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The Race to the Bottom: LED Bulbs And DFM

by Sibyl Dominguez (06-09-2025)


Philips Hue Smart Bulbs: The Ultimate Smart Lighting Guide!The dropping cost of LED bulbs is accelerating. We examine a few brands to see how they're approaching design and decrease value manufacturing. You've most likely seen LED EcoLight smart bulbs situated next to the incandescent and energy-efficient bulbs compact fluorescent (CFL) bulbs at your local hardware retailer. I spend means an excessive amount of time in these aisles. That is capitalism at its most interesting! I find the battle of new tech, good manufacturing, and EcoLight lighting large demand intriguing. I've switched virtually all of the lights in our home over to LED partly because of the (small) energy savings, however largely because I am lazy: A 22-yr lifetime means I do not must climb a ladder for a while. Once i bought my LED bulbs a number of years ago they were around $15 a pop. As with most all tech, I've watch the worth drop over time. In this case, LED bulbs in my local Home Depot (Philips 60W) are hovering round $10.



Toshiba LED Light Bulbs - This picture makes all of these lo… - FlickrOn a current visit to the lighting aisle I used to be taken off guard when a pack of two 60W bulbs by Philips had been promoting for $5 ($2.50 every!). This isn't just a drop in value, that is an all out worth conflict between some heavy hitters. Confusing me was the truth that proper next to those 60W bulbs for $2.50 have been 60W bulbs for EcoLight $10 from the identical producer. Upon closer inspection I seen something odd. These decrease value LEDs had a show life of 10 years as opposed to 22. Okay, so they shaved some cost by shortening the life span of the bulb. Neat marketing trick but the engineer in me needed to know how. Nothing too crazy. Each bulb claimed to be 800 lumen at various power consumption ranges (8.5W to 9.5W). And i only noticed this now however the cheap bulbs are non-dimmable. Laborious to see within the above image however the bulb in the middle (cheap Philips) is barely shorter than the more expensive Philips bulb.



The TCP is a couple of centimeter taller. This has little effect on lighting but millimeters of materials will start to matter. I did a fast initial take a look at to see how the bulbs carried out. 13.2W). Maybe the actual LEDs consume 9.5W and the ballast (the factor EcoLight changing AC to DC) consumes the rest. This can be an excellent-sneaky advertising ploy, as I assumed the ranking on the skin of the packaging was the overall power consumption of the bulb. All three bulbs had opaque plastic upper our bodies. The costly Philips bulb came apart with some robust twisting. Beneath was a neat plastic diffuser. Beneath the diffuser was a mixture of small and huge LEDs. Not what I might have anticipated - 14 large LEDs, 6 small. A, as effectively as the date code: 2014-10-14, a delta of 7 months from once i purchased the bulb. The date might be in relation to design version and not manufacture date.



With fairly a little bit of prying pressure, the metallic LED PCB comes off the metallic base heatsink. This was to be anticipated; there was good thermal grease sandwiched between the PCB and the heatsink. Some additional prying and EcoLight energy we are able to see the ballast underneath. I got a bit forceful with a hacksaw so ignore the hack marks for EcoLight smart bulbs the second. The steel base is threaded onto the plastic base and EcoLight smart bulbs then spot crimped to the plastic (you can see the multiple dots or dimples around the metal base). That is the first clue that Philips is working on simplifying the manufacturing course of. Moreover, the 2 uncovered wires in the image are usually not soldered to the bottom, they are compressed to it, additionally simplifying the meeting course of. The ballast! Plenty of caps, an inline fuse, transformer, inductor, and some transistors. C1, C2 and C3 are metalized polyester film capacitors. Right here is the rear facet of the ballast.