good bulbs for led harvesting?

Bauer

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Nov 14, 2012
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Are there any bulbs from say home depot/lowes that are good candidates for harvesting led's? I'm looking mainly for emitters that are good in a flashlight like xml, xpg, mce, nichia etc..
 

CoveAxe

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Why go through the process of taking it out of a bulb (and most likely damaging the LED in the process) when you could just buy the LEDs directly?
 

Bauer

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No real chance of damaging the leds, plenty of experience reflowing. Bulbs are pretty cheap and have several emitters that if purchased individually would cost more than double the price of the bulb.
 

brickbat

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You'd get more relevant responses if you described what you meant by "good".

The norm in cheap LED lamps now is an array of 2700K or 5000K emitters - each on the order of 100 lumens or less. Do you consider that good?
 

CoveAxe

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several emitters that if purchased individually would cost more than double the price of the bulb

Just doing a quick search, this assumption is incorrect though. Using the Cree 4Flow as a reference, the eight LEDs can be bought from digi-key cheaper than buying the bulb. Buying enough of them negates the shipping cost. This all assumes you value your labor at zero. Thinking about it more, most LEDs for light bulbs are going to have large spread or will be more side-emitting. They would be terrible for flashlights.

If you're still dead set on going this way, I'd just buy the cheapest bulb you can find because those usually have all the LEDs on a single board and they are much less picky about light directionality and the like.
 

Bauer

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Like I said in my original post, I am specifically looking for bulbs that use xml, xpg etc.. but it seems that most of the newer bulbs are just using more of the low power emitters.

I dont care about any labor involved, desoldering is easy and fast, plus, hobbies rarely pay a salary:D
 

kingofwylietx

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I'll let you search for the thread...I'm 99% sure that someone posted that one of the Cree bulbs had 16 XML's in it.

While not very specific, it might get you looking in the right direction.
 
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