Cree LED Floods

[mayken4now]

Guess You're

done Glen!  Nope aint doing it.  Old hardware store near where we live bought up all the 100 watt incandescent bulbs he could, Like 8 cases total #16000 bulbs.  PSST, he shares them with me when I ante up for a few.  

 

[gansky1]

Disappointed in this story from the beginning, Glenn, that really sucks. I bought six Cree bulbs at Home Depot for a new bath light fixture and have had good luck so far. If I do have a problem, I will trot them right back to Home Depot, they're usually pretty good about returns.

16,000 bulbs?? That's great Steve, you'll never have to run out. I think I have a few 100W incandescents around but I don't have many fixtures that will even take them anymore.

 

[kb0nes]

Well with the failure of the 3rd lamp that pretty much confirms you got a bad lot. I'd bet Cree is aware of this problem and may be why they didn't ask for the return of the defective ones. Its a darn shame to see this from a company like Cree, which is generally considered to be on the forefront of this technology, and one of the few companies assembling here in the US. Of course issues can happen with any product, at least this one is pretty minor compared to GM's problems...

I have six of the PAR38's, the oldest few dating back into July running 12 hours a day at work, not a flicker out of any of them. Between work and home I have another ~30 Cree A19 lamps and never had a hitch with any of them either. I assume the replacements you got from Cree are doing fine?

Out of all the LED lamps I have bought (more then 75) I have had only one failure and that was an early Lights of America lamp that was built with discrete leaded plastic encapsulated LED's. Autopsy found a solder joint failure.

 

[artcurus]

*whistling as he quitely looks over the *ahem* large supply of items that produce heat with light as an afterthought. ;-)

The more problematic is these. I have five of these in operation between two houses and a workshop.

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mid-century...iers_and_Ceiling_Fixtures&hash=item418934dcd9

They take 300-500 watt Silver Bowl bulbs like this

http://www.ebay.com/itm/SYLVANIA-30...8895798?pt=US_Light_Bulbs&hash=item4ade675cb6

They would have to pry these lamps from my cold, dead, hands before I give them up. The quality of light is unbelievable.

 

[mayken4now]

Greg

Yep, 16,000 totaled the 8 cases.  They are huge boxes.  

 

[DADoES]

More Cree Failure

 
One of the replacement bulbs went dead this morning.  That's four bulbs failed of six total ... three original and three replacements.  I have e-mailed the customer service rep with whom I dealt previously, awaiting her reply.

 

[joeekaitis]

As soon as I saw "100 watt equivalent" . . .

. . . I bought two of the CREE daylight (5000K) globe-type LED bulbs, about $20 each (anyone remember the first-generation hundred-dollar LED bulbs?). They're bigger than an incandescent and coated in a shatter-containing film. One's in the range hood, the other is over the kitchen sink.

SO nice to have plenty of instant-on light for just 18 watts each.

 

[gusherb]

My CREE LED's and the ones in my sisters office are working fine last I heard. Been 8 months for hers and well over a year for mine.

 

[sudsmaster]

Glenn,

 

I'm wondering if your installation is having an effect on the LED longevity. Is there enough space around the bulbs in the recessed fixtures to allow for adequate cooling? LED's put out about as much heat as CFL's, but are more sensitive to the deleterious effects of heat. As I'm sure you know. Since others here do not appear to have your rate of failure with these bulbs, there's got to be something different about your site. Assuming the bulbs you're using are of same quality/design as what others are using?

 

 

[DADoES]

 
I've considered that possibility, and the package says "Lifetime may be reduced if used in air tight enclosures or in insulated ceiling air tight (ICAT) recessed down light enclosures" [don't think that's what I have] ... but --

1) 20-ish years reduced to two months??

2) The fixtures are intended for BR40, which fit slightly proud of the trim ring.  These Cree bulbs are PAR38 so fit a little recessed from the ring which allows slightly more space for convection airflow.

3) The duty cycle likely is not long enough for overheating to be a relevant factor.  I usually turn them on for only a minute or two to fetch something from storage in there (two closets, several cabinets and drawers).  Only time they'd typically be on 10+ mins is if I'm folding clothes.

I have a couple WalMart-brand BR30s dating to Jan 2014 in the same type of fixtures in my office room, which are often are on for 4- to 6-hr stretches.  Those haven't failed.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, since you have other brand LED floods that work in the same types of fixtures... that seems to rule out the fixtures as the issue.

 

Bad luck there.

 

 

[kb0nes]

Its not thermal, failure happened way too early. This is clearly a manufacturing defect. The fact that Cree didn't want the lamps back makes me believe they are likely aware of the issue.

All of mine (6 now) are still running just fine, not a hitch one any of them. A while back I installed two more of them inside of totally enclosed, water tight housings inside the surround of the other CNC machining center. They run 8-12 hours a day 6 days a week, these would be more apt to have thermal issues then the ones you had fail.

It is indeed sad that the manufacturer wasn't a bit faster at rectifying what I suspect was a known defect.

 

[sudsmaster]

Have you tried one of the Cree lights in the office fixtures?

 

Are the Walmart lights CFL's or LED's?

 

If LED, have you tried one of the Walmart lights in the fixtures where the Crees have failed?

 

 

 

 

 

[sudsmaster]

Feit Conserv-Energy 1250 Lumen True Color 6 in. Recessed LED

Don't mean to hijack this thread, but it's not too far off the topic.

 

I picked up one of these Feit recessed light kits at Costco last week. Installed it in the over-sink light  in the vintage cabinetry in the patio kitchen. It's very bright and the colors do seem to pop (94 CRI) more than under the daylight CFL that was up there before, which was probably in the 80's. The light is "Warm" at 2700K, but with the high CRI it's not as dull looking as typical low CRI lighting.

 

I liked it well enough I went and got a second LED retrofit kit for the main house kitchen. It just fit in the fixture above the sink, and was bright enough. But then I turned on the radio I keep by the sink. Oops. Horrid interference on FM. Plugging in the radio in another outlet on a different circuit didn't fix it. So I checked on a radio tuned to same FM station out on the patio. Sure enough, the LED light caused some interference there, as well. Not as bad as in the main kitchen, probably because the radio on the patio is further from the LED light than the radio in the main kitchen is in proximity to the LED light there.

 

What to do? I like these lights but the radio interference is unacceptable (at least in the main kitchen). One solution is to extend the rooftop antenna system to the FM radios... which would help reception in general and something I've been thinking of doing for a while. But I hesitate to split the signal too much. I might run a temporary antenna line from the existing hookups to the radio in the main kitchen, and see what kind of result that gives. The antenna line is of course shielded coax, so it should be more resistant to radio interference of this sort.

 

Has anyone else found ratio interference from their LED lights?

 

In any case, the price was right on these LED retrofit lights. With a PG&E rebate, the cost was $12.99 each.

 

 

[jerrod6]

No interference from my LED bulbs and I have them in almost every room and hallway of the house. Maybe something going on in the circuitry in these bulbs? 

 

[vacbear58]

@ Gansky1

Is that the light fitting in your bathroom? It looks magnificent! More pictures please

Al

 

[kb0nes]

Rich,

I have seen some conducted RF interference from some of the LED lamps I have tested. I have an HP spectrum analyzer that runs up through 1Ghz. I don't own a calibrated line impedance stabilizer network so my conducted measurements can't be used with absolute precision, only comparatively. I also look for directly radiated RFI with a sniffer loop antenna next to the lamp with the lamp decoupled from the power line. Generally I see nearly zero direct radiation.

As a Ham I worry a lot about RF radiators causing interference. In general the LED lamps are a lot cleaner then CFL's.

What I have seen in my testing is that in general the Philips and Cree lamps have tended to perform best. None of the better lamps I have tested radiate excessive energy in the MW/HF spectrum up to 50Mhz. I will admit I haven't routinely tested through the FM band since I haven't previously seen or heard of RFI problems in that range. I have even seen a few lamps that caused problems for a garage door controller up around 900Mhz!

If you really like those lamps you might try adding a little filtering on the power line. A couple snap on ferrite cores on each line (ideally a wrap or two through the core) will isolate the lamp from the incoming power line which is the radiating antenna. You could do this inside the can perhaps.

You used to be able to easily get the snap on ferrite cores at Radio Shack, but who knows now. There are scads of eBay auctions that sell them. If you have a choice I'd buy ferrite material #43 which has good attenuation properties at 100Mhz. I used to salvage bunches of them from old computer cables, but you never really know what they are, but they usually seemed to help.

 

[sudsmaster]

It would be easy enough to snap a couple of ferrite cores onto the light socket adapter that comes with the Feit LED retrofit kit. It has separate wires that are about eight inches long. Not sure it will fix anything, though. I have to visit the local Radio Shack anyway to pick up a new freezer remote thermometer, so I'll look there. If not, Fry's may have them. It would be great if I could keep these lights and cut the RF interference.

 

For now, I put a 100 watt CFL up in over the main kitchen sink. The HD radio likes it.

 

 

[mysteryclock]

Interference....

I'd installed LEDs in both our garage overhead lights as well as our garage door opener, and as soon as I did that our car openers stopped working. Took me a while to figure out what happened (since I was having battery issues in my car at the time) but once I put the CFLs back everything started working perfectly again.

Don't remember the exact brand but it was the black box ones they sell @ Lowes.

 

[sudsmaster]

Well, I got some ferrite cores ("chokes") at RS and tried them on the LED retrofit this evening. I tried one on each leg of the AC power to the lamp, as well as one snapped over both legs. I even tried putting a choke on the DC power (from transformer) into the radio.

 

Result: absolutely no difference. Still tremendous RF noise that drowns out weaker FM stations and causes even strong HD Radio stations to lose their minds.

 

Verdict: I bought three of these lights at $13 ea. Two are going back; the first one I put in at the Patio kitchen is not near enough to a radio or TV to be of much concern. I'll spend the $26 on a nice 100 watt "standard" LED to try over the kitchen sink. For now, I have a 100 watt FEIT warm white CFL that actually works pretty good. I'm warming to the warm white look, having gotten a little tired of the daylight look anyway. Esp after I read that light in the blue end of the spectrum before retiring tends to make it more difficult to fall asleep. Plus at 1600 lumen the "standard" 100 watt LED might actually be brighter than the retrofit kit at 1200 lumen.

 

PS-The FEIT CFL is an older, bigger model. I tried a more recent more compact model but noticed that the smaller version takes forever to warm up, at least compared to the larger one. The large one seems to hit nearly full brightness on powering on, and takes only a minute or so to get to full lumen output. Go figure.

 

I might wait for a high CRI (>90) 100 watt LED bulb to become available at a reasonable price before switching back over.