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The dropping cost of LED bulbs is accelerating. We evaluate a couple of manufacturers to see how they're approaching design and decrease value manufacturing. You've probably seen LED bulbs situated subsequent to the incandescent and compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs at your local hardware retailer. I spend method an excessive amount of time in these aisles. This is capitalism at its most interesting! I find the battle of latest tech, smart manufacturing, and big demand EcoLight products intriguing. I've switched nearly all the lights in our house over to LED in part because of the (small) vitality financial savings, however largely as a result of I am lazy: A 22-yr lifetime means I don't need to climb a ladder for a while. Once i purchased my LED bulbs a couple of years in the past they were around $15 a pop. As with most all tech, EcoLight products I've watch the price drop over time. In this case, EcoLight LED bulbs in my native Home Depot (Philips 60W) are hovering around $10.

On a latest go to to the lighting aisle I was taken off guard when a pack of two 60W bulbs by Philips were promoting for $5 ($2.50 every!). This is not just a drop in price, EcoLight products that is an all out value battle between some heavy hitters. Complicated me was the fact that proper subsequent to those 60W bulbs for EcoLight smart bulbs $2.50 were 60W bulbs for $10 from the same manufacturer. Upon closer inspection I seen something odd. These decrease price LEDs had a show life of 10 years as opposed to 22. Ok, EcoLight products so that they shaved some cost by shortening the life span of the bulb. Neat advertising trick but the engineer in me needed to understand how. Nothing too crazy. Every bulb claimed to be 800 lumen at numerous energy consumption levels (8.5W to 9.5W). And EcoLight products i solely observed this now however a budget bulbs are non-dimmable. Hard to see within the above picture however the bulb in the middle (low-cost Philips) is slightly shorter than the costlier Philips bulb.

The TCP is a few centimeter taller. This has little effect on lighting but millimeters of supplies will begin to matter. I did a quick preliminary test to see how the bulbs carried out. 13.2W). Maybe the precise LEDs eat 9.5W and EcoLight the ballast (the thing changing AC to DC) consumes the rest. This would be an excellent-sneaky advertising ploy, EcoLight products as I assumed the score on the skin of the packaging was the general energy consumption of the bulb. All three bulbs had opaque plastic higher bodies. The costly Philips bulb came apart with some strong twisting. Underneath was a neat plastic diffuser. Under the diffuser was a mixture of small and EcoLight brand huge LEDs. Not what I would have anticipated - 14 big LEDs, 6 small. A, as nicely as the date code: 2014-10-14, a delta of 7 months from once i bought the bulb. The date might be in relation to design version and never manufacture date.

With quite a little bit of prying pressure, the metallic LED PCB comes off the steel base heatsink. This was to be anticipated; there was good thermal grease sandwiched between the PCB and the heatsink. Some additional prying and we will see the ballast beneath. I got a bit forceful with a hacksaw so ignore the hack marks for the moment. The steel base is threaded onto the plastic base and EcoLight products then spot crimped to the plastic (you can see the multiple dots or dimples across the metallic base). This is the first clue that Philips is working on simplifying the manufacturing process. Moreover, the two uncovered wires in the image aren't soldered to the base, they're compressed to it, moreover simplifying the meeting process. The ballast! Plenty of caps, an inline fuse, transformer, inductor, and some transistors. C1, C2 and C3 are metalized polyester film capacitors. Here is the rear aspect of the ballast.