Seen alot esp with leds with flat tops single led. Did a family guy and 6 months later almost all were dim

Would you mind sharing the brand of led? I have heard of this happening but wondering if it matters on the brand.

Your eyes are just getting worse.

Made in China I'm sure

Buy cheap sell high grasshopper

All major brands are from the same factory. Stern is using them too.
Its suspected that sometimes, out of the millions of diodes, some can be bad,
but I was still at a loss when an entire game, had the issue.
A bulb here or there would make sense. A whole backbox, does not, and points to something in the game.
I have heard "theories" but nothing definitive.

I've recently noticed this same exact thing on 2 games I have on location. The insert LEDs are brill as bright as ever but all the GI is getting really dim.

I had a Funhouse on location that was going through G.I. LED's like water. I measured the AC voltage at the coin door lamp sockets. It was a whopping 8 volts! Turns out the machines power transformer jumpers were set at 105 volts AC input. I moved the jumpers to 120 volts and the lamp voltage dropped to 6 volts where it should be.

Its a tricky thing to find, and one would hope there is a universal answer.
Over voltage, and under voltage, is possible.
A Power Spike, I am guessing at...??
SCR or something else?
and of course the bulbs themselves.

I have an Xmen, that through 4 years has bulbs from everyone in there, including the production I was doing.

Ive had about 8 bulbs fail. Some have gone out, some have dimmed.

Shouldnt happen, but I do know the difference in fabrication between a single diode $.26 and the same single diode bulb from Japan that would cost over a $1.00.

I toss them and put new ones in.

I no longer own an LED business, and I can say things that may be a bit more "open" at this time.

There is a big difference in how single LEDs are made and QC vs SMD.
Factories dont want to make the 1 LED as much because of very low margins of profit.

One really must see how these things are made, in order to appreciate the prices offered by all suppliers
today.

Walk into Walmart, and see what you can find for a Quarter!

If your game is losing a bulb here or there, blame it on the bulb.
If your game is losing a bulb in the same socket, something is wrong there.
If you loose all the bulbs in your game, or all on a "line" somethings happening in the game.

Work with your LED Vendor, as they each have their own policies.

Consider upgrading to a better made bulb.

makes sense. would depend no what is truly going on. plus who cares if you get the cheap ones and they last for a year or 2. you got well above your monies worth.

plus I love those cheapies you had back when you had the company. huge bang for the buck!!!

They are still available, if in stock.

All I can say is this year for just that bulb, and only that bulb, it was a pain in the ass to get the components made at the same price as it was the last 3 years.

I bought this nifty TZ clock board from Germany that came with these super flux LEDs. They slowly died over 4 months on location.

Anyone know where I could get reliable replacements domestically?

image (resized).jpg

My local electronics shop supplies those.

They are called flat top Piranha leds.
They come in 3mm and 5mm

Here is a link to an online store. Located in
WA.

http://lighthouseleds.com/led-component-lighting/piranha-super-flux-leds-1.html?p=3

If that's an Ingo clock board you can find replacement LEDs in your choice of colors at http://lockwhenlit.com/products.htm
Borygard here on Pinside. $10 a set, $15 for color changing.

Now Available-Additional Sets of TZ Clock Board LEDs

Complete sets of LEDs for Ingo's TZ Clock Board.

Wow crazy had mine for years and leds look new still

This makes perfect sense. Alot of games I've seen came set at 105 volts

Not that it's going to solve the problem, but just out of interest have you tried splitting the LED apart by removing the metal base from the LED itself to see whether the support components inside are the problem? i.e. the mini bridge rectifier, resistor, etc?

I've noticed more than anything the plastic housing gets brown and brittle, eventually causing the bulb to fail....VERY prominent in 555 (4x) LED bulbs.......have had several random, single 5050's dim or die over time, as well....as Art pointed out, these are not high end electronics ( which break eventually too)

Not all LEDs are the same quality, as much as some people try to sell that point. There are different grade led chips. Lower cost chips, not as bright. One way to compensate is a trick called "overdriving". This will allow a higher voltage to the led making it brighter, for a shorter time. So when its new, looks great. So if your a flipper, these are the LEDs for you. Someone else's problem when they dim out.

Another thing is packaging. This is the other components that provide the power to the leds. Higher quality, better tolerances! Same as leds there are different quality resistors. Low quality, low life expectancy. If the resistor values vary a larger amount, you will have more failures, more dimming, and shorter life.

Sorry to hear about the experience with the picture of the led with two months use and it now worthless. Unfortunately we hear the same story every week.

As with most products available, they are not all the same. As a route operator I have a lot of experience with LEDs with many hours on them. More then glad to chat about the amusement business, pinball, and leds.

We have High Quality Frosted 2-led units at 69 cent each per hundred. Free USA shipping on orders over 100 dollars.

http://cointaker.com/products/44-47-frosted

If you have any questions, please feel free to give me a ring.

570-847-6366

Regards,

Chris

IMG_7566 (resized).jpg

NOT CT (resized).jpg

^^ * "componeNts"

More like COmpoNents....

This is typical of an over-driven LED. To get maximum brightness, the resistance value is at the "hairy edge" or even over it. Then you have voltage fluctuations from using lots of LED's as well as different input voltages especially on GI circuits. All of that contributes to the semiconductor junction eventually weakening or burning out.

For a great example note that the majority of commercial truck-trailers on the road today have LED tail & brake lights. The cheapest ones have fewer elements but are driven at the edge to provide the DOT mandated light output. On these it is common to see a few elements burnt out as they get a few years old.

The original LED lights with fewer elements were made by Signal-Stat. Trick-Lite bought Signal-Stat several years ago but marketed the Signal-Stat line as their lower cost /economy product line.

It's just a standard 10mm LED isn't it?
Are both of the 3 pin dual diode packs still good?

Plain and simple, the lower end LEDs will fade over time when used for GI on route games. It has been posted and documented before. As was stated, they are being over driven to get maximum brightness out of lower end products.

FWIW, I have Coin Taker Premium WWs in an EM on location and they are as bright after 2 plus years as they were when new. It's just hard to shell out $1.19 per led to fill some backglasses using 40+ lamps each. (Cheap bastard alert!)

Perhaps the difference was this machine was on location thus those LEDs were on 12 hours a day.

Also, I think there is a brightness adjustment on that board. I may have set it too high.

Chris,

Are your $0.69 2 led bulbs SMT LEDs or through hole style?

Surface mount.

It's simply a resin LED, not potted, just made that way. Some of the cheapest kind of LEDs you can buy. While a large package, they don't typically put out as much lumens as surface mount or piranha/T-Flux products without being driven at their limits.

Guessing they used a decade box and stopped on a value that gave the brightest light instead of using Ohm's Law........

Typical forward voltage drop for a standard white LED is 3.2V
Account for the bridge rectifier is another 1.2V
6.3V - (3.2 + 1.2) = 1.9V (required across the resistor)
1.9V / 0.02 amps (typical standard LED forward current) = 95ohms.
So on face value those two 51 ohm resistors in series should be about right.

But the 6.3V AC is RMS, take into account the peak voltage and a LED with say a low quality/spec peak forward current and that could possibly be a problem.
Also as with most things they don't like heat. So if you're bench testing leftover LEDs for a month or two, pinball thermals should be simulated.