Which Emitters Have You Burned Up From Overuse?

None.

Even the light bulbs that have died on me still have perfect working emitters.

At this point, just actual driver heatsinking or derating components should be a requirement for light bulbs IMO.

I should clarify my longwinded comment above. In the household lights and such, I have seen several emitters burn (they all have been cheap plastic smd packages) and some did quit without showing any spotting or brownout. No idea how many we’ve been through…hundreds. I disassemble an awful lot of them just for a peek. Far and away it’s something on the driver that fails, rather than the emitters (most often seems to be the transformers in the lights that have them, but diodes as well…caps always seem fine). Most of those are not overdriven at all but the circuits supplying their power still seem to fall short of solid engineering. Topology and quality is all over the board and price/brand is not a guarantee.

none ...nada

None.

Now I want to test the limits of ALL flashlights I own with back-to-back battery change-outs when running on turbo perpetually!

For me turbo is a meaningless brightness level .

A crazy high number that then drops like a stone within less then 15 seconds isn't one worth even measuring .

Back in the day the standard of almost all lights was one hour on high .

Maybe they were cheating back then too but not to this degree .

Those were the good days. And made complete sense.

mine was cree xre, i’ve been using it for more than 10 years

A bunch of my Hyperikon bulbs have failed, particularly the filament style. No surprise the company went bankrupt. I’ve never burned up an LED in a light but I sometimes do destructive testing with my bench PSU.

No total burnouts, but the boost HX in my Astrolux EA02 has a fried segment from running a 21700 50E on its maiden voyage. I’m guessing the cell was crushing the tailspring, creating a sort of bypass, and the short bit of FET turbo swallowed all the juice from that fresh 4.2V. It’s pretty evident when shining on a close up surface, but it still throws the farthest of all my distance runners. I run an Sanyo 18650 GA in it now.

Not ever, at least not that I can recall.

All my daily-drivers, I don’t push too hard or use for extended periods. I also get to enjoy electricity and indoor plumbing.

Plus, for around the house, I typically “rotate” based on what I want ’em for. Concealable “pocket-rocket”? GTmicro on momentary mode. Noises outside? SF47 or IF22A on turbo. Floody indoors light? SC31T. Kitchen-light for grubbling through cabinets? Tacklife w/ diffusion film. Etc.

Ie, not enough mileage on ’em to matter, as it might be 30sec/wk? Well, except the SC31T, as I use that quite often for seeing what the little devils are doing in the house, looking for skeeters if I’m unexplainedly itchy, etc.

I’ve burned out some 5mm led’s when I first started modding flashlights 15 years or so ago, but nothing SMD yet. They were probably overdriven since they were just cheapo direct drive 3xAAA lights.

A few emitters did not make it, back in the good old XM-L2 days. Most of them in a led-swapping frenzy. Which tought me to pay more attention to tolerances. A few emitters were sheared off from the ledboard because of a tight fit of the centering ring in the reflector.

Dead LEDs in one small 12V bulb, several garden lights with PV charging.

Fixed the garden lights with resistors and the bulb with some of rngwns LEDs.

My 230V bulbs tend to die because of the driver, especially IKEA ones.

I thought LEDs don’t burn out they just get dimmer.

At least mine looked burned.

No flashlight failures but LED lightbulbs i’ve gone through a few.
I suspect its the drivers dying and not the LED chips as all the chips stop working at the same time.

I take that back, one Convoy S2 failed but not sure why, and i can’t seem to find it and may have tossed it with e-waste without thinking a few years back.

I had burned SST 40 in convoy S2+.
I open it and see that one of wires in diode has a break and I try to dedome diode and solder wire.
It works but only for 10 minutes and died again completelly.
I buy new diode at Simon store and it eorks now without problems.

no failed FL emitters, but dozens of failures in the 120vac LED bulbs.

On disassembly i found tiny black dots on failed emitters. So called longer life bulbs, but most failed in the first year, maybe 1 or 2 made it 2 years. Several had just one emitter in the series string let go, but some took out the entire string.

Older versions had transformers and circuitry, now there is just a diode bridge rectifier, a capacitor, 3 resistor pads but only 2 populated, and a Joulwatt JW1981 LED driver chip.

JW1981 datasheet

Last winter I cooked an XHP-70 in my 2 cell hunting light. It was really cold out and my daughter and I were cleaning a deer and it was our only light. I think it condensed going from the house out to the field and about 20 minutes in it just got dimmer and dimmer. The dome turned black and I shut it off because the output was so low.