Tear down of a $15 LED shop light.

Everybody likes tear downs, right?
Not much to read, just a lot of pictures :slight_smile:
I found this fixture at a regional chain of stores called Ocean State Job Lot. This store is found only in the Northeast part of the U.S.
Today I was in Rhode Island and stopped in one of their stores. In Rhode Island they are all over the place.





These lights will daisy chain up to 4 fixtures.

2 screws at each end and the reflector comes right off.


2 more screws on each end and the endcaps come apart.

2 LED strips wired in series with an AC passthru for the socket.

The other end contains the switch and LED driver.

A closer look at the driver, both sides.


There seems to be an isolation transformer, 1:1, and a AC to DC power supply. I measured the output voltage to the LED’s, it was 70.7V
Q1 looks to be a 7N60?
A peek inside the tubes shows the individual LED’s. They are spaced about 1cm apart and the tube is about 110cm long for a total of about 220 LED’s. There must be some sort of series - parallel configuration as the input voltage as stated above is 70.7V

These fixtures are nice and bright, quiet and turn on instantly. The daylight color is good in a work environment, and for the price I am VERY pleased.
This very same fixture is available online at Amazon for $39.99 :confounded:
BUT, there’s FREE shipping :stuck_out_tongue:

I guess my point is that we all can look forward to ever decreasing prices, and increased quality of light from LED bulbs and fixtures.

That looks pretty well made for a low cost light. Do you think it makes the specified 4100 lumens?
At $15 I’d say it was quite a steal. Possibly a record in lumens per dollar! I’d bet the pull switch is the weak link but it looks easy to replace it fails (if it is even used). I like that they are daisy chain-able. Nice find! :+1:

I’m envious of your finds! I’ve been checking stores here in California for LED shop fixtures, and I haven’t found anything under 35 bucks. Glad to hear that you’re finding them cheaper there, hopefully some of those discounts will make their way across to us “western” folk.

Thanks for the teardown.

Funny how they want to make them look like a CFL fixture. I bet that if you leave that idea out and design it around the leds that are used and the application, the design would look way different.

What i find interestimg is those LED 65W from the second picture for 99cents each!
Did you also get some of those?

I sure did!
But they weren’t 99 cents, they were “FREE”

Those bulbs, and the CREE E27’s and GreenLite 4 packs were on a “Crazy Deal”
Buy in groups of 10 and get 100% of the purchase price back as a Crazy Deal Gift card. Then the gift card can be used to buy anything in the store, other than another Crazy Deal.

A typical receipt. The purchase of 10 bulbs for $9.90 and the $9.90 gift card that was received.

I posted about this deal a few weeks ago here.
FREE LED Light Bulbs - CT, MA, NH RI and NY
The LED shop lights are not a Crazy Deal, just a straight up price. Crazy Deal cards can be used to buy them!

So buy 15 bulbs for 99 cents, get a gift card, then use the gift card to buy a shop light :slight_smile:
I needed lots of LED shop lights, so how many gift cards did I get?
Lots!

This all must seem outrageous, but I needed to replace about 30 - 8’ florescents with these 4’ LED fixtures.
In total, I got my fixtures at a very good price and a whole lot of free bulbs.

It occurred to me later that with the Amazon listing at $39.99, I made it appear that those fixtures were made to sell for $40, and I caught a deal.
I did catch a deal, but those fixtures are made to sell for less. Plenty of other sites do, I was just poking fun at Amazon. Often times they are NOT a good place to shop online.

AND, I confirmed on MaxLite’s website, THIS IS A SECOND GENERATION FIXTURE.
Made to sell for less.

Here are some screen grabs of some other sites selling this fixture.



I can believe that spec. In fact MaxLite, in their literature, claims 4700 lumen on startup.

That was actually my point. I know you will. Remember how expensive individual bulbs were when they first came out?
Give the manufacturers time, and they will figure it out.

You are right! There is NO reason for LED shop lights to be made this way, other than to look like a “shop light”

Same goes for the LED worklights found in Home Depot and such.
They are made to look like the old Halogen worklights. No need for that.

As time goes on, the design will no doubt be adjusted as we get used to how an LED fixture should look.
LED

Old Halogen

YOU ARE THA MAN!

wow wow wow wow…….

That`s insane! I wish I was leaving near you… You find some amazing deals over and over again.

Almost stopped at an Ocean State today to see what they had. I’ll head out in the morning, I need a couple of 4’ shop lights, don’t really need any more standard LED bulbs but I know I won’t be able to resist picking some up.

Thanks for the heads up!

Me too. Just replaced a 4’ T8 fluorescent tube — used up my last spare.

20 years ago I was salvaging junked fixtures and putting in good electronic ballasts to replace the dead ones.

(That was my early introduction to weasel-wording — finding that “solid state ballast” was another way of describing an iron-core transformer, when printed on the boxes for new shop lights.)
(electronic =/= solid state)

No, that’s not insane,
That’s CRAZY :slight_smile:

Yesterday, March 27, I went to the Sturbridge, MA store just to see if there were still bulbs and shop lights.
Actually, they had more lights on the floor than they did 2 weeks earlier!!!
Shop lights are on the top shelf and are still $14.99. I bought 6 more using Crazy Deal gift cards I had gotten earlier.
I also got 40 more CREE’s and the resulting gift cards for them. ($39.60)

Elsewhere in the same store, lots and lots of bulbs.

I feel like a lone voice crying in the wilderness. Is there anyone in the North East that has been able to partake of this deal?

Today is June 4, 2017 and these deals are still on!!!
Only right now they are even better. :laughing:
Between June 1 and 7 Seniors, which I am, are entitled to 25% off anything in the store. I had been away for the past 2 weeks but got back just in time to make my 50th High School reunion AND take part in the “Silver Salute” that OSJL offers each year.

So what did I do?
I traveled the 15 miles and hit the first store in MA. and picked up 6 more shop lights.
6 lights at $14.99 each is $89.94. Then 25% off is $22,48 for a total of $67.46. Used CRAZY deal gift cards that I got buying the CREE bulbs and got them for a cash outlay of $8,87 :wink:

that shoplight was designed to be cheap and disposable.
could have been much longer lasting if the led strips were attached to the reflector as a heatsink.
and the reason the led worklights are made with the halogen design is the diecast housing serves as the heatsink.
not to mention the setup to make this style has been paid for long ago.
a few minor changes and its modern with a cheap cob led and a $0.50 driver.
wring as much profit as possible out of the design.
which by the way is nothing but a outdoor halogen floodlight on a stand.
so you make one device and sell it for multiple applications.

The steady state temperature of the fixture is more dependant on the surface area of the heat sink than the thickness. The cast aluminum will allow the heat to be more evenly distributed though.
You are right on the shop lights too. They are made more cheaply. As we know, the weakest link in LED lights is usually the driver components. So actually, why over engineer the sinks on the LEDs. Besides if the LEDs were sinked to the reflector the fixture would no longer be double insulated and would have to be grounded.
All part of getting the cost down.

BTW, just today I was in an OSJL in Massachusetts and these fixtures are more plentiful than ever. There are still more CRAZY DEAL light bulbs too. My wife and I just picked up another 40 of the 100W equivalent MaxLites.

Lots of cheap LED shop lights around now. Just as I predicted, the OSJL price of $15 is now being matched by other stores. We can all look forward to ever cheaper prices in the future. :slight_smile:
Here are some examples
4’ LED shop light at Home Depot, but they are sold out. What would you expect at that price?


Another store though had a few……………….

Home Depot also has a 3’ LED shop light for $15. I set one on the shelf in the picture above.

And Menards, a Home Depot like chain in the midwest has a $20, 4’ shop light for sale.

It’s the light to the left, nicely finished.


The back of the light, the lens is molded over the fixture, it is not removable


thank you for tearing it down / the pictures.
Does anyone know how many of these shop lights I would need for a slightly larger 1 car garage?

A friend used 4 of these 4100 lumen lights in his good sized 2 car garage.
The ceiling height is probably 10’, that is an 8’ step ladder in the picture.
There are no windows, all the light you see is from those 4 fixtures.