independent constant voltage drivers.

Does anyone know the temperature of the circuitry in a GU10 or A19/E27 LED bulb? don@ www.liteonled.com

6/1/2012 4:50 AM EDT

ICE2HS01G manufactured by Infineon.

6/1/2012 4:12 PM EDT

"Does anyone know the temperature of the circuitry in a GU10 or A19/E27 LED bulb?"

I don't know the internal temperature but the hottest "60W" A-19 I've used is the Philips. The external heat sink temperature is about 122 deg F with a 73 deg ambient.

Though the life of electrolytics at the elevated temperatures in an LED are a concern, my greater concern are the life of the electrolytics in a SmartMeter. Last summer, 105-110 deg ambient temps were the norm here in Texas. The meters are "designed for 20+ year life." (Landis-Gyr spec sheet.) That's 175,200 hours in temps ranging from 15-110 deg F 24/7/365 x 20.

6/6/2012 7:03 AM EDT

I am sure LED light bulb will soon replace the CFL bulbs. I really hope companies will start manufacturing them in bulk so that cost per piece comes down.

6/9/2012 10:28 AM EDT

The "fixture" (such as the lamp base) could have the power conversion circuit (from wall 120/240VAC) and the "bulb" could be primarily the LED's + diffuser. The packaging often wouldn't be as tight physically and there could be one power conversion circuit for several "bulbs". The LED bulbs could be replaced or potentially the lamp base's electronic module could be modular and replaceable. I don't see why the power circuit would be very expensive, especially given the possibility of much more packaging freedom.

We should get a teardown of the driver and PFC or whatever else they use to understand this aspect better.

6/12/2012 11:17 AM EDT

There is one aspect of LED lamps that uniquely sets them apart - No RF interference. For a long time now, RF interference (particularly in the VHF / UHF range) from fluorescent lamps is well known. LED for the first time offers a clean source without this interference. It is major plus for many outdoor public areas. In addition, it would be a major plus even for business offices where public safety personnel are needed (such as EMS, Fire etc).

6/13/2012 4:50 PM EDT

I have no problem at all with retaining the standard Edison base. For one thing, it means that using LED bulbs does not mandate buying all new light fixtures for the entire house. Hardly something to ignore.

For another, it means that when you change the LED bulb, which on average should be several years, the electronics are trivially easily changed along with the bulb. Without having to go through an INEVITABLY more complicated procedure, should the electronics, part of the lamp fixture itself, go bad.

Besides, it wouldn't be all that hard to have the LED part of the bulb be a separate piece from the Edison base which houses the electronics. Snap the LED glass part onto the Edison base. Assuming the electronics are good enought to last way longer than the LED. That still makes the system fully backward compatible AND totally user serviceable.

Parenthetically, I'm not saying that everyone prefers a system that is fully backward compatible and totally user serviceable. We could create a whole new industry of previously unnecessary lamp maintenance shops, to artifically improve employment opportunities.

8/10/2012 10:28 PM EDT

All lighting has advantages.
No lighting technology can "replace" another.

LEDs are ideal in sheet or panel form,
Fluorescents in long tube form.

As with this warm fixed color temp incandescent copying Philips LED bulb,
they are compromised as politically pushed replacements for simple incandescent bulbs
- with particular difficulties to achieve omnidirectional and broad spectrum and, not least, bright 100W+ equivalent lighting in the small bulb format.

The Deception behind the Light Bulb Switchover
13 points, referenced
http://tonn.ie/p/deception-behind-banning-light-bulbs.html

8/10/2012 10:35 PM EDT

About that Philips LED bulb, its quality issues, and issues over how
it won the US Govmt prize...
http://freedomlightbulb.org/2012/03/lots-of-public-money-for-doubtful.html

The poor quality of the bulb on testing and how competition rules were skirted - as referenced with competition rules, patents, lobbying
finance records, the prize committee's own lab test review document
and publicly less known designated lab test reports released on Freedom of Information requests.

8/10/2012 10:38 PM EDT

Correction re last comments..
thought that was the Philips LED bulb...
anyway, might nonetheless be of interest

8/17/2012 3:07 AM EDT

I think it will be suitable for my daughter's room!
http://www.squidoo.com/charmingdate-com-review-it-gives-you-a-safe-and-efficient-russian-dating-service-charmingdate-r

9/19/2012 3:43 PM EDT

It really is interesting to see where the technology will be in years to come.

www.burtonenergygroup.com

3/21/2013 5:56 PM EDT

Incandescent bulbs have gotten a bad rap. OK, they're not especially efficient in making visible light. BUT there's is more to the problem set than producing lumens. In North America the vast majority of the population lives north of 30 degrees north latitude which means there is a significant seasonal change in hours of daylight. ALso, obviously there is a strong correlation between shorter days and lower temperatures - meaning that a residence requiring both heat and light simultaneously is to be expected. When I turned on the 100W incandescent on my nightstand this morning not only did I receive illumination but heat - as it was 9F outside any heat produced by the incandescent bulb was a welcome addition - and heat that my furnace then did not have to produce. While this little "space heater" may not be quite as efficient as my natural gas furnace in heating my house NOT A SINGLE JOULE WAS WASTED! Now the same can be said for the lesser amount of heat produced by any other electrically powered lamp - like LED. However, incandescent bulbs are cheap to make and are easily and safely recycled. OK so what happens on a warm July morning or evening? Well unless I'm getting up before 5am or VERY cloudy there will be ample natural light - and even at night, it's usually well past 8pm before I need to turn on interior lighting. Sure, the heat generated by my incandescent will indeed be wasted then, but only during this fairly limited span of the calendar. My back-of-the-envelope calculation shows that when you include the visible and infra-red light given off by an incandescent 100W bulb it's only at a ~15% disadvantage in total system efficiency compared to a similar amount of lumens produced by a MUCH more expensive LED bulb. BTW - I design LED lamps (commercial T-8s, etc) so I am no novice to solid state illumination.

3/24/2013 9:49 AM EDT

LEDs are far too expensive considering all the things that could go wrong over an expected multi-year life. How often do incandescents break due to accidents, problems with fixture etc???

Expect a very conservative ramp in these products - i.e., only new construction where builder puts them in and subsequent home owner pays the price without much consultation.

3/25/2013 2:36 PM EDT

I too am concerned about the lifetime.
I am afraid that we are going to get the same failure to meet reliability claims that we had with CCFLs: Six years ago I replaced most of the lamps in my home with CCFLs that came with a 6-year warranty (or was it 9?). In about a year half had died. Unfortunately I had lost my receipt and could not claim replacements.
Now these LED lights are claiming 25000 hour lifetimes. I wonder? I am most concerned about the 330uf capacitor I see on the photo. Most electrolytic caps have a lifetime spec of only a few thousand hours at 85 degrees C. I did a quick search and found only one with a lifetime spec of 18000 hours, and it was large and expensive - not the one in the photo.
I would like to see the teardown include the make and spec of the cap in question, as well as other components likely to be problematic. Also I would like to see some actual temperature measurements - wire up the device with thermocouples in strategic locations, and run it in a hot environment for a while. Just like we test every new product we build.

3/25/2013 4:22 PM EDT

My experience with CCFLs has been that they have a life span either dramatically less than an incandescent or, about the same. I read that the CCFLs were designed to operated in an open fixture with the base down and that the rated life-span was dependent upon adhering to those operating conditions.

How ridiculous is it to sell a product that only operates on a specific set of conditions that are not in place more often than they are. I don't have a single light fixture in my house were the bulb isn't either enclosed or mounted base up. I could get 500,000 miles out of my car with little or no wear and tear if I'd only put it on a trailer and tow it everywhere.

When I look at the workmanship on the circuit boards shown in this article, I can't help but expect that we'll be seeing the same thing with LED bulbs due to poorly made power supplies.

4/5/2013 11:58 PM EDT

There are some interesting points in time in this article but I don’t know if I see all of them center to heart. There is some validity but I will take hold opinion until I look into it further. Good article , thanks and we want more!

5/6/2013 11:31 PM EDT

I hope it will be a good device, thanks to your post.
Some site you can play games with paradise games online in sites yepi, fun, free for everybody
http://www.yepi6.org |
http://www.yepi8.org |
http://www.games-yepi.com |
http://www.kizi-2.net |
http://www.hopy4.com |
http://www.friv-10.org