Filament LED

electronupdate

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The emitter uses a construction that I have never seen before.... the only thing close that I know of is organic LEDs. Does anyone know more about the base technology of this bulb?




 

AnAppleSnail

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I looks like a linear COB-style (Array of LEDs) with very little done for heatsinking. Was the bulb pressurized? That could increase conduction of heat from the 'filament' slightly.
 

SemiMan

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There will be a bunch of these on the market soon but expect to see some patent battles too. Was several at the Hong Kong light show and saw the first ones 6 months ago.
 

wws944

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jtr1962

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It seems most of these lamps are getting in excess of 100 lm/W overall. That implies 110 to 125 lm/W for the LED filaments themselves. Given that most of these bulbs have 4 to 12 filaments, each filament only needs to deal with well under one watt of heat. Doubtless junction temperatures are high, probably over 100°C, but that's still within the safe operating range. Even two years ago, a design like this wouldn't have been possible because LEDs weren't efficient enough.
 

Illum

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yep.... this first came about in 2009. It was an accent lamp at the time. Heatsinking with still air is a goober.

Japanese company Ushio Lighting came out with a 2500K Filament LED lamps for decoration/general lighting purposes...
At 0.6W per lamp they rated the output to be ~18lm...

150VDC....High-efficiency d.c. electroluminescence?
 
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carnal

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Thank You electronupdate! The microscope views of the arrays under the phosphor were cool! No flicker is a big surprise for such a cheap bulb from China. I expected no filtering at all. Amazing! Wonder what that array would have done with diminishing sine wave off an autotransformer, just at the cut off-point? Maybe not much different than what you had, due to it's solid state controls. If a designer knew that the user had varying level of sign wave input, perhaps there could have been SOME dimming.
Thanks for what you do!
Experiment on cool stuff, instead of forum conversation involving assumptions and endless arguments of STUPIDITY! You just tear stuff apart and show us all! REFRESHING!!!

I guess China's Filabulb is one of the patent holders. http://www.ledfilamentbulb.cn/

Also this site sells the filaments. Some specs there. 10mA @ 75-85 input voltage with 120-130 lm/w & 90-95 CRI
http://www.runlite.cn/en/product-detail-145.html.

These guys have the glass enclosure down RIGHT! (it looks more like the vintage looking carbon filament shaped bulb we are all familiar with)
http://www.volkerhaug.com/shop/lamps/led-lamps/l095-led-filament-edison.html
Edit... That site is not pulling up the photo now, but it had a photo of a LED powered filament bulb in the classic edison carbon shape. But at 6X the cost! (compared to Ebay $10 vers)
It can be seen here in the 5th row from the top in all its Australian glory...
http://www.volkerhaug.com/shop/lamps/led-lamps.html

Someone should let Filabulb know how important the enclosure is in many applications! Perhaps they could supply lamps to directly to the "lovers of the" Edison carbon filament market directly. They would probably crap their pants if they knew they could get $60 (US equiv) in an vintage Edison looking enclosure.

They are prob a young company that doesn't understand the "retro" market. Or they just don't care, and want to push volume.

They are LEDs with phosphor. No magic.
I say it IS magic! Lest no one up till this point has produced the retro look of a filament, WHILE doing it in LED's. NOVEL! From an artistic perspective, anyway. Think what this could do for the EL wire market! It is much brighter.
 
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LEDAdd1ct

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1) electronupdate, where would you peg the color temperature?

2) How well does it render browns and reds, traditional shortcomings of LED bulbs?

3) Video linked here.

4) More specs here.

5) Do these "COB" have enough heatsinking for sustained use?

6) Two U.S.A. sellers, superbrightleds and ledstoreusa, appear to stock these. The second site apparently has a six watt, 600 lumen version...

7) See also "B00HZC5UOW" on Amazon.

8) Finally, one person notes the product code ZL-A19-FIL-4W-27K
which takes you to this PDF.

9) With these (apparently) available domestically, no reason to wait for the slow boat from China save for the slightly cheaper price.
 
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JohnR66

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Measure the light from the bulb and run it for 1 or 2K hours and measure again. Be sure to measure the light at the same position and distance to be accurate. If the bulb maintains its output, I'd say it is an interesting product, otherwise, it is more of the same Chinese junk.
 

Lightdoctor

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Measure the light from the bulb and run it for 1 or 2K hours and measure again. Be sure to measure the light at the same position and distance to be accurate. If the bulb maintains its output, I'd say it is an interesting product, otherwise, it is more of the same Chinese junk.

Wow...an honest post instead of the typical 'LED fanboy' club where all LED's are cool non-sense. These are typical Chinese junk products made to separate you from your hard earned dollars...that is all. The vendors mentioned above only sell junk. I have bought from them in the past and can say honestly that the products they sell should have never been imported to the U.S. Do you see the top tiers (Philips, CREE, Osram) making this kind of lamp? There's a reason for that.
 
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LEDAdd1ct

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While I do not see a Cree branded product of this type,
Cree does produce COB diodes.

I bet if Cree did produce a COB "filament" LED bulb, they would fly right off the shelves.
 

SemiMan

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Neither Cree nor Philips have an exclusivity on LED knowledge or innovation. Knocking the product simply cause it is Chinese is stupid ... Especially since the base technology is Taiwanese.
 

oldwesty4ever

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These "filament led" bulbs use helium as the fill gas, which supposedly conducts heat from the "filaments" to the outer glass envelope. I know a couple lamp engineers personally and they said they were impressed by these lamps, but their concerns are that the electronics could be a weak point and also the vacuum seal could leak in some cases, which could pose premature failures from overheating.
 

AnAppleSnail

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Helium is 10x more conductive than most air. Who knew? That also means a large reduction in thermal transfer when it leaks.

I know Switch (Or someone) tried to make heat-pipe bulbs that carried heat by condensing on the glass. This seems simpler, until the seal fails.
 

bshanahan14rulz

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Note that the chips they use are rated for 10mA, not the 20mA that most manufacturers spec their 5mm LEDs at. Since those are heatsinked through the legs, if at all, I would guess that these may not require much more heatsinking than is supplied by the metal wires that support the individual "filaments."

It is very cool that you have even found a supplier of the filaments themselves!

With some places banning various incan bulbs, and incan bulbs having a great clear retro look to them, I could see these taking off if they tweak their phosphor for less efficacy and more warm-and-fuzzy light
 
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