I have a variety of 110v amber lights (we use them for evening light, having found that these no-blue and some low-blue lights cured our insomnia)
The earliest ones ran rather hot, and I’ve got my first burnout.
This one ran maybe half an hour to an hour per day for the last five years or so.
I’m guessing it’s a capacitor that failed, something I ought to be able to fix.
When it’s turned on, now, the LEDs sometimes give a very faint flicker, sometimes do nothing.
This is the bulb:
The emitters are on a hexagonal board that doesn’t pry out or even wiggle, either pressure-fit or glued in:
The parts are: the finnned aluminum heatsink; a white plastic piece; and the usual Edison metal screw-in connector. The screw-in piece has dimples around the circumference next to the white plastic piece, so it looks press-crimped (maybe glued)?
I’m guessing that I can pull it apart by wrenching and twisting, but I wish I were smarter.
Wondering if I should unsolder the positive contact at the middle of the Edison screw-in piece, guessing maybe that got soldered as the last step so there would be a tight wire inside.
Suggestions, whether from theory or from actual experience, welcome.
The threaded metal sleeve is indeed crimped onto the plastic housing. I've successfully forced one loose using strap wrenches, but others have simply been too tight to remove. The wires going to the base are usually just pressed in between the sleeve, and between the contact on the base to hold it in place. The metal heat sink unthreads from the plastic housing at the base.
My first suggestion is to individually test the emitters to verify that they are all still functional. In my cases, I've never had a driver fail; it's only been a single emitter, and usually caused by poor heat-sinking to the base. I keep a AA carrier with a bare wires connected handy, just for testing individual emitters.
These emitters look like what you have in that bulb:
All five of the emitters do blink — faint but even across all of them — when power is applied.
I’d guess they’ll all test individually but I will do that to make sure.
Looking more closely I see the neutral wire comes out next to the white plastic ring and is soldered to the metal screw base.
And I see a bit of black solid stuff around the edges of the emitter board and around where the white plastic meets the metal threaded part, that looks like glue. Doesn’t surprise me that it’s put together more solidly than recent Chinese work; this came from a US company, Lighting Science Group, back when they were making “turtle safe” lights. It was an early product, hasn’t been sold for a while, probably ‘overbuilt’ since they were for outdoor coastal use.
I’ll desolder the obvious negative wire, but as I can see black gunk at the edge of the Edison threaded metal piece, I expect it’s glued on.
I’m wondering if immersing just the base in boiling water for a while would loosen it up (not figuring on immersing the aluminum heat sink and the electronics inside it, tho’ they’d get damp)
EDIT — I did check each emitter individually — all five light up just fine (using 2.4v from a couple of NiMH cells)
So it’s something in the driver or wiring inside.
Anyone know if heating it might break the glue — looks like gray epoxy —- to free the board from the heatsink without destroying the LEDs and the electronics behind the board?
Else maybe I’ll try a little saw blade on a rotary tool.
