OT: LED lighting fires

[Bruce]

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 15:50:21 -0600, [e-mail] wrote (in article ):

I've used many feet of the LED ribbon in woodworking projects as embedded lighting for glass artwork. You can find them far cheaper on ebay and amazon (about $0.70/foot) than most anywhere else. All the components are passive and not prone to fire, basically it is a series of three LED's with a small current limiting resistor repeated along the length. Power is 12 volts, which I usually supply by a wall-wort or surplus laptop power supply when more current is needed.

The 120V LED bulbs have the ac-dc conversion and current regulation in their base and this is where cheap components can cause fire issues. As stated before, it is not the LED itself that poses the hazard, it is the power supply and finding UL rated power supplies is easy.

-Bruce

[Bruce]

On Wed, 24 Apr 2013 18:16:17 -0600, lektric dan wrote (in article ):

Exactly.

Many of the LED's take far more current, some I've used take several amps. LED arrays look like a single device, but actually are many smaller LEDs inside a single package. I've used arrays (Cree) that take 48V at about

300ma.

Note that LED's are current, not voltage dependent devices. A proper power supply will be current regulated.

-Bruce

[Father Haskell]

Expect that the burned units had plastic casings on their power supplies. Metal casings bleed off heat much better, which helps to keep the enclosed circuits from burning out. Most of the failed T-8 (cheap) fluorescent ballasts I've seen were plastic boxes. Failed metal-enclosed ballasts are almost dead-on reliable.