I’ve slowly been swapping out emitters in my led bulbs around the house. I’ve been using 1W Bridgelux Thrive 2835 SMD’s in combinations with 5700k, 5000k and 4000k. The new emitters are 9v like the old ones so they’re a direct replacement.
This latest one I used six 5700k and six 5000k. I thought I’d take a few pics of the process and an Opple reading. I thought the CCT would be a bit cooler and I was hoping the duv would’ve been a bit lower than .0045, but overall I’m pretty satisfied.
I think my next bulb I’ll try a mix of 5700k and either 2700k or 3000k to try and get the duv closer to the bbl. I wish digikey.com had the 6500k in stock.
My question: How do you get them apart?
I have saved a few to try to rebuild. But as they are completely dead, I think it is the electronics rather than the LEDs that is the problem. Might be an entertaining project to take one apart and see. But getting them apart is the first hurdle.
The bulb says 10w on the side, so I assume the emitters are being slightly under driven. I agree though that there’s definitely not enough heatsinking. I’m sure that’s done on purpose. Otherwise there’d never be a need to replace them. I was going to swap emitters in an old Osram bulb that I couldn’t even touch to remove after it had been on for a while.
Bigclivedotcom on youtube has some great videos where he breaks down old led bulbs and replaces resistors to under drive them.
Opening them up is far and away the worst part. I’ve mangled a couple of them, and nearly cut myself a few times. The best tool I’ve found is my cheap harbor freight snap off utility knife. I slide the blade out like 3/16” or so, and make my way around the circumference of the bulb.
I’m sick of buying them new and finding it’s pot luck if they even come close to the colour temp on the box. Let alone what CRI they are.
I’ve got some of the 90mm “all in one” recessed surface downlights that have two or three colour temp options built in- at least you’re not stuck with an annoying temp then.
Once the glue/seal is broken loose, do they just pull apart? One of your pictures looks like it might be some kind of bayonet mount?
I did play with one . Cree 18 watt 2700K (for damp environment on label) . It has the funky thing that “looks” like a heat sink above the base and wrapping around the diffuser. But I think it is plastic. Plastic diffuser.
Would love to get it apart. Suggestions?
Yeah, I found twisting while pulling seems to make it easier. The dome has a little lip all the way around and locks into some “clips”, for lack of a better term. Some bulbs have had a “clip” all the way around others have had seperates “clips” spaced out.
That Cree bulb you have is a lot more complicated than the ones I’ve done. I’d suggest twisting kind of like a rocking motion together.
It has been sitting here for a couple of years with me thinking about messing with it…
I think it is some kind of COB thing. At least I can see some kind of structure vertically in the center.
Not sure what I could do as far as changing LEDs. But I have often wondered why these LED bulbs fail. And whether it is worth it to try to fix them??
I had a look at one of mine that I’m not happy with and it appears to have a glued glass cover. I’m not too keen on trying to remove that by force and there’s no visible glue.
I’d guess most led bulbs fail from a single emitter burning out from heat. There really isn’t a lot if any heatsinking in all of the one’s I have done.
It’s probably not really worth it to fix old bubs. It’s not expensive, but it is a bit time consuming and frustrating at times. I did it because I wanted some ultra high CRI bulbs and I like tinkering with stuff like this. Also, I wasn’t going to spend the $20 per bulb waveformlighting.com charges.
Yeah, I haven’t had anything like that in any of the bulbs I’ve done.
