Cree bulb failure

[supersuds]

This is an odd one.

Sunday afternoon I was napping and heard a "plop" from the stairwell.

Turns out, the glass globe from a Cree 9.5 watt bulb (60 watt equivalent), installed base up, had fallen off. The "plop" was the globe hitting a carpeted stair. It didn't shatter.

At first I thought the globe was either a slip fit or had been glued into the base, and had just gotten loose, but close up you can see where the glass fractured. The light was not on at the time.

The light still worked, and if anything was brighter, but the box says not to operate without the globe, so I took it back. Actually, you're supposed to mail it back to Cree, but I'd been through this once with a GE "2 year" halogen bulb and never got any response....

Happily, Home Depot replaced the bulb even though it was beyond their 90 day return policy, so all's well.

I'm not sure what happened. Probably the bulb had gotten banged around in shipping almost to the point of failure. I didn't over-tighten it or put any unusual stress on it, I'm sure. Why it took over three months to fall off is the mystery!

For the curious, this is what it looks like on the inside.

 

[sudsmaster]

You got kids?

 

[supersuds]

Lol, good guess, but no.

Seeing he arrangement of the LEDs at least shows why the bulb has a black spot in the middle -- the LEDs are all pointing sideways.

 

[sudsmaster]

Yes, and TCI is trying to use the Cree "black spot" as a marketing lever.

Not sure about the TCI bulbs though. Only seen them in one store so far... and now can't remember where. The Cree TW bulbs give such a nice color rendition that I'm not tempted to switch to TCI just yet.

 

[tomturbomatic]

Thanks for the glimpse inside the bulb.

 

[mikeCL]

That's odd for that to happen like that.. I picked up about 40 of them from HD in the last two weeks.

 

[circlew]

I bought one of the 100 watt equivalent Cree bulbs at the H.D. the other night. It was about $20. Haven't taken it out of the package yet.

 

[mikeCL]

It's nice the power company here is subsidizing the price on the bulbs (60W Cree) they are $3.97 each I have about 30 more to pick up.

 

[supersuds]

Sounds like a great deal

I would recommend them to anybody. Maybe just be a little careful about not stressing the globe, and keep your receipts....

 

[mikeCL]

Yeah, I've seen two in stores where the bulb was shattered in the plastic packaging.

 

[kenmoreguy89]

It happened to me with a fluorescent lamp, the base exploded, they got a kind of chip transformer inside them that in my case appeared melted, and it exploded for a short circuit occurred because of it, that also triggered the safety switch of the apartment, if you touch the base of fluorescent lamps you'll noti d gets pretty hot.
Am not a fan of these eco saving bulbs, not to mention, LED...
While I can stand fluorescent light as long as I mitigate it's light with other regular incandescence ones, I cannot stand light coming from LED, they gives me a terrible headache after awhile, same reason why I cannot watch LED tv's...
I could read many times that LED light has been thought and confirmed by some studies, as potentially dangerous for sight, well, not sure if it's so or not, in my case it gives me a nasty headache, enough to say "no thanks" and stick to the natural incandescence light sources which BTW I find being way more pleasant.

 

[DADoES]

 
I bought 5 of the 60-watt equivalent units a few days ago.  Quality of the light is nice but the dark spot is an odd effect.

 

[sudsmaster]

Haven't seen any utility company subsidies for Cree lamps here. Have seen Feit LED's subsidized to some extent.

When people say CREE, they could also say whether they are the TW series bulbs or not. The TW bulbs use a rare earth metal doping of the glass to filter out unnatural portions of the spectrum, resulting in a relatively high CRI of 93. Standard LED's have CRI's more like 80. The filtering lowers the lumens somewhat, hence the higher wattage consumption per lumen of the TW series. But I think they are worth it.

Haven't also seen the 100 watt equiv. Cree bulbs. Hoping they make a TW version... I'd get that for the 1941 era original bath.

 

[DADoES]

 
The Home Depot I shopped had a display of 100-watt equivalent Crees next to the 60-watt equivalents.  They were priced $20-something.

 

[eronie]

led bulbs

Cree led bulbs do not draw bugs in to my porch lights. I also have noticed no bugs in my tourchere lamp.

 

[mikeCL]

They are still subsidizing the bulbs here I picked up a BR30 bulb it was only $12.97 I think next week I will pick up 20 or so, I spent too much money on tools this weekend lol