So I had a LED bulb that had gone out. And I was curious what was inside. So I saw it off half of the bulb which is plastic and took pictures so that I could share it here.

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I had an idle thought about harvesting the LEDs, but it does not look very practical.

 

Looks like a 4 pin rectifier chip and a six pin current controller? Hard to tell with all the conformal coating. Wonder what may be on the other side?

 

Check out Big Clive on YouTube. He has taken apart dozens of LED bulbs, reverse-engineered the circuits, and explains their operation fully.

He also shows mods to reduce current supplied by the LEDs which can extend bulb life tremendously.

 

Big Clive..

 

If you look close on my picture you'll see that one of the components is fried. Probably why it failed. Still I thought it was interesting a bunch of three Watt or 10 Watt LED's.

 

If you look close on my picture you'll see that one of the components is fried. Probably why it failed. Still I thought it was interesting a bunch of three Watt or 10 Watt LED's.
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Not likely, since their are 27 of them. Divide the bulbs actual wattage (likely 8 or so) by 27.

 

Best that I can tell, the fried component is the 4-pin rectifier chip. Likely an overvoltage blip which is why I have a surge arrestor on both of the 120V buses in my 200A panel. Can't protect against bad chips but can keep on spec chips healthy. If you have lightning in your area, it can induce overvoltage blips coming into your panel or even in the house wiring itself and do significant damage to your solid-state electronics. Also have one at the well house to protect the submersible pump. Better safe than sorry. They used to be cheap but last time I looked they have gotten more complex and therefore expensive.

 

So I had a LED bulb that had gone out. And I was curious what was inside. So I saw it off half of the bulb which is plastic and took pictures so that I could share it here.

View attachment 293264​

I had an idle thought about harvesting the LEDs, but it does not look very practical.

Is it completely potted in silicone? (Hard to tell from the photo). If not, heat on a hotplate and pick each LED off with tweezers.

 

Is it completely potted in silicone? (Hard to tell from the photo). If not, heat on a hotplate and pick each LED off with tweezers.

Yes, a hot plate will do it. If your hot plate can’t get the (probably RoHS “solder”) to melt enough, adding just a bit of heat with an iron after the preheat will do it. You’ll need decent tweezers, too.

An alternative is to use a desoldering alloy which will make everything easier.

 

I always look for truth in advertising. They say - and likely rightfully so - that LED's can last up to around 50,000 hours. But what they're leaving out is that the electronics that drive it isn't going to last that long. 50K hours is 2083 1/3 days continuous, or 5.71 years. Given that you might use a light for about 6 hours a day average (between summer and winter {just a guess}) is just a little over 22.8 years. If my math is right. I just don't see the electronics lasting that long or cycled that many times.