el cheapo china LED floodlghts teardown

[amlu]

I ordered some of the cheapest LED floodlights than one could find... fiver each, postage included (ebay, from uk, took couple of days to arrive). Need only the enclosures for my personal project so the internals are coming out anyway. Got some pics if anyone interested whats in them....

The boxes are actually quite well made, nice sealing around and a good gland for holding the cable.



Inside we have a 10W Led module, screwed to the body and some thermal paste used...
They mean to be not replaceable, but its an easy job with a soldering iron and a steady hand.

Big issue i found is that the reflector part sits right above the module connection, if the lights gets dropped or something
it has a big possiblity of shorting the terminals on it.
Had another one from a different supplier too, they did not use any glue and wires to the led were dodgy soldered and come right off...
On this batch is not too bad.



At the back just a driver in a potted enclosure. Earth wire connected to the enclosure.



Managed to dig it out, just a switch mode power supply... it works when it works, when it stops it will stop... you never know.
Again not hard to replace with a soldering iron.



Anyway value for money

 

[Barry White]

May I ask what you are making/modding?

 

[Rpa07]

Good job amlu, appreciated and less messy watching someone else do it. Like you say though - value for money if it lasts even a little while. It's the IP that would be its downfall, then the electronics unless it's used undercover then just the electronics!

 

[amlu]

May I ask what you are making/modding?

Converting them to produce UV light. Basically swapping the LEDs into UV ones, and drivers into adjustable current DC-DC converters. Whole lot will be powered by 24V DC and used on an outdoor exhibition end of this month.

 

[Marvo]

There's a few things that I don't like about the design. The driver PCB is very small and I'd question the lack of separation between the high and low voltage side. It seems the latest fashion with cheap SM PSU's is just to have a white line showing where the separation gap should be rather than actually having a physical gap.

Why the hell didn't they just use a rubber or silicon washer instead of half a tube of liquid silicon around the gland? Oh and the power flex is too short and would make the power connection unnecessarily difficult for the installer.

Overall I guess you get what you pay for.....

 

[superkev001]

Interesting. I posted a thread about buying British so am interested as to how much crap stuff we buy from abroad but keep buying it. Would you be happy to pay a little more money for good British made stuff ? I really believe we should start to look after British business and promote within the trade, keeps and improve jobs here. You can push products to customers with the made in Britain tag. With all the news about the steel inductry etc, it makes me feel more protective of our fragile manufactuers