T8 2Ft / 0.6 m LED Tube Teardown

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The LED tube is about $6 – $26 per pcs with UL certification and DLC qualified now days, I search the data on the Aug, 2017.

Someone say LED tubes are just LED strips also, but in retrofit enclosure, they are more expensive than older tubes, and they do the same job as less expensive led strips (with diffuser).

LED tube has a good future. Unlike fluorescents they don’t have mercury and therefore they are safe for environment. The LEDs tubes are more efficient than fluorescents. They worked perfectly with control systems. Their life is not affected by turning them off and on again and again. Moreover their dimming capabilities make their life more durable.

LED tube lights are intended to be a trade for the poisonous fluorescent tube lights, they speak to the new era of eco-accommodating lights. They have a dazzling outline and offer most extreme light yield. They give a lighting arrangement as far as vitality reserve funds. Their extraordinary strong state configuration makes them free of warm up time. They are light weight and greatly tough. They have a long future and require for all intents and purposes no upkeep. LED tube lights are accessible in both clear and iced focal point plans in various shading temperatures. These progressive tube lights decrease your power bills and this is particularly valid for the T8 LED lights which utilize 40 percent less vitality than the more seasoned T8 lights, According to Todd Manegold, Director of LED Lamps marketing at Philips Lighting, 80% of fluorescent ballasts are electronic instant-start ballasts, over 10% are rapid start, and less than 5% are dimming ballasts.

LED Tube have following benefits/advantages

LED Tube save energy to the tune of 50 – 60% compared to std fluorescent tube light
LED Tube life is around 35 – 40,000 hrs VS std tube light life of just 4000 hrs ( So 10 Times more life compared to std tube light )
LED Tube have instant ,Flicker free operation VS std tube light which has flickering while starting
LED Tube does not need starter /ballast(Choke ) as they are integrated ,in std tube light you need the same
LED Tube light Power factor is > 0.9 compared to 0.5 in std tube light with EM Ballast

Here are some question list:

How many do you need?
Where to use them?
How long will they be switched on per day?
Do you need more light?
What light colour do you want?
Would you like a high CRI?

You can go to local shop, Amazon, or Home deport, choose brand then buy it will be OK. That is a piece of cake. But if you want to buy from Chinese Company, that is another story, even they have MOQ for the orders.

Before that there is a lot more to know to be able to answer this question, but overall the good solution may be an LED T8 tube.

Importing LED tubes from China

If you want to import some form China, The process of importing LED tubes from China seems easy but in fact no. There are tons of LED manufacturers and suppliers in the China and many claim to be the best in LED manufacturing. So, you got to put extra effort to what customers need, need lots of solid knowledge.

Key steps is same as in any procurement process:

Search for suppliers ( Alibaba.com), or attend one of many lighting expo’s in your country.
Get & study the test data/ docs, so on. If you can get more, that is great.
Bargain for price.
Pay Fedex/Other Express charges to get samples and test them first hand.
Place orders.
Send 30% or 100% payment in advance TT/Others.
Visit china at the time of shipment if you can, or hire some testing lab, to check the products quality.

Here are some supplier and Brand in the USA, some Chinese you may not search on the Alibaba.com.

Brand	Chinese Suppiler
Feit	Ningbo Klite Electric Manufacture Co., Ltd., NATIONAL STATE INDUSTRIES LTD.
philips	TOSPO, YANKON, KLIT, GMY, Ningbo Klite Electric Manufacture Co., Ltd.
CREE	LEXTAR
OSRAM SYLVANIA	senngled, ETI, Zopoise, Yankon LEEDARSON LIGHTING CO., LTD. , eastfield
IKEA	LEEDARSON LIGHTING CO., LTD.
LIFX	Shenzhen Eastfield Lighting Co., Ltd.
GE	Xiamen Topstar Lighting Co. Ltd
RAB	Zopoise Technology (Zhu Zhou) Co.,Ltd, SHANXI GUANGYU LED LIGHTING CO., LTD.
WAC Lighting	WAC Lighting
TCP	TCP
duracelllighting	JIawei
LIGHTING SCIENCE GROUP	SHANGHAI DANGOO ELECTRONICS CO., LTD. (link)

Some say most Suppliers are honest to specifications unless you have bargained the price to ridiculous levels, but few suppliers over state their rating by one level up, but these can be understood during testing of samples that they courier to you at your cost.

Certifications required: BIS certification conforming to relevant Indian safety standards is mandatory for Bulbs, LED Drivers, few streetlights & downlights & panel lights.

The Customs duties are lower for LED products & inputs, subject to certain conditions & documentation.

Some tech you have to consider

The Difference between T8 and T5

T means tubular, the number describes the diameter of the tubes, it can be 4, 5, 8, 10, 12, but the most used are T5 and T8.

T8 LED tube is 8/8 inch(26mm) Diameter while T5 is 5/8 inch(16mm). In earlier days of fluorescent tubes FTL, the first version was nearly 40/32 mm dia which later got improved and replaced by small dia 25mm (T8) & Dia 16mm (T5) which improved efficiency and more importantly saved materials & energy footprint in manufacturing. When it comes to LEDs, this size has no significance, except that we are producing Retrofits to match the legacy holders.

Heat Sink

Cheap tubes try to shave materials costs by using plastic heat sinks. Higher quality tubes have aluminum heat sinks that conduct heat away from the diodes with greater than 10 times effectiveness, increasing the life and health of the diodes.

Color consistency

Cheap tube lights can vary in temperature from batch to batch. If your office space requires 4000 Kelvins and in six months you need to replace the cheap tubes you’ve purchased, you may not end off with the same color temperature. Quality tubes adhere to tighter color specifications and tighter LED binning processes to guarantee consistency.

Frosted or Clear Lenses?

LED Tubes milky (or frosted) lens will provide greater than 106 lumens per watt (>106lm/w) while the LED Tubes clear lens is slightly brighter at greater than 110 lumens per watt (>110lm/w). If your tubes are going into a covered fixture with a surrounding lens, the clear tubes offer your brightest option. However, if the tubes are exposed, aesthetically speaking, the frosted lens is the way to go.

Watts

an 18 Watt LED tube should offer slightly more lumens on the ground than a 40-watt fluorescent tube. If the ceiling is more that 12-feet above finished floor (AFF) you may want to consider a 22 Watt tube.

Life Time

Currently, T8 tube LEDs ought to have a rated lifetime of around 35,000-50,000 hours. While the LED chips themselves may not fail for 100k or 200K+ hours, the system lifetime is significantly lower. Lighting-class LEDs dim gradually over time without catastrophic failure. According to the Illumination Engineering Society of North America’s LM-80-2008 test to characterize the lumen maintenance of LED semiconductor components, LED lifetime is defined by the product becoming dimmer than 70% of its original lumen output. Therefore at the rated lifetime of 35,000-50,000 hours, the LED tube light will be functional albeit dimmer than desired.

The entire LED package consists of electrical, thermal and optical systems that are all integrated to produce a LED light e.g. T8 LED tube. The main components that determine lifetime are the heat sink, power driver, optical components and LED chip. The heat sink dissipates the excess heat that is produced by LED and is the linchpin of the entire system. When poorly designed, all other components can be compromised. The driver, which provides usable power to the system, is currently the limiting factor currently but progress is being made technologically. Optical components can (but rarely) yellow over time and lose light. As mentioned previously, the LED chips practically never fail. Therefore at the end of the rated lifetime, the most common problem is that the driver is not providing enough power to sufficiently light the LED.

the failure point is the driver and the cause is inefficient thermal management. So as a tube the usable life can be anything from 10k to 50k hours depending on switch-starts and the ambient temperature of the operating environment.

You can judge for yourself prior to investing, simply have a look at the tube itself, if it has an aluminium backing this is the primary heat sink and tells you the designer is not managing the heat efficiently, some are even perforating the PCB, and therefore the stress on the driver is inherently higher and the reliability compromised. The microprocessor design is far more important than the LED’s is assessing usable life and value for money.

Both Paul Reid and Rob Lai are quite correct in their observations. Lifetime of T8 LED tubes depend greatly on driver and heat sinking technology deployed in the tubes.

Flicker

LED tubelights are flicker free as many fluorescent lighting fixtures out there contain magnetic ballasts that cause the light to flicker, which has been known to produce symptoms of eye-strain and fatigue.

All types of light sources that utilize a transformer or ballast will ‘flicker’. However, I think what you mean is when it is extremely noticeablele, yes? To be honest, the simple answer is that you are looking at cheap lights. High quality manufacturers work hard to minimize visible issues. However, cheap imports are notorious for this problem. In addition, if you got a light source meant for use in another country, then it will be extremely noticeablele when shooting videos or photos. In other words, avoid cheap Chinese imports.

“mostly accurate” the flicker is caused by a cheap power design, regardless of transformer or ballast. You will see the flicker in your phones camera, this flicker is caused by the above and not from using a bulb that was meant for use in another country. (I work for a manufacturer of LED lighting)

Even though you don’t always see it, all mains-powered light sources flicker – whether incandescent, halogen, fluorescent or LED.

Installtion

I bought a LED tube on hand, let’s take peek inside LED T8 2 Ft replacement tube for fluorescent tubes.

But this LED tube can not be replaceable the FL directly. You have to re-wire the the FL system.

Here is the characters of the T8 LED tube table for reference:

Input Voltage	100 – 277 Vac
Frequency	50/60
Input Current	0.1 A
Watts	9 wattage
PF	>0.9
THD	< 25%
Color Temp	4000 K
CRI	> 80
Lumen	1500 lm
Dimensions	600 mm / 2 ft
Lm/w	150
Certification	UL/cUL
Warranty	—
Claimed Lifetime	> 50000 Hour
Price	$ 8
Dimmable	No
Location	Damp

T8 LED tube

There are some letters on the surface of the Lamp Cap. It shows “Power” instead of the L/N. Each Lamp cap provided 3 openings, each measured 0.9 mm. The distance between the 2 pins is 12.7 mm.

Another Side

Remove the Metal Ring, Aluminum, measured 0.7 mm thickness, it secured to the Lamp Base by integral threads. The Lamp pin to the metal ring is more than 4.5 mm.

Why does the manufacture like to used this metal ring? What do they want to do?

After removing Lamp Base by tool, you can the input wires are attached by screws. It is 24 AWG with white shrink tube. The Lamp base is secured to the Lamp base support by snap-in.

Screw off the 2 screw on the Lamp base, the LED module is in front of you. The Lamp Base support measured 1.2 mm thickness.

We can pull the LED Driver and LED module out of the heat sink part. The LED and Driver look like below photo.

Here is back view of the LED Driver and LED PCB.

Heat sink

LED module

LED Driver

LED Driver Back View

There are 2 IC in the led Driver. The one near Moset is BP3319MB, from BPS, here is its datasheet link. It sell o.4 RMB/ pcs.

LED Driver IC is JW1232, from JWJOULWATT, here is the datasheet link.

This sell 1 RMB/pcs.

The bridge module is MB10F, datasheet link.

LED Driver Transformer

Back side

Except some SMD capacitors, SMD Resistors and SMD Diode, the price may be lower by bulb order.

Here is the key components table:

Num	Parts	Price(RMB)
1	IC, U1, BP3319MB, 1 pcs	0.45
2	IC, U2, JW1232, 1 pcs,	1
3	BD1, MB10F, 1 pcs	0.1
4	Fuse, 1 pcs	< 0.1
5	CX1, 104k, 310 vac, 1 pcs	round 0.2
6	EC1, 1 pcs, 22 uF, 50 V, 105 C	round 0.1
7	N-MOS, 4 A, 650 V	round 2
8	C7, E-cap, 470 uF, 50 V	round 0.1
9	Y1, 222M, 400 V.	round 0.1
10	L1, Line Filter fully covered with electrical tubing	round 0.2
11	L2, Line Filter fully covered with electrical tubing	round 0.2
12	T1, Transformer, Core is Ferrite. PRI: Enamel copper wire, wrapped by tape. Sec: Triple insulated wire,	round 1