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Cheap LED Lighting

Charles Hill said:
I went https://www.earthled.com and got these for less then 30.00$ a light and increase lighting about double It took about 15 min per light fixture it was simple to remove the ballast rewire the light Just use old or even cheap fluorescent light rewire it you would still be ahead






https://www.earthled.com/collection...ballast-bypass-direct-wire?variant=2403570948
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Thanks, Charles.....
That looks like a pretty good way to go for those of us who have the old fashioned fluorescent fixtures already installed in our shops. When I get down to my last replacement fluorescent bulbs that are already on hand, this will be a good option to consider.
ko
 
olaf Vogel said:
Ah yes...that wonderful selection of products you enjoy in the US.
And we can't get in Canada...hey, it's so far away!

Often Walmart, Lowes, Home Depot carry stuff in the US but not here and frequently the prices are MUCH lower (after exchange rate). Something that's really bothersome. And why we drop ship across the border.

But Seriously, I'll check these lights out.

And no Bill, just to assuage any concerns, I'll stick with white light. I'm not turning my shop into a disco!
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A mirror ball might be a cool segmented project 😀
 
You joke but since I make a lot of mirrors I've been considering other alternatives. I was thinking more on the line of a concave segmented mirror like you might use to cook with the sun. 🙂
 
I have been thinking of the painted balls done in the 1800s that had a enigmatic patterns on them until placed on a mirror which revealed a picture in the mirror plane. Cones and other shared were also done. The flexify plugin for Photoshop makes the patterns.
 
I recently purchased LED 4 ft. tubes and the instructions say to just put them in the fixture, no need to change the wiring by removing the ballast. Might different brands have different instructions?
 
Dave Fritz said:
I recently purchased LED 4 ft. tubes and the instructions say to just put them in the fixture, no need to change the wiring by removing the ballast. Might different brands have different instructions?
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There are two different kinds of replacement bulbs for linear fluorescent fixtures, those used with a ballast (plug and play) and those without (bypass/direct wire/ballast removal). In my kitchen, I chose to use bypass and remove the ballasts. Reason being is they are all >20 years old and the ballasts are going out and they are $30 each. So I put in new end caps (not totally necessary) , removed the ballasts and rewired.
 
john lucas said:
You joke but since I make a lot of mirrors I've been considering other alternatives. I was thinking more on the line of a concave segmented mirror like you might use to cook with the sun. 🙂
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Hey that sounds awesome. You could go off grid make your own domestic hot water put in a solar concentrator and generate some electricity. Who knows you may have found a real niche market!

 
Other Options

Charles and Steve thanks for the options from buying new fixtures.
I tried the idea of using flood lights (LED) in cool white. There is not as much light as is produced by a CFL (tube) . So I am thinking that could be used for storage areas and corners of the shop and bulbs replacement is 5 or less and no ballast.
Mark congrats on a great thread and we have all learned and shared a great deal of info to ease our search for better lighting.
 
Well, after reading the first part of this thread I went to Sam's and picked up two of their 4' LED shop lights (about $40 each with tax). The box says 4300 lumens, 5000k color temperature, 40 watts and 50,000 hour life. WOW!!!! What a difference they make. I can't believe how much more light they produce versus the two two-tube fluorescent lights that they replaced. I figure if I have them on for 10 hours per day, they should last 5,000 days or about 13.7 years and thus cost about $2.92 plus electricity per year to operate. Based on the amount of light that these two new fixtures are putting out, I think it is well worth the money. Might have to go back and replace the rest of my shop lights with these LED shop lights.

Thanks for the help and advice.
 
Gerald Lawrence said:
Charles and Steve thanks for the options from buying new fixtures.
I tried the idea of using flood lights (LED) in cool white. There is not as much light as is produced by a CFL (tube) . So I am thinking that could be used for storage areas and corners of the shop and bulbs replacement is 5 or less and no ballast.
Mark congrats on a great thread and we have all learned and shared a great deal of info to ease our search for better lighting.
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Thanks Gerald. I think we certainly did learn a lot here. I know I did.
 
Well I've been doing some post christmas clean up and remembered that I was given lights by my father in law.
If anyone has a BIG shop and wants serious light. (or has a grow op.... just kidding)

http://www.pllight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/PLX_HPS_MH_Spec_Sheet.pdf

400w at 240v, 2.1 amps of high pressure sodium.
Not sure how many lumens, but they are insanely bright.
From basic Wiki info thats about 32,000 to 60,000 lumens!!!

Seems rediculous, but I don't know much about greenhouses.
I have two HPS lights outside my shop. 50w each and light up most of the property.

ONE of them totally overpowered my shop.
Six of them would likely melt it down.

🙂
 
Good thread. Just a thought...I have a six month old Moffat light that the contacts stopped working because off all the dust in the switch. Crummy design lets in dust...

It's takes a surprising amount of time to get to the switch contacts. I put dielectrical gel in there, hoping it doesn't just attract more dust. The jury is still out.

So, it might be worth taking a look at what kind of switch you're buying with the lamp.
 
Zach LaPerriere said:
Good thread. Just a thought...I have a six month old Moffat light that the contacts stopped working because off all the dust in the switch. Crummy design lets in dust...

It's takes a surprising amount of time to get to the switch contacts. I put dielectrical gel in there, hoping it doesn't just attract more dust. The jury is still out.

So, it might be worth taking a look at what kind of switch you're buying with the lamp.
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I have two Moffatt lights, the oldest is twelve years old. I don't let dust accumulate. After every use I use the air hose and shop vac to clean up everything in, on, and around the lathe. So far, I haven't had any problem with the switch ... knock on wood.🙄
 
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Thanks for the reminder, Bill! I blow it out now and then, but certainly not daily. I can only guess, but maybe there was some flying sap that ran down, because I couldn't clear the switch with air. Kudos to Moffat for using a switch that could be taken apart, cleaned, and reassembled. I still think the switch design could be better, but it seems to be the best out there.

Moffat makes quality lamps. And they stand behind their product. I sent them a polite email lastnight and first thing this morning they offered to send me a rubber boot for the switch, even though I made it clear that I have what amounts to a dust factory right next to the lamp.
 
lights up my world!

olaf Vogel said:
Well I've been doing some post christmas clean up and remembered that I was given lights by my father in law.
If anyone has a BIG shop and wants serious light. (or has a grow op.... just kidding)

http://www.pllight.com/wp-content/uploads/2015/02/PLX_HPS_MH_Spec_Sheet.pdf

400w at 240v, 2.1 amps of high pressure sodium.
Not sure how many lumens, but they are insanely bright.
From basic Wiki info thats about 32,000 to 60,000 lumens!!!

Seems rediculous, but I don't know much about greenhouses.
I have two HPS lights outside my shop. 50w each and light up most of the property.

ONE of them totally overpowered my shop.
Six of them would likely melt it down.

🙂
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I have a sodium light mounted on my barn and shining across my front yard as a night security light. It uses the smaller bulb with no capability to change to a bigger bulb that is the same price however this is a lot of light. I have a spare unit in the barn. If I figured out how to bypass the light sensor that makes it come on only after dark I could put enough light in my barn/shop to have to wear shades to turn!

Been reading this thread and I am going to LED's since I seriously need more light in my barn. I tried the big CFL's and they get dim fairly fast and they buzz. When I find the buzzing annoying as deaf as I am they would probably drive someone else insane!

Noticing all of the comparisons here started me wondering a bit. When I had buildings full of fluorescents I found just taking the bulbs down and cleaning them brightened things a bunch even if they were shielded. Changing bulbs brightened things tremendously. Leaves me suspecting that when comparing old fluorescents to new LED's we aren't making a fair comparison. Is the LED output going to remain the same for the service life of the LED's or are they going to dim with time? Of course they will require cleaning but I wonder how much they will dim, and how soon if they will dim?

I bought some 270 volt three phase fluorescents used and very cheap years ago. Mounted fourteen four feet four bulb fixtures in a paint booth big enough to hold a ten wheel over the road tractor and painted the interior of the booth bright white, ceiling and walls. With lights mounted high and low and the white paint everywhere the light was fantastic in there. Had to mount the clear glass with safety wire in it over the lights to meet code so none of the plastic to dull the light coming through. Some loss swapping the lights to 240 single phase but they still worked great. Wish I could lay hands on some of those lights again at the price. I think I paid fifteen dollars a fixture and seems like I had to swap the bulbs but I don't remember for sure. The ballasts worked OK on 240.

Hu
 
I'll relate my experience with high pressure sodium lights. I think that they're OK for road and other outdoor lighting, but horrible for lighting working areas. Many many years ago when assigned to work on a new aircraft flight test program, our new office building wasn't quite ready so it was decided that a large high bay hanger could be used because it wasn't going to be needed for about a year. The hanger had recently been refurbished with new high pressure sodium lighting with its characteristic salmon colored light and constant buzz. All of our office furniture was nicely arranged on the hanger floor and the sodium lights about 45 feet up next to the ceiling. The odd colored flickering light had some really strange physiological effects. By the end of the day, the lighting seemed to be what we normally think of as white light, but as we walked outdoors into the sunlight at the end of the day, the natural outdoor light seemed to look really strange -- a somewhat greenish-blue color. The strobe effect of the light also had some other effects such as causing drowsiness. Folks threatened mutiny if something wasn't done so our VP, a nice guy, came to investigate and spent the day with us. At the end, he was in our camp and told the higher-ups to fix it "or else". Within days, workers had assembled an overhead false ceiling with normal office fluorescent lighting. Other amenities were added and by the time that our new building was ready, we actually like our hanger better.

More about the color of lighting and the physiology of the brain: If you are outdoors all day on a clear day, it appears that the color of natural daylight remains fairly constant. In reality, the color of daylight varies over a wide range. The effects of weather and surroundings make this variation even more dramatic. When you're indoors, the color of incandescent or fluorescent lights doesn't seem to be a lot different than natural light especially after you have been indoors for a few hours, but in reality the color of artificial lighting is very different from sunlight. If you were to take pictures using a digital camera in all of these different settings with AWB (automatic white balance) turned off, the pictures would show how drastically the color of what we think is white light actually varies. The color white would range from orange to deep blue in those images. The reason is that our brains are wired with an automatic white balance that is far more sophisticated than an digital camera. A person's brain identifies things that it "knows" is supposed to be white and then processes what our eyes see so that colors appear correctly. The odd spectral content of the high pressure sodium lights combined with the 120 Hz stroboscopic effect is more than our eyes/brains can handle without creating long term after-effects.
 
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Bill Boehme said:
...The odd colored flickering light had some really strange physiological effects. ...

The odd spectral content of the high pressure sodium lights combined with the 120 Hz stroboscopic effect is more than our eyes/brains can handle without creating long term after-effects.
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I found that pPeople have radicallt differing sensitivities to such flickering.
In the days of CRT monitors, at 60 hz, the cheaper ones would drive me crazy in minutes.
While some people didn't notice at all but got headaches eventually.

I was a trader. We all sat on trading desks and stared at the monitors all day long...watching little numbers tick up and down. Boring!

The newer LED monitors etc don't seem to have that issue, thankfully.

I've also got HPS lights outside the shop, if I need to get things done in the evening (Like after 5 pm in this season)
Awesome efficiency, huge amounts of light. But serious downsides. Besides the flicker and strange color temperature, they can't be turned on/off quickly, need a few minutes to come up to full power, and buzz like hell. Personally I wouldn't use them inside.
 
Modern monitors are LCD display devices. The backlighting that shines through the liquid crystal pixels may be either fluorescent lights or LED lights. The great majority of them use fluorescent backlighting. A decade ago, the ones with LED backlighting were extremely expensive, but the prices have been gradually coming down. LCD displays with LED backlighting are still more expensive, but affordable and much more common in both monitors and TVs. The screen refresh rate is a determined by the LCD and not the backlighting. The more expensive ones have faster refresh rates as you might guess. Typical refresh rates are 60 to 80 Hz. Just as with CRT displays, afterimage persistence reduces flicker problems. Early LCD displays had terrible refresh rates with noticeable flicker problems.
 
hu lowery said:
I have a sodium light mounted on my barn and shining across my front yard as a night security light.
Noticing all of the comparisons here started me wondering a bit. When I had buildings full of fluorescents I found just taking the bulbs down and cleaning them brightened things a bunch even if they were shielded. Changing bulbs brightened things tremendously. Leaves me suspecting that when comparing old fluorescents to new LED's we aren't making a fair comparison. Is the LED output going to remain the same for the service life of the LED's or are they going to dim with time? Of course they will require cleaning but I wonder how much they will dim, and how soon if they will dim?



Hu
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I cannot speak definitively on the loss of brightness of LED , but have had a couple in kitchen for about 2 years and see no loss of light compared to CFL. On the idea of changing a light sensor there are 2 ways , both require wiring to a light switch. You can paint or otherwise block the sensor access to light or open light and bypass the sensor.
 
Semiconductor junctions slowly degrade over time because of ion migration. Elevated temperatures accelerate the process. Semiconductors have a long half-life several decades. I don't know how this impacts brightness, but I'm sure that brightness must decrease ... just don't know if it is noticeable. Don't worry though, because in another decade or two there will be something even greater to replace LEDs.
 
I am new here and saw this post a few days ago. I had one 4 bulb fluorescent fixture with a bad ballast. Rather than replace the ballast I replace the light with a 4' LED light fixture. In fact I replaced two of my four fixtures. I am pleased with the brightness of the lights. I plan to replace the other two fixtures. I paid $35.98 each for the LED lights at Sams. Also, I will be going from 512 watts of lighting to 160 watts so I will reduce my lighting cost by two thirds.
Tom
 
Another thumbs up for the $35 LED shop light from Sam's Club. I replaced a T8 fixture above my bench and, although the first one I bought was dead out of the box, the second one worked fine. The improvement is amazing. I plan to use one of these over each stationary tool and work area.

Ken
 
Thank You!

Gerald Lawrence said:
I cannot speak definitively on the loss of brightness of LED , but have had a couple in kitchen for about 2 years and see no loss of light compared to CFL. On the idea of changing a light sensor there are 2 ways , both require wiring to a light switch. You can paint or otherwise block the sensor access to light or open light and bypass the sensor.
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Gerald,

Many thanks! Something as simple as a few wraps of solid tape around the sensor hadn't crossed my mind. I'm not going to use that as an inside light just because it is too focused and there are too many things to cast shadows to be able to use it effectively in the barn but I'm thinking maybe a work light behind the barn or security lighting in the house yard pointing towards the highway or back towards the barn. Not sure what would be best use of it.

I'm thinking I'll get four of the LED's for my work area. Three around my lathe and grinding area; one to be able to find things in my tool boxes and bins, an impossible dream but being able to see would have to improve my chances.

Hu
 
costs

Bill Boehme said:
Apparently, our local Ace Hardware didn't get the news. I was in the store a couple days ago and they were selling for $99. 🙄
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Was looking the other day at air flights from Delta.
From Lansing, Mi to detroit to Marquette MI a week ago was $481. Then jumped to $781 2-3 days ago. Looked at going from Grand Rapids (59 mi west) back to Detroit and then Marquette+$381!!!!! Thought I'd look at a northern city in Mich (Traverse city) in case I would be vacationing there , and then just jump over the great Lakes, and it was $1381, to Marquette.!!!!!

I guess I just don't understand!!!!
BTW. I just got back again from Marquette and brought back a 27# maple burl in my carryon, and 40ish# of small cherry burls in a checked in nylon bag.. Befriended the check in gal (which the vet I work with said I should), and she said she had burls in in front yard!!!!. Asked for my wood business card. Will show her a finished cherry burl baby bowl in a couple of weeks.
I watched the TSA pawing through my nylon checked on bag with the cherry burls and they were grinning. Wonder why???? Gretch
 
Mark Hepburn said:
FYI, I found some pretty good, inexpensive LED strip lights if anyone is out there looking.

I was looking for some zip ties at WalMart when I stumbled on these lights and I bought 4 of them. They're LED, 4' long, plug-in with hanging chain and 4200 lumens. $43 bucks each. I bought one, installed it above my VB lathe and was so amazed that I went back and got 3 more.

They've almost completely eliminated my need for task / spot lights around the lathes (although I still have some mounted). I bought 4 of the little LEDs from Cindy Drozda's booth at Pittsburgh and they're great, but the overall lighting in the shop is hard to believe. I took out 6 fluorescent, 2- or 4-tube fixtures and replaced with these 4 and have much better light.

I know that there's always the debate about color temperature, CRI and so on. But for me, since I'm not doing any finishing or staining, etc. in this room, all I really need is lots of light (I wear trifocals and am due for another bump in strength shortly). So color temp isn't the deal for me but lots of light is.

Now, I know my shop is not exactly a Cadillac setup and could use some paint, etc (it's a converted porch), but you can probably see how much impact they've had for under $200. And I'll probably never have to replace them.

They're "Lights of America" and are also on Amazon. Link: http://smile.amazon.com/America-Sho...1965862&sr=8-1&keywords=lights+of+america+led

I have no affiliation whatsoever and am merely trying to help those who, like me, are finding their vision diminishing over time.


Edit: Oops, forgot the photo.

View attachment 9153
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They are amazing
 
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