# where can i get LED instructions?(not for growing)



## zem (Dec 26, 2011)

i have been looking into buying some LED bulbs tubes and spotlights wholesale to resell them to regular clients for household and business uses, and i went quite some distance in this, i actually purchased some samples and am trying them now. problem is, these lights are expensive and i can't afford to get the wrong product which doesn't keep up to its claims. i know the samples i got DON'T meet their claims! it is said that lifetime is 50,000 hours, BUT i had 1 of the lights i am trying already burned on me not even 1000 hours of usage. you would think it can only be a defected item, but when you're only trying with 4 lights on, and 1 gets burnt out, it would definitely worry you. they also claim it can handle voltage from 80-240v, so they should never burn due to voltage fluctuation. 

i have learned enough to know that there are different types of LED, the "cree" type being the best quality and most expensive, but i yet have to know what cree is and what the other types are, and how they work, etc... i want to know technical aspects of LEDs to know which i must chose and how to tell which is which. although my samples come with manufacturer warranty of 2  years, i really don't want to get a bad product that gets a bad name and ultimately makes me lose money!

i think there are some growers who would know quite a lot of info on LEDs, and any help will be very useful for me, as i want to cut the research time, because competition in this market is building up, and i happen to have at least a couple of big clients with whom i have a priority to sell them IF i can find the right product. also if you happen to know someone on this site who can help me with this, it will be great if you can just tell me the name, and i can PM them.

Thank you!


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## Roddy (Dec 26, 2011)

What are these lights used for?


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## Locked (Dec 26, 2011)

This is just my opinion but I wld be very careful Zem....the LED market is full of liars and thieves and they will take your money in a heartbeat and leave you with cheap crap instead of quality products. They will promise you the moon but won't really deliver on that promise. You can get stuck with panels that don't work as advertised and your choices will be to eat the loss or pass these cheap pieces of crap off to your "clients".    Jmo


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## zem (Dec 26, 2011)

Roddy these are regular lights that replace the bulbs spotlights and tubes in homes.
HL i know what you're talking about, this is why i am worried to buy anything in bulk just yet. when i thought i found a good product, i got samples of it, and already i see how these don't deliver what they claim. the bulbs are nice, look good, decent amount of light, but the fact that 1 broke so quickly, makes want to get something else, and i want to know more about what makes a good LED. i will talk to the supplier tonight and i'm gona tell him that his claims are false, he said that there's no way that any of these lights burns. the one that burned out is the biggest of the bulbs, 8w good looking bulb, replaces 60w incadescent, and it's true, the light is quite good, i had it on in my room for almost 3 weeks+ before it broke, that's 500 or so hours, it's supposed to live 100x that, 50,000hours! the price of such bulb would be ~20$ for the consumer, and he would be very very pissed off if they start burning on him a month after installation. i am not considering in any way to get LED grow lights BTW


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## Hushpuppy (Dec 31, 2011)

I can tell you that being an electronics technician for the past 20 years, I have seen a lot of crap and a lot of quality. I can say with confidence that anything that comes out of China is crap. While most of the electronics made in Japan is far superior but more expensive. 

Something that most peopel dont understand about electronics is that in the manufacturing process, they make these components by the 100s of 1000s at a time. Most of these components start out as raw chemicals that are cooked and mixed and "doped" with certain elements to create "substrates" that become semiconductors, which are the heart of all electronics. If at any point in this process there is a "cheaper" product or function used to make these components(which include more than just the light emitting diodes), then the whole end product is weakened. 

Within a batch of components that may number in the 10s of 1000s, you will have a percentage that will fail as soon as they are powered, a percentage that will fail within the first 100hrs of use, and a percentage that will never fail in the life of the end product. Some of these failures are due to the manufacturing process being cheap, or the raw materials being cheap or just chemical matrix failures that occur completely randomly.  It is these percentages and statistical fallout that the manufacturer looks at during quality control. 

It would be too expensive for a manufacturer to test every component that they make, so they pull out a random sample from each batch and test them. If the failures fall within their accepted statistical  parameters(which are different for each manufacturer) then the batch passes and is sent either to further product assembly or out to the customer. At this point there is still an accepted failure rate and you could concievably get a bad batch of components from a solid manufacturer with high quality standards.

All that being said, I would suggest that you research the manufacturer and find out how long they have been in business and how long they have been manufacturing LED components and/or products. I say this because the LED industry has ballooned very suddenly in the past few years, but there are solid companies that have been doing component manufacturing and LED manufacturing for many years. These companies will be the ones that have the most experience and best setup for making quality parts. However, while Cree is fairly new to the industry, they also pride themselves on being cutting edge and high quality. 

Ultimately, There is no way around doing some serious research on this.


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## BBFan (Dec 31, 2011)

Hey zem- I've been working with incorporating led's into our products.  Everything we're working with right now is low voltage.  I don't know how that would work for consumer replacement applications (we only sell commercial).

They really are still all over the board right now as far as quality.  Though I have been using 12" x 12" panels that have been running nearly 24/7 for about 6 years with zero failures so far- we have about 100 installations with those products- but I don't think that fits your needs.

Right now we're working with some T-5 replacements- they fit in a standard fixture (you have to remove the ballast), but we're still in beta testing, trying to fine tune color spectrum.  Nothing in incandescent replacement right now.

Good luck with your search.  I'd be interested in knowing if you come up with something.


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## zem (Jan 4, 2012)

Thx for the awesome replies HP and BBF 

HP the manufacturers i am looking into are from China, and i know that it's more risky to buy from there in terms of quality, but i can't afford to take products that are much more expensive than that, because i need the product to be more economical than the regular CFL or incadescents and spotlights etc... I have experienced many Chinese products, lights and others, many are of poor quality but have seen many that deliver more than you would expect. as for the raw material that the LED components are made from, i really have no idea yet to find out if they are of good quality or not, i am choosing between different manufacturers according to my evaluation. i am leaning more towards the companies that have logical more beievable claims about their lights' lifetime. there are some that would claim 50,000 hours lifetime, when others that are of the same or better finishing that claim 30,000 hours lifetime, and philips LED bulbs also claim 30,000, so i am trying to fnd someone who is more trustworthy to begin with, and i will keep refining them to chose the one or more i will buy from.


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## zem (Jan 4, 2012)

BBF the products i am considering to begin with are regular bulbs 7w up to 12 w to replace household bulbs and such, spotlights 4-6w 12v to replace 40w spots, candle bulbs 3-6w to replace the candle lights of 40-60w. i also found very nice plug lamps to replace the U-CFL plug that fits in a glass enclosure, they are 6-7-9 and 11w. as for the tubes, i found some energy saving tubes, that are not LED, they deliver the similar lum/w as LED tubes, and don't require starter or ballast, lifetime 12,000-20,000 hours, and their price is less than 1/2 that of LED, but i yet have to know what the technology behind them is, but they seem like a very good alternative than LED tubes.
my first purchase would be basically those, because i am thinking of starting small, minimizing costs, so i have a competitive edge  basically i am focusing on getting the best product that has a high demand, then reselling it to end customers and retailers, using my resources, which are a good storage room an office and a station car, and mostly, myself as a human resource


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