One of my bench lights started intermittently blinking off and on, and before it got too bad I decided to swap the driver in it, since it was the most likely issue.
If left longer the blinking would have got more frequent until the light was pulsing continuously.
If attempting a repair on a similar light, ensure the power is turned off and check the integrity of the earth/ground connection in the light. In this style of light you can use a lower power driver with a higher power LED. I use a 20W driver with a 50W LED.
My bench lights actually have a fairly easy life, since they are on a PIR sensor so that they turn on automatically when I approach the bench and turn off if I'm away from it for a few minutes.
It's hard finding a good quality driver with proper electrical noise filtering that actually fits in one of these floodlight cases. I opened a few lights, found a couple of suitable drivers and then chose the one that looked better quality.
The driver that failed is explored in another video.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- https://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators
If left longer the blinking would have got more frequent until the light was pulsing continuously.
If attempting a repair on a similar light, ensure the power is turned off and check the integrity of the earth/ground connection in the light. In this style of light you can use a lower power driver with a higher power LED. I use a 20W driver with a 50W LED.
My bench lights actually have a fairly easy life, since they are on a PIR sensor so that they turn on automatically when I approach the bench and turn off if I'm away from it for a few minutes.
It's hard finding a good quality driver with proper electrical noise filtering that actually fits in one of these floodlight cases. I opened a few lights, found a couple of suitable drivers and then chose the one that looked better quality.
The driver that failed is explored in another video.
If you enjoy these videos you can help support the channel with a dollar for coffee, cookies and random gadgets for disassembly at:- https://www.bigclive.com/coffee.htm
This also keeps the channel independent of YouTube's algorithm quirks, allowing it to be a bit more dangerous and naughty.
#ElectronicsCreators
This video is going to look a bit different because one of my lights that lights this bench has failed. So I've got a temporary light up here. at the moment. it will be a slightly different color.
it'll be a different color engry index, blah blah blah and it's not as intense. So uh, that's going to affect how the video looks. Also noting that I'm not getting the huge big splashes the light I usually get from these couple of flood lights. so this is a light that I've had for a long time.
but I've retrofitted it h on more than one occasion over the last 10 years with new LEDs this LED in here is a high CRI LED rated 50 W but I'm running it from a 20 W Power supply I have a new 20 W power supply to stick in because the intermittent blinking out of this light at the back of the bench is most likely caused by the power supply. With the LEDs themselves, you've got 1, 2, 3, 4, Five series strings. Sometimes when the bonds fail and they do it failed on one of these expensive High CR lights the bonds sometimes fail and you end up with strips going out, but not the whole lot. and that does hint at dying capacity itors.
So I have this other 50 W light I was looking for drivers I couldn't find drivers but I know that this one only draws 20 wats, so hopefully it's got a similar driver inside. Let's take the screws out and we'll see what's actually inside it and if it's going to be a suitable retrofit in there, it'd be nice to use super good quality power supplies, but they're kind of hard to find. Uh, even when you pay a bit more for a power supply, it doesn't mean it's going to be better quality. So I'm just taking the screws out here.
I shove that out the way here and take this screw out in shot so you can actually see something is happening in the background, not just screwdriver noises. The glass comes off. Oh, look at that tiny little purse pile that is really small. Uh, this is going to be a super low class electrically noisy driver, isn't it? And it's kind of.
It's is it silicon down or is it uh, Hot Melt Hot Melt would be great, but having said that, Hot Melt would be a terrible idea for things I'm just going to poke it the probe. How does it feel? It feels a bit silicon. that's going to be quite hard to go off. Going to have to stick something under it like the spudger perhaps, right? Okay, Um, I've going to see if I can find alternative driver, but if not, I shall stick this one in in place of that one I Kind of prefer the one that was in there before this one.
Uh, if it's possible to get the stuff out, it says spring snow in the back, that's the supplier I got it from most like an eBay seller. if this porting compound comes up, we'll peel it back and we'll take a look at the actual circuit board once. I've got the got everything back up and working again. I'm going to go and look for a better power supply one moment please.
Slim pickings for someone who likes lighting so much and there so many lighting things I have a complete lack of uh, proper power supplies I did find one that was relatively acceptable. It is a 20 W power supply designed for these LEDs but it is just heat shrink sleeved. The one advantage is that it's stuff with circuitry. it's I can see like inrush limiter So it's b better circuitry so that's what I'm going to use I say that I'll probably blow up so I shall take this one out when you're removing these I've already got we Red Dot there. but I'm just going to aend it we Red Dot just to show which is positive, avoids damaging LEDs by applying reversable AR cuz the Gallum nitrite LEDs are a little bit more susceptible to damage from that. That came off easier than expected which is nice. Excellent there's old power supply. We shall possibly take a look in this afterwards.
If I can pick this stuff off it, we'll see if there's any obvious issues. This is not powered at the moment. it's completely unplugged. I Just feel the need to say that from a safety perspective.
Yeah, me doing safety That's kind of unusual. So I Shall uh strip these wires with a suitable wire stripper. I should use this wire stripper. Hopefully these are actually.
oh, that doesn't cut wires very well. That wire stripper. Hopefully these aren't copper coated aluminum. They could well be.
uh, hold on I'm just going to give it the twist test. Oh, not convinced I think they are copper coated di That is not great I wonder if they'll cause problems in the Uh VY type clone terminals clone cables in Clone terminals. That's a perfect combination. Let Us slip the wire up here not that it's completely not Twisted together and PP it into the back and lock it down.
That's probably just sever the wire as it clicked down and then we shall, uh, put the other wire in as well. and then we'll deal with the low voltage side. I Could kind of stick that in, but I think I'll just hold it Loosely in place with the the glass cover. It's probably the best thing.
Okay, does it even fit properly? It kind of fits I trimmed a bit of the um heat shrink sleeving off this. Let's trim these to size so they're not too long long. so I'll trim that one to about that size and this time I shall uh strip it. it's soft silicone so I shall just nibble with my side Cutters and just basically slide that off just like that I shall s do that connection on I shall tin it if it tins.
Hopefully it is actually a tintable metal. it's tinning that's good and I shall pop that onto the LED soon. Hopefully the color will be restored to the bench and the brightness cuz uh, the brightness is the thing that's really falling down at the moment. These this light I've got is a linear light and it's also, um, just uh, 20 wats which is equivalent to just one of these.
I've got two of these lighting the bench. maybe I should look at new lighting I Did go online looking at power supplies and all the ones I could find are crappy little. I'm just do that with this H crappy little ones smaller than this? uh and everyone. everyone else is just trying to push the driver on board. the super cheap ones that flicker horribly and are unsuitable for making videos. these aren't really twisting that well. Wonder what this is? tined aluminium probably? Who knows. Mystery cable.
So much mystery cable online these days by locally from proper. Electrical Distributors Don't buy crap from eBay if you need something predictable because there are so many corners being cut, largely because people have invested in Copper as a means to, uh, make money and in doing so, have destroyed the electrical industry in the process, right? tell I'm going to put the reflector on this and that's in fact I'll just do it right now. Actually, I'll do it right now that there are only two screws. it being the classic Chinese product and the Earth is actually just pinched under here.
so I shall try and pop these terminals down under here. I'll just rearrange everything a little bit in here and the Earth will now not want to stay put. I should put a screw through here and then through that and this is where it's going to get most fumbles. And yeah, it's going to get very f umbly the wires W going to want to control where that uh screw goes I think that's it in position though.
Is it screwing down? Yes, it is. Is the wire trapped? Yes, it is not an ideal electrical Bond uh, what about the other one? Maybe I should have taken screw out before I did that. But not to worry I didn't I put the screws in here just to park them out the way. so I didn't lose them now once.
I get this in place I'm going to blow actually think that's a little speck of soldier in the LED I shall flick it off with uh with something. there's another probe. I'll just use that probe just to flick that little speck of led to the side. click it and see if I can send it into some crucial electrical position, Then grab that second screw, put it in before I tighten this up fully.
I'll just make sure it's aligned roughly with the Led, the LED roughly in the middle, which is good cuz sometimes there's a bit of leeway in a bit of spacing. then theoretically. um, I could power this up right now and see what happens. It's turn it side so it doesn't Dazzle everybody I'll just put it down like that.
Oh, power supplies just dropped out. Let me just plug in that, turn the switch on, and it is lit. Okay, that's a good result. Power is back off I she get the cover, pop it back on and I'll put it back up and then we'll take a look inside.
this if I can actually get the potting compound out one moment, please. And normality has been resumed with hopefully no more glitching from that light now. I did take this apart, but I went to F hog I made the full tear down photographs, reverse engineering schematics. so I shall actually put that a separate video because otherwise this one will end up absolutely enormous. So I'll I'll uh, release that in a couple of days. Uh, so in the meantime, the lighting is fixed and that is the main thing now. Hopefully this will last for a good length of time and you can see the inside of this very soon.
bigclive delete this. You're not supposed to fix stuff anymore. You're supposed to buy new. Id watch your back, big LED is coming for you.
p.s. please release a new led dimming video. Also in the states commercial LED lights often have separate 0-10v dimmer circuits. Would be cool to know how they work.
Along the lines of having a flock of solder or a stray blob of solder.
I've seen this wreak havoc in devices.
This is the most recent thing I've seen that had a problem with something wrong with this lines.
In this case there was actually two little splashes of solder on the inside.
I had one of those side socket sort of USB equipped surge protectors.
Had both to USB a force and a USB C port.
First thing that went out was the USBC then finally the rest of it which was kind of strange but then again I haven't unplugging it and using it elsewhere moving around turns out that what killed it was both the USBC Port first and the other was flex and drops of solder that had been there for manufacturer that broke loose from the plastic chassis and floating around in there and of course hitting something critical shorting something out and of course doing the deed.
Also something of Interest this might appeal to viewers of this channel as well.
On that particular surge protector what was used as the protection indicator was essentially a LED and a resistor wire across the output of the power supply for the USB thus win The Surge protection is no longer functioning which also this one didn't have the thermal fuses which completely cut out the output in series with the supply to both the receptacles and also USB power supply module which looks like an off-the-shelf module by the way!
Very interesting design very well-built if it weren't for the Solar Supply is it would still have been working to this day.
So definitely something to avoid when you're building something for yourself and also in manufacturer but you know something's always have a tendency to slip past quality control or like oh it'll be okay sort of thing well not in this case!
Use it for quite a few years!
Served very well until that time really high quality it seems like the wiring on the AC side of things is heavier than needed to be even.
And yeah designed for the US market it was pretty clever how things were done in there with the ability to swivel the three AC sockets and the three USB as well.
I was expecting it to be contacts either side however something better they had just run the power wiring through one end each of the two separate sections definitely better than some of those funky contacts that sometimes don't work well I've seen these fail on something similar.
But then again somebody was putting a pretty heavy load on these and they were discolored so clearly High Resistance connections but not surprising probably due to tensioner that was contacts I think it was an earlier design the name is something that had been Don similar to the above surge protector later on since I saw the same product essentially but don't know if it's the same brand and haven't done with just wire going from the main body to the swiveling sections so likely the design change because of reliability and other issues
What's that brass screwdriver you have there? I'd really like one like that.
I have it but small, took 3 dollars and 50 cent
What about using old laptop powers supplies? I thought somebody told they were good led drivers.
I Adore the accent.
Close your eyes and listen to Kryten from Red Dwarf repair an led lamp…
The copper thing is very supply and demand driven. The demand is not always generally beneficial. Building EVs needs a lot of copper and all those ginormous empty apartment blocks all over China have plumbing and electricity. Let’s just hope they’ll recycle efficiently as some get knocked down.
I forgot to mention is had lots of Led Drivers on there On Temu not sure if you can see my first comment it may have been deleted by Yoube
One of the best reasons to turn a newly fixed light upside down is not to get blinded by the high-power LED.
Also:
To keep the shrapnel safely inside if the "new" power supply decides to loose a few components on power-up.
Hence my motto: "Red on red, Black on black and STAND BACK!" 💥💥💥
Your videos helps a lot of people from difference backgrounds to get started, keep up the good work Clive!
Not sure why you're not using strip lighting for even illumination. Just need two strips. Either on left and right or back and front.
@BigClive, I’ve enjoyed your channel for years. I have a question that I haven’t been able to find an answer to, and it seems right down your alley. Why do touch lamps of many types always become over-sensitive? For a while a short term fix seems to be opening the circuit (switching the lamp off, unplugging, or removing the screw-in circuit). Is it for lack of a ground connection to the control circuit?
This is pretty important to me because I have a degenerative nerve disease, and often cannot use a physical switch. Thank you for anything your genius can shed light upon!
Mean Well makes really good quality LED power supplies for a reasonable price.
I had the same concept but a 70W fixture and it would blink. I also changed the PS and it still blinked. I've had several chips do that. It turns out that the internal bonding that supplies all the strips in the chip (s) acts like an old fashioned tungsten bi-metal blinking strip. On this particular chip that had a round 70W chip I used a square 100W chip and drive it with a 70W supply like that. The case is the heatsink and it's poorly designed with pop metal that doesn't transfer/dissipate heat very well. It's been 8 months now and it's still working fine.