Unfortunately the Bridgelux BXRA-30G0540-00 is no longer made. The –03 has to be bought 250 pieces at a time (@ $3 or so each). Also the 18V Vf can be a problem. Many 12V MR16 fixtures can deliver close to that much voltage when lightly loaded. 18V is in the area where boost converters may not work. I originally designed my own replacement fixtures for my MR16 lights and ran up against that problem. I wound up using a simple bridge rectifier, filter cap, ballast resistor for the driver and Bridgelux LEDs driven at around 14 watts. I built a few of them, but was not all that satisfied with the results.
I now have Philips 10 watt bulbs in my MR16 fixtures. They deliver 490 lumens and put out more light than the 50 watt halogens they replaced. And, yes, they cost $30 each at the time (now can be had for around $20). None of them have failed in over two years.
In my case, considering the Total watt per emitter i required, and the cooling power of my bulb heatsinks, i use buck-step up driver, 350mA 18v ones( imput V is 12v).
This way i run each emitter at arround 6w, real 450 lumen: the temp near the emitter should not reach 80deg C: in a year, running this way, the luxmeter said the emitter did degraded arround 5%, as you can see at the photo above the sillicone-ph emitter coat is at great shape!
30G0540-00 can still be found, especialy in the US Its a great emitter though, great! Maybe your driver wasnt that good, you can also use a meanwell current driver to drive them in pairs, they are cheap and a very good option
Phillips emitters ……its actualy Cree you know, and there arent many high CRI with good R9 value mr16 or whatever kind of bulbs arround,plus in US it maybe 30$, but in EU (cause we are ritch:)) its above 30euros(40:money_mouth_face:
For me, luments and total watts arent that important, but the CRI… your skin looks pale, red oak is looking like shit, CRI 80 is way low, if you ask me they should ban(for indoor use) everything lower than 90
Claim to have R9> 70, yet, its lower than ES Star array ,arround 80, maybe cause its more powerful( one reason) and i used generic MW drivers to power then
CRI (R9) depends alot also from the driver, Linear Technologies have so called “chip pre-heat” technology in order to rise the Total CRI.
Something that is good to know:
There are lotsa Taiwan BXRA clones…that are not even near the quality of the american chips, look at this Edison chip, the price was tempting, so i took several samples for evaluation
So what had happened after 6 months/ 24/7 test, running at its deault , on an open air, with a suitable headsink, the temp in the control point of the emitter was arround 62-3deg C all time, room temp 25-27deg C
Burned out SP coat, dramatic crom shift( from 3000k to nearly 3800k), great drop in the CRI too
Only for 4k hours….great, Edipower 2…Taiwan manifacturers are way behind USA ones
Its a public secret that MLS invented the COB emitter back in 2004( or it was 2005?), regretably i havent touched their product yet, no EU suppliers, Asia ones demand orders above 1k
With 5 billion produced emitters and official reniew of above 500 mill they have everything needed to produce quality stuff….yet, we aint sure about it .
The price in EU is like 2.5, maybe in the USA you could find it way cheaper: the better option over Bridgelux matrix emitter
Even more, its working at 9v/300ma, and there are tons of that kind of bulbs in Alibaba, realy cheap, with good drivers and reflectors but hella crappy emitters
UV spectrum should be a warning to all, a slight CRI benefit is completely outweighed by the negative, if the price is exposing yourself to more UV spectrum.
The latest IKEA bulbs are over 90 CRI. Strange enough they do not advertise it, but it is there on the package. What I do not like is that there is a ripple on the output (only shows on pictures, have not tested the frequency), but then, all Philips and Osram bulbs have that too (but not my Yuji high CRI bulbs).
(apicture showing the ripple, left is a Philips bulb, right an Osram bulb)