The first LED light we have in our house is a first-gen generic 5W Chinese flush-mount ceiling light with beefy heatsink my dad bought in 2009. The driver failed not long after and was substituted with those old heavy linear power adapter and ran under-powered. Still turning on to this day and the whole setup is so simple it's basically immortal at this point.
Simple food for thought whenever you replace a screw into especially plastic, turn it back until it clicks back into the same groove it was in originally, then turn it right into the groove to tighten. Also often MFG's will use a self taping screw, and it might cut another groove, and in that case after a few time removing with out getting into the original groove the screw hole will be completely drill out with no more grooves. Machine threaded items don't usually have this concern. Nice project, I never knew if these could be taken apart to be fixed!
I remember you making some variation of this lamp. My elderly grandmother had the old model that made a strange low rumbling noise. It ran constantly for my entire youth and young adulthood.
This was over 30 years ago, but I'm pretty sure there was not a motor, nor was there any color. "Rumble" may not have been the best description. It was almost a hiss and a percolation noise. The lights in the base were warm white, almost yellow, and in my minds eye looked similar to halogen bulbs. I wonder if the noise actually came from a built-in dimmer circuit?
As a complete novice with all this, I'm always in awe of big Clive's soldering skills. I'm all thumbs, but am learning thanks to these videos. Top man 👍
I guess, if the heatsink compound is silicone based, it will creep. Silicone grease I have, especially the older stuff, creeps everywhere once applied. It may not be because the silicone grease is older but because it's been in place for longer.
Changes in temperature and heat transfer through metal often causes metal parts to warp and move around a bit. Even such small movements will create a "pumping" sort of action that causes heatsink compound to creep.
The heat compound is likely to be a very viscous liquid at operating temperature, thus flowing at glacial speeds over the years it's been running. At Manchester Uni, England, there is a pitch glacier that was made with an apparently solid lump of pitch back when Victoria was alive. By the seventies when I was there it had flowed several centimetres down the 10degree slope it was built on, and had completely lost it's original rectangular shape. Like pitch, heat sink compound is likely to flow less slowly the warmer it gets. It's designed to do this to help it spread well in the gap that it's bridging. If it acted like a solid it would make no better contact that leaving the gap dry.
@@FerralVideo To be fair, at that point some one may have over done it a little with the heatsink compound... On the hand, I don't think ~30 years of creep was planned for....
I see that I have an identical vice from my old pillar drill stand. I even remember buying it,decades ago. It's always fun to see other people's tool history played out on the bench.
Thank you for putting good descriptions in your videos. So many channels just copy and paste the same stuff, you actually take time to write useful and interesting stuff.
I sometimes put so much extra data in the description that I hit the character limit. I also occasionally post 3D printing scripts in the description too as copyable text.
Im impressed it lasted that long, its not usually the LEDs that fail its the power supply in the base, I do wonder about these life expectancy figures on the box. At least LED's are cheap now compared with the silly prices paid when they first came out
It is the power supply because that is typically either close to the heatsink or has parts that do not take heat well close to a heatsource (part of the driver or the LED). Most LED's do not suffer a failure because most people will never see their power supply last that long and throw the complete light out while it might just be the power supply that has gone down. Sometimes the power supplies are also designed with the absolute limits of handling main-power spikes in mind: making sure that parts supposed to protect the driver from those transient spikes suffer as quickly as possible but not to quickly that people want to switch brands.
@@Dutch3DMaster Yes totally agree, personally if I can I use 12V leds with a separate power supply but thats not always possible when retrofitting although I find track lighting pretty useful in those situations.
Why not fit a colour-changing lamp ? Maybe the sort with a handheld remote. It's handy that it will work thermally on 2W rather than needing 20 like a lava lamp
I recently bought a second hand NAS enclosure that was over a decade old, you can clearly see what drives were populated by the previous owner because the blue presence LEDs are a lot less bright on some of the bays.
Cool lamp an a nice repair. I'm amazed it's lasted 8 years. :) When modifying the normal LED mains bulbs, if you have them lit for about 15-20 mins then unplug them, (obviously), then it's easier to get the spudger in to remove the defuser dome. It softens the silicone glue. :)
I have experienced a similar thing on a smaller scale. I had a fan that was battery and/or USB powered. There's a small surface mount blue LED inside the base. Fan was running nearly continuously for about 4 years or so before I broke something while cleaning the dust off it one day. The package for the blue diode had turned noticeably yellow compared to the red one next to it that indicates charging state. (Flash for charging, solid for charged/no battery.) I don't know if it's the actual color attacking the material or something else, but I found it fascinating. That's impressive how long that lamp ran for. Most failures in my experience was the PSU getting too hot or too wet when used outside that one of the caps goes kablamo and the fixture starts blinking. In most cases, it just ceases to emit light. 8 years of near continuous operation is impressive, especially with how everything is so disposable these days.
the shorter the wavelengh, the higher the energy is carried with it. that is also the reason why modern vehicle headlights like xenon and led with their blu-ish colour tint are MUCH more prone to blind people in the dark then the old fashioned halogen bulbs did. if i was in the position to change things, i'd vote for a UV and Blue filter in these headlights. so your eyeballs don't get toasted at night on a steep uphill with oncoming traffic.
I always find the differences between North American English and UK English interesting. What you call a pillar drill we would likely call a drill press. They are typically free standing, either shorter bench top models or taller floor models. However, we also have much older drills, from the early 1900's, that are called post drills. They are not free standing. As the name suggests, they are mounted to the side of a post. Typically in a barn or shop. Most post drills are hand crank, although I have seen some with an electric motor belted to it.
There is a phenomenon you see with some thermal compounds in high-power electronics with transient loads, like CPUs and GPUs. Thermal cycling on and uneven heating results in expansion and contraction of the contact surfaces which produces a sort of "pumping" effect. This pushes out some of the thermal compound. I'm not sure if that's relevant here as you mentioned the lamp was on the entire time and its a relatively static load, but ambient temperature variations can certainly play a role here.
Clive what can I say, it’s fantastic how it’s lasted all this time non stop, and at under 2w it’s not going to make a dent in the electric bill is it, Brilliant mod shame the manufacturers don’t do it instead of the tungsten lamp
This would have been a great time to change to specific wavelengths rather than just "red" or "blue". I find most of the "red" beads like this are around 625nm which has that slightly orange cast to it. I really like the deep red 660nm ones. Add in a 440nm blue and 510nm green and you'd have really rich colours. Of course if you're more interested in the colours being more muted this might not be the way to go. it all depends on preferences I guess. But this video goes to show how long these things can last and that there truly are "user serviceable" parts inside. 😁
I just had a thought Clive is to build another one using under-run LEDs and the more up-to-date versions of the LEDs are something to think about for your next project.
So nice you can fully disassemble a lamp like that, the ones I could buy where I live are terrible noname brand products with the tiny SMD LEDs that start flickering after a few months of use, they can be hacked as shown in your channel but most are prone to fail in less than a year. I stick to incandescent for now and experiment with building my own LED lights with filaments inside small pickle jars. Power supplies are always external due to size issues. Not much but I've built a big one, 20W with 40 filaments inside a big mayo jar lol, bit messy but it works wonders.
Looks like the wavelength of the blue LED is just short enough to have enough energy to degrade the LED lens material, given enough time; In the same way that sunlight degrades most things (except UV light makes the process much faster). An impressive run time, maybe got lucky with the power supply under-running the LEDs, compared to the usual grilling.
This vid reminded me of a tech I used to know who had some highly amusing theories. One of them was that the universe would actually end when everything was covered in a thin layer of heat sink compound. He always got us laughing when things were getting too stressful.
At 70000 hours, that really is an impressive time span for LEDs. Silicone does creep. It was used as a lubricant on magnetic drum recorders between the record/playback head and the drum. Unfortunately, it doesn't stay where it's put and ended up putting a very thin film over everything, including electronic gear adjacent to the recorder. It made things very hard to clean and soldering difficult.
At a guess, thermal migration of compounds is at play. The heat of the LED's generate thermal eddie currents within the enclosure, this thermal flow can and does move inorganic matter causing it to migrate around the area. The Thermal paste is oil based and thus is prone to becoming airborne within the thermal eddies created, but as it's heavier than air gravity eventually becomes the dominant force and thus it ends up 'splattered' around the base of the enclosure, aided by the metal basket being slightly cooler than the higher areas. We have sealed external cameras that used to suffer what looked like fogging on the inside of the glass lens, took us ages to work out it was the various manufacturing greases (thermal compound, flux etc...) within the housing becoming mobile due to the thermal currents, they then essentially condense on the cooler front glass. We solved this by A; Isopropyl bathing all the components before assembly, and B; by closing up the enclosure in a nitrogen 99% environment to ensure no airborne contaminants get in during sealing. Just my guess.....?
The Silicon Oil in the Heatsink Compound would definitely creep when it constantly hot, as others have said. I have occasionally seen this before with the white compound. This lamp should last another 10 years now
Consider this must be just one of an untold number of Clive-crafted always-on theatrically-inspired reduced-brightness lamps constantly illuminating Clive's cold cottage.
That was not what I was imagining whey you said you were going to get your Vice. 🙂 That is an interesting Lamp, I don't think I have seen one like it before. Thanks for your Videos Clive.
I'm sure I have a similar lamp, same construction but warm white in colour. Also still going after a number of years. I'll try to find it, and see if it has the same problem with the heatsink paste.
At around 13:20 my Google thingy started listening and then said "Great" after you said "...and that is notably a lot bluer"!! So your replacement has been acknowledged by them, good news!! ;-))
Clive, I am watching you solder surface mount LED's with a soldering iron. Have you ever used solder paste? It is lead-free and you just squeeze it on like flux, Then you heat it with a special heat gun which directs the hot air into a pinpoint, The paste has a lower melting temperature than lead-based solder and it makes soldering look so easy. I would like you to feature a video of this for other people.
holly molly 8 continuous years?! I've ordered a bunch of such led bulbs over the time from aliexpress and ebay (ofc the cheapest i could find, lol) and none have passed 3-4 years. They were white led bulbs used on various appliances around the home, so not 24/7, but rather 3 hours / day at most. And the majority of such bulbs would die in 2 years, some in one and some in 3 + years. You got amazing quality from your bulb there
I have made DIY LED's also that are still running after 10 years, running LED's, especially slightly below their wattage rating, results in them lasting incredibly long.
I've seen many cases of blue LEDs fading over time, mostly when used as indicators. Power LED in a small 3 channel analog mixer on my desk has faded to barely visible at night over 3 years of being on 24/7. A USB hub that has indicators on each port has noticeably faded on a couple that are always left connected. I wonder why they are typically so fragile? I prefer red/amber/green indicators anyway for power but sadly the trend is for blue and even (UGH) stupidly bright white!
Very amazing and cool. Thanks Big Clive. Interesting on the discoloration over time. I wonder if there is a better material they could have used if they had it back then?
@@bigclivedotcom Eight years. So fabulous. I wonder if the quartz windows would get cheap with mass production and a higher demand? Calcium Nitrate. Seems like you mentioned that recently with it being much heavier than water. I'm going to have to look that up and play.
Hi Clive. Sorry about random question here - couldn’t work out how best to contact you. I have an old “master/slave” power strip. Never really used it, so just tested it still worked before planning to eBay. Used tester plugs and they revealed all slave sockets have “live” permanently! Master just cuts neutral to them! Sounds super dangerous to me so I won’t sell now, but wondered if you wanted it for demo etc?
The same thing goes for LED TV's and computer monitors. I usually run the brightness level at 0 percent. It makes the screen lighting last longer than the capacitors in the power supply.
If you over apply thermal paste, the pressure and heat will make it creep. Especially since it isn't a rigid construction. The aluminium sheet flex a little and probably trap a blob in the middle between the screws which then works as a spring. When the paste is warm and more viscous it squirts out. Have you had a chance to search for the tripple function heat/UV/ozone boot dryers?
Inserting the lamp into the holder. Get/use a round 1.5 inch rubber sucker with a key ring holder on the back. The sort of thing you would use to remove a smartphone screen (or the sort of thing the used to hold Garfield cats to the rear windscreens of cars 30+ years ago). This also means you can lift the lamp out without turning anything over.
I've got one of those colour changing Oggz LED eggs and I've had it running 24/7 since about 2006. The internal battery doesn't hold much charge and the green colour works sometimes and flashes/flickers most other times but other than that it still works on external power. Can't find a replacement battery and can't get into it as the capsule is glued together.
I’ve salvaged components from old computers. Heat sink compounds do flow when heated, but it’s like the infamous tar drop experiment in that’s it’s very slow. It tends to flow away from the heat very slowly. After a couple of years of on/off performance you can see it on gpu heat sinks, there is less compound in the middle and more at the edges, and sometimes it starts to bulge out and flow across nearby areas.
constant pressure between the two parts as well as variations due to temp cycles and sometimes gravity plays against the compound. That's why high viscosity pastes or pads are recommended for low maintenance applications.
I know you have tons of experience soldering, but when you was pushing with the iron. I was wincing in fear that you'd stab your finger with it. My own experience taught me that solder can flow unexpectedly fast after being stubborn. Stay safe.
Have an IKEA "snake LED" lamp (JANSJÖ LED USB lamp - black) of the first model they sold. This is a much better product then the current version with the same product name. It has been on 24/7 for the last 9 years and are still about the same strength as when it was new. This first model have outlasted several of the newer version. The newer models have a little stronger light, but you can not expect them to last more then 3-4 years then the power module dies.
It might be creep, but it might also be vaporization and deposition. Silicone based products will vaporize (if you've used the coatings for your dashboard, you'll notice you have to clean the windshield more often), and then deposit themselves. The underside of the disk will be the hottest point, but will rapidly cool as it flows up the edge of the aluminum casing towards the outside.
It's a beautiful lamp. I like them very much. We experience blue light as blured because our eyes focus on red and green wavelength. What I am looking for is a horizontal lamp with blue and transparent filling with central axis in the middle across, slowly tipping from one side to another and back, some 10 degrees or so, resembling so the waves in the water, sea. Very bright, some half meter in length. I recall it from my childhood have seen in Italy, Udine, but could not find it anywhere any more.
I made a video some time ago about an LED light from the base of a traffic bollard, it had clocked up over 100K hours and was still working, the chips had faded from warm white to blue and the phosphor was burnt to a crisp, also the lenses were brown and crispy, presumably due to the heat exposure.
8 f'n years of 100% uptime is kind of crazy, longest I've ever had a light is CFL lights lasting nearly 15 years and not on 24hr Also, an LED strip shop light that's been on nearly constantly (for indoor plants) since 2017. Now I'm going to go look to see if you got an old video on the glitter lamp lol.
When i made some indicator leds to my car i didn't know about blue leds being so sensitive. I limited current just like for green led (like 2k) and it was just like a mood light - brighter, than 5W bulb. When circuit for this led was off it stayed dimly lid, so i was sure about some that mistake being in wiring. Many hours of trying to repair this later i used my second led to find correct resistor, and it was dim at about 200k ohm. I installed this value on this problematic led and it was off - from being at overcurrent conditions it ended up loosing like 70% of efficiency and needs 50k for the same brightness and does fade in instead of instant turn on. This was hard lesson for me, as every change in circuit was backed by like 10 minutes of disassembly and then driving around :>
It would have been nice to set the wasted blue chip through a spectrum analyser. On which frequencies would it be performing nowadays? Has its frequency shifted, is it just less efficient (less emission) or a combination of both?
What about thermal pads like what they use in GPU's vram and other areas? It comes in different thicknesses and I don't think will creep, its a bit squishy so it would ensure the front part pushes the lenses more properly onto the LED's (from behind). At least I think.
I’ve seen silicone based thermal compound creep and start to separate over long periods of time. Even some thermal pads can start to emit a thin oily residue around them over time.
Nasel inhaler? you mean a bottle of poppers 😎 Interesting light, just shows when the LEDs aren't run at 100% or more, they last a good amount of time. 2x👍
Clive, re your own glitter lamps not working/destroying the glitter; have you tested the PH value of your solution? Also, Glitter lamps would use Anhydrous Calcium Nitrate as a basis.
From memory the heatsink compound is Boron Dioxide. I'm not surprised that is crept based on how far a tiny blob goes when you don't realise it's on your cuff.
There's an effect called pumping that happens with the expansion and contraction when heating and cooling of materials that can cause thermal compounds to creep out from between the 2 mated surfaces, but seeing as this light has stayed on 24/7 i don't think this is the case here as the temperature change in this unit should be next to none.
Speaking of fixing things... I fixed 2 $300 dollar dell monitors 2 days ago and surprised the old tech guy i think i earned points! Just a few bulgy caps on the psu. Replaced them and boom 43 inches of HOLY SHIT THAT'S CLEAR! only the 3rd time I have ever soldered in my life!
@@zyeborm Kind if curious why it was the same 5 caps on both boards(seperate monitors), is that an overload symptom? or Just a common failure point? And thanks for encouragement!
@@jayare1933 heat is the killer on them these days. Same design, same problem. They were probably working hard which gets them hotter which shortens their lives.
@@zyeborm I was informed they were on ebay for a total of an hour! I'm glad I gave them a new life! I feel bad taking some of the stuff apart! It was nice to do the opposite. Urban prospecting is fun! Today I learned about the bios password jumper!
So guess who saw the title and calculated how many years that would be of continuous running; only to hear Clive give the same figure within a few moments of the video
I have a set of LEDs from RapidLED that have been running on my aquarium for 10 years. 10-12 hours a day (depending on the time of year) on a sunrise-sunset controller. I would have thought two years then they would fail.
Bigclive, I’m sure you understand the lot of your followers are competent when it comes to electrical components, you may want to be inspiring many others being as primal as you can be within context! Lots of new ears these days!
Clive, you are without a doubt the best man I can think of to hot-rod a glitter lamp, and almost certainly the only one who would. 😅
"Hot-rodding a Glitter Lamp" is a pretty excellent phrase, Mate! 🙂
I know many others have said this but it bears repeating that your videos bring some odd joy and and peace when watched.
The first LED light we have in our house is a first-gen generic 5W Chinese flush-mount ceiling light with beefy heatsink my dad bought in 2009. The driver failed not long after and was substituted with those old heavy linear power adapter and ran under-powered. Still turning on to this day and the whole setup is so simple it's basically immortal at this point.
Simple food for thought whenever you replace a screw into especially plastic, turn it back until it clicks back into the same groove it was in originally, then turn it right into the groove to tighten. Also often MFG's will use a self taping screw, and it might cut another groove, and in that case after a few time removing with out getting into the original groove the screw hole will be completely drill out with no more grooves. Machine threaded items don't usually have this concern. Nice project, I never knew if these could be taken apart to be fixed!
i will cringe when people dont do this
This changed my life when diodegonewild said it in some video. Never looked back.
I’ve always been annoyed with computer fans for this exact reason. It seems like the self-tapping screws are some sort of standard.
A few years ago you made a diamond lamp. Mines been going now for about 4 years. Never been turned off.
stop wasting electric power - they should jail you in a dark cold room too 😂😂😂😂
@@HBees79 ermmmmm no
@@HBees79 Do you take a shower longer than 4 minutes>? Then you are wasting more.
@@gordonlawrence1448 but I wash my self, not that I'm just standing in the shower and looking out the window 🚿😂
@@HBees79 Still using more power...
I remember you making some variation of this lamp. My elderly grandmother had the old model that made a strange low rumbling noise. It ran constantly for my entire youth and young adulthood.
Would the rumbling noise have been a synchronous motor turning a coloured disc maybe? Can't think what else would make that noise...
Was it magnetic ballast CFL?_
This was over 30 years ago, but I'm pretty sure there was not a motor, nor was there any color. "Rumble" may not have been the best description. It was almost a hiss and a percolation noise. The lights in the base were warm white, almost yellow, and in my minds eye looked similar to halogen bulbs.
I wonder if the noise actually came from a built-in dimmer circuit?
As a complete novice with all this, I'm always in awe of big Clive's soldering skills. I'm all thumbs, but am learning thanks to these videos. Top man 👍
I can't hold components that small while soldering without burning my fingers.
Almost at 1 million big lad, well done.
Thank you for posting this video! This is the second time a circuit board has surprised me with its simplicity. Must try it.
It's nice to see the Vice of Knowledge making a cameo appearance to assist in this video.
"Granular Liquid Mercury".... ahhh, what an evocative description.
Thank you for adding so much to the pleasures of this existence.
Perhaps it looks different to the eye but I quite like the sharp red spots and the blurry blue ones together, makes a nice contrast.
I guess, if the heatsink compound is silicone based, it will creep. Silicone grease I have, especially the older stuff, creeps everywhere once applied. It may not be because the silicone grease is older but because it's been in place for longer.
Changes in temperature and heat transfer through metal often causes metal parts to warp and move around a bit. Even such small movements will create a "pumping" sort of action that causes heatsink compound to creep.
That might explain how the goop in my 486 computer's heat sink got into the socket. Thanks for the info!
The heat compound is likely to be a very viscous liquid at operating temperature, thus flowing at glacial speeds over the years it's been running.
At Manchester Uni, England, there is a pitch glacier that was made with an apparently solid lump of pitch back when Victoria was alive. By the seventies when I was there it had flowed several centimetres down the 10degree slope it was built on, and had completely lost it's original rectangular shape.
Like pitch, heat sink compound is likely to flow less slowly the warmer it gets. It's designed to do this to help it spread well in the gap that it's bridging. If it acted like a solid it would make no better contact that leaving the gap dry.
@@trueriver1950 I must say, what an incredible explanation! I really feel like I learned quite a bit more than I actually did! Well done! 👍
@@FerralVideo To be fair, at that point some one may have over done it a little with the heatsink compound... On the hand, I don't think ~30 years of creep was planned for....
Good morning Clive. Impressive it has gone this long without any major failure in between.
I see that I have an identical vice from my old pillar drill stand. I even remember buying it,decades ago.
It's always fun to see other people's tool history played out on the bench.
Careful what you wish for.
Thank you for putting good descriptions in your videos. So many channels just copy and paste the same stuff, you actually take time to write useful and interesting stuff.
I sometimes put so much extra data in the description that I hit the character limit. I also occasionally post 3D printing scripts in the description too as copyable text.
Good stuff! I enjoy these 're-visit much later' videos as I often watch your videos and wonder how long the thing is going to last etc. Cheers.
Im impressed it lasted that long, its not usually the LEDs that fail its the power supply in the base, I do wonder about these life expectancy figures on the box. At least LED's are cheap now compared with the silly prices paid when they first came out
It is the power supply because that is typically either close to the heatsink or has parts that do not take heat well close to a heatsource (part of the driver or the LED). Most LED's do not suffer a failure because most people will never see their power supply last that long and throw the complete light out while it might just be the power supply that has gone down.
Sometimes the power supplies are also designed with the absolute limits of handling main-power spikes in mind: making sure that parts supposed to protect the driver from those transient spikes suffer as quickly as possible but not to quickly that people want to switch brands.
@@Dutch3DMaster Yes totally agree, personally if I can I use 12V leds with a separate power supply but thats not always possible when retrofitting although I find track lighting pretty useful in those situations.
"To the workbench!"
*Swirling background, and your logo making like the 60s Batman one*
Why not fit a colour-changing lamp ? Maybe the sort with a handheld remote.
It's handy that it will work thermally on 2W rather than needing 20 like a lava lamp
Wow...an excellent runtime!
I recently bought a second hand NAS enclosure that was over a decade old, you can clearly see what drives were populated by the previous owner because the blue presence LEDs are a lot less bright on some of the bays.
Cool lamp an a nice repair. I'm amazed it's lasted 8 years. :)
When modifying the normal LED mains bulbs, if you have them lit for about 15-20 mins then unplug them, (obviously), then it's easier to get the spudger in to remove the defuser dome. It softens the silicone glue. :)
I have experienced a similar thing on a smaller scale. I had a fan that was battery and/or USB powered. There's a small surface mount blue LED inside the base. Fan was running nearly continuously for about 4 years or so before I broke something while cleaning the dust off it one day. The package for the blue diode had turned noticeably yellow compared to the red one next to it that indicates charging state. (Flash for charging, solid for charged/no battery.) I don't know if it's the actual color attacking the material or something else, but I found it fascinating.
That's impressive how long that lamp ran for. Most failures in my experience was the PSU getting too hot or too wet when used outside that one of the caps goes kablamo and the fixture starts blinking. In most cases, it just ceases to emit light. 8 years of near continuous operation is impressive, especially with how everything is so disposable these days.
Shorter wavelength light (blue, violet, UV) tends to damage plastics more than the longer wavelengths like red...
the shorter the wavelengh, the higher the energy is carried with it.
that is also the reason why modern vehicle headlights like xenon and led with their blu-ish colour tint are MUCH more prone to blind people in the dark then the old fashioned halogen bulbs did.
if i was in the position to change things, i'd vote for a UV and Blue filter in these headlights. so your eyeballs don't get toasted at night on a steep uphill with oncoming traffic.
I always find the differences between North American English and UK English interesting. What you call a pillar drill we would likely call a drill press. They are typically free standing, either shorter bench top models or taller floor models. However, we also have much older drills, from the early 1900's, that are called post drills. They are not free standing. As the name suggests, they are mounted to the side of a post. Typically in a barn or shop. Most post drills are hand crank, although I have seen some with an electric motor belted to it.
Thanks for posting this fun stuff. I have learned so many soldering techniques from your videos.
There is a phenomenon you see with some thermal compounds in high-power electronics with transient loads, like CPUs and GPUs.
Thermal cycling on and uneven heating results in expansion and contraction of the contact surfaces which produces a sort of "pumping" effect. This pushes out some of the thermal compound.
I'm not sure if that's relevant here as you mentioned the lamp was on the entire time and its a relatively static load, but ambient temperature variations can certainly play a role here.
Clive what can I say, it’s fantastic how it’s lasted all this time non stop, and at under 2w it’s not going to make a dent in the electric bill is it,
Brilliant mod shame the manufacturers don’t do it instead of the tungsten lamp
It requires much more delicate liquid density balancing than a tungsten lamp.
@@bigclivedotcom oh I see shame it’s not widely available, great work btw thanks
This would have been a great time to change to specific wavelengths rather than just "red" or "blue". I find most of the "red" beads like this are around 625nm which has that slightly orange cast to it. I really like the deep red 660nm ones. Add in a 440nm blue and 510nm green and you'd have really rich colours. Of course if you're more interested in the colours being more muted this might not be the way to go. it all depends on preferences I guess. But this video goes to show how long these things can last and that there truly are "user serviceable" parts inside. 😁
It's currently got a red/amber combo in it.
I just had a thought Clive is to build another one using under-run LEDs and the more up-to-date versions of the LEDs are something to think about for your next project.
So nice you can fully disassemble a lamp like that, the ones I could buy where I live are terrible noname brand products with the tiny SMD LEDs that start flickering after a few months of use, they can be hacked as shown in your channel but most are prone to fail in less than a year. I stick to incandescent for now and experiment with building my own LED lights with filaments inside small pickle jars. Power supplies are always external due to size issues.
Not much but I've built a big one, 20W with 40 filaments inside a big mayo jar lol, bit messy but it works wonders.
Looks like the wavelength of the blue LED is just short enough to have enough energy to degrade the LED lens material, given enough time; In the same way that sunlight degrades most things (except UV light makes the process much faster). An impressive run time, maybe got lucky with the power supply under-running the LEDs, compared to the usual grilling.
Flowing some " soulder" with big Clive!
Love these kind of videos!
This vid reminded me of a tech I used to know who had some highly amusing theories. One of them was that the universe would actually end when everything was covered in a thin layer of heat sink compound. He always got us laughing when things were getting too stressful.
At 70000 hours, that really is an impressive time span for LEDs. Silicone does creep. It was used as a lubricant on magnetic drum recorders between the record/playback head and the drum. Unfortunately, it doesn't stay where it's put and ended up putting a very thin film over everything, including electronic gear adjacent to the recorder. It made things very hard to clean and soldering difficult.
It's also vaporization and deposition. Same thing that happens to your windshield in the weeks after you put Armor-All or similar on the dashboard.
Testing if the power supply is discharged by bridging the cap with the finger. Love it! 😂
At a guess, thermal migration of compounds is at play. The heat of the LED's generate thermal eddie currents within the enclosure, this thermal flow can and does move inorganic matter causing it to migrate around the area. The Thermal paste is oil based and thus is prone to becoming airborne within the thermal eddies created, but as it's heavier than air gravity eventually becomes the dominant force and thus it ends up 'splattered' around the base of the enclosure, aided by the metal basket being slightly cooler than the higher areas.
We have sealed external cameras that used to suffer what looked like fogging on the inside of the glass lens, took us ages to work out it was the various manufacturing greases (thermal compound, flux etc...) within the housing becoming mobile due to the thermal currents, they then essentially condense on the cooler front glass. We solved this by A; Isopropyl bathing all the components before assembly, and B; by closing up the enclosure in a nitrogen 99% environment to ensure no airborne contaminants get in during sealing. Just my guess.....?
Huh ???
A very good Friday morning to you all from Wellington Somerset
dang ... desoldering with circuit in one hand like a boss.
Nice to see one that survived so long :)
2:40
Stepping on LEGO: Hurt Lvl 9
Stepping on a UK Plug: Hurt Lvl OVER 9000!!!!
The Silicon Oil in the Heatsink Compound would definitely creep when it constantly hot, as others have said. I have occasionally seen this before with the white compound.
This lamp should last another 10 years now
I thought I saw you in Wetherby West Yorkshire a few days ago but thought can’t possibly be you. Keep up the great work.
It wasn't me.
Consider this must be just one of an untold number of Clive-crafted always-on theatrically-inspired reduced-brightness lamps constantly illuminating Clive's cold cottage.
This would be a fun little kit to build.
It's pretty impressive to get 70000 hours from a lightbulb Clive and morning too here it's 1:07AM
That was not what I was imagining whey you said you were going to get your Vice. 🙂 That is an interesting Lamp, I don't think I have seen one like it before. Thanks for your Videos Clive.
I'm sure I have a similar lamp, same construction but warm white in colour. Also still going after a number of years. I'll try to find it, and see if it has the same problem with the heatsink paste.
At around 13:20 my Google thingy started listening and then said "Great" after you said "...and that is notably a lot bluer"!! So your replacement has been acknowledged by them, good news!! ;-))
Clive, I am watching you solder surface mount LED's with a soldering iron. Have you ever used solder paste? It is lead-free and you just squeeze it on like flux, Then you heat it with a special heat gun which directs the hot air into a pinpoint, The paste has a lower melting temperature than lead-based solder and it makes soldering look so easy.
I would like you to feature a video of this for other people.
Impressive little light. Today leds cannot survive so much time even sitting on the shelf, what to say if they must work lol.
holly molly 8 continuous years?!
I've ordered a bunch of such led bulbs over the time from aliexpress and ebay (ofc the cheapest i could find, lol) and none have passed 3-4 years.
They were white led bulbs used on various appliances around the home, so not 24/7, but rather 3 hours / day at most.
And the majority of such bulbs would die in 2 years, some in one and some in 3 + years.
You got amazing quality from your bulb there
It was probably helped by being lower than 3W to start with and operating base-down in a cool environment.
Well, the explanation is fairly simple... "It's ALIVE!" 😱
I have made DIY LED's also that are still running after 10 years, running LED's, especially slightly below their wattage rating, results in them lasting incredibly long.
The vise of Knowledge makes an appearance!!
I've seen many cases of blue LEDs fading over time, mostly when used as indicators. Power LED in a small 3 channel analog mixer on my desk has faded to barely visible at night over 3 years of being on 24/7. A USB hub that has indicators on each port has noticeably faded on a couple that are always left connected. I wonder why they are typically so fragile? I prefer red/amber/green indicators anyway for power but sadly the trend is for blue and even (UGH) stupidly bright white!
Very cool. You could replace one red led with a yellow, and have red, yellow and blue
Very amazing and cool. Thanks Big Clive.
Interesting on the discoloration over time. I wonder if there is a better material they could have used if they had it back then?
The new UVC LEDs use quartz windows. But that would get expensive fast.
@@bigclivedotcom Eight years. So fabulous. I wonder if the quartz windows would get cheap with mass production and a higher demand?
Calcium Nitrate. Seems like you mentioned that recently with it being much heavier than water. I'm going to have to look that up and play.
Hi Clive. Sorry about random question here - couldn’t work out how best to contact you.
I have an old “master/slave” power strip. Never really used it, so just tested it still worked before planning to eBay. Used tester plugs and they revealed all slave sockets have “live” permanently! Master just cuts neutral to them! Sounds super dangerous to me so I won’t sell now, but wondered if you wanted it for demo etc?
Heat sink compound creep is a thing with some brands. Cool light
You're correct, Clive. An additional yellow diode would be an improvement.
The same thing goes for LED TV's and computer monitors. I usually run the brightness level at 0 percent. It makes the screen lighting last longer than the capacitors in the power supply.
If you over apply thermal paste, the pressure and heat will make it creep. Especially since it isn't a rigid construction. The aluminium sheet flex a little and probably trap a blob in the middle between the screws which then works as a spring. When the paste is warm and more viscous it squirts out.
Have you had a chance to search for the tripple function heat/UV/ozone boot dryers?
That was so cool! Very interesting video.
Inserting the lamp into the holder.
Get/use a round 1.5 inch rubber sucker with a key ring holder on the back. The sort of thing you would use to remove a smartphone screen (or the sort of thing the used to hold Garfield cats to the rear windscreens of cars 30+ years ago).
This also means you can lift the lamp out without turning anything over.
I've got one of those colour changing Oggz LED eggs and I've had it running 24/7 since about 2006. The internal battery doesn't hold much charge and the green colour works sometimes and flashes/flickers most other times but other than that it still works on external power. Can't find a replacement battery and can't get into it as the capsule is glued together.
Ah yes. I stepped on a nema 5 plug some years ago and had it go into my foot. I have a “no stepping on plugs” policy now
the main problem seems to be all of them are 90° angled versions. so you have to step into the prongs 🤦♀️
I’ve salvaged components from old computers. Heat sink compounds do flow when heated, but it’s like the infamous tar drop experiment in that’s it’s very slow. It tends to flow away from the heat very slowly. After a couple of years of on/off performance you can see it on gpu heat sinks, there is less compound in the middle and more at the edges, and sometimes it starts to bulge out and flow across nearby areas.
constant pressure between the two parts as well as variations due to temp cycles and sometimes gravity plays against the compound. That's why high viscosity pastes or pads are recommended for low maintenance applications.
I know you have tons of experience soldering, but when you was pushing with the iron. I was wincing in fear that you'd stab your finger with it. My own experience taught me that solder can flow unexpectedly fast after being stubborn. Stay safe.
Have an IKEA "snake LED" lamp (JANSJÖ LED USB lamp - black) of the first model they sold. This is a much better product then the current version with the same product name.
It has been on 24/7 for the last 9 years and are still about the same strength as when it was new. This first model have outlasted several of the newer version. The newer models have a little stronger light, but you can not expect them to last more then 3-4 years then the power module dies.
It might be creep, but it might also be vaporization and deposition. Silicone based products will vaporize (if you've used the coatings for your dashboard, you'll notice you have to clean the windshield more often), and then deposit themselves. The underside of the disk will be the hottest point, but will rapidly cool as it flows up the edge of the aluminum casing towards the outside.
It's a beautiful lamp. I like them very much. We experience blue light as blured because our eyes focus on red and green wavelength. What I am looking for is a horizontal lamp with blue and transparent filling with central axis in the middle across, slowly tipping from one side to another and back, some 10 degrees or so, resembling so the waves in the water, sea. Very bright, some half meter in length. I recall it from my childhood have seen in Italy, Udine, but could not find it anywhere any more.
Rocking wave lamp.
@@bigclivedotcom Thank you
I made a video some time ago about an LED light from the base of a traffic bollard, it had clocked up over 100K hours and was still working, the chips had faded from warm white to blue and the phosphor was burnt to a crisp, also the lenses were brown and crispy, presumably due to the heat exposure.
A light fitting came with a rubber suction cup for removing and installing GU10 lamps and I kept it. Surprised how many times its come in handy
8 f'n years of 100% uptime is kind of crazy, longest I've ever had a light is CFL lights lasting nearly 15 years and not on 24hr
Also, an LED strip shop light that's been on nearly constantly (for indoor plants) since 2017.
Now I'm going to go look to see if you got an old video on the glitter lamp lol.
The sound is so different when you're not at the bench, didn't expect that.
I would of took a red out and put a green in lol
8 years wow fantastic video as per norm
Clive keep at it
@@Kevin-mp5of taken
creeping up, reminds me of red wine , it also creeps up the glass wall, minimally
When i made some indicator leds to my car i didn't know about blue leds being so sensitive. I limited current just like for green led (like 2k) and it was just like a mood light - brighter, than 5W bulb. When circuit for this led was off it stayed dimly lid, so i was sure about some that mistake being in wiring. Many hours of trying to repair this later i used my second led to find correct resistor, and it was dim at about 200k ohm. I installed this value on this problematic led and it was off - from being at overcurrent conditions it ended up loosing like 70% of efficiency and needs 50k for the same brightness and does fade in instead of instant turn on. This was hard lesson for me, as every change in circuit was backed by like 10 minutes of disassembly and then driving around :>
It would have been nice to set the wasted blue chip through a spectrum analyser. On which frequencies would it be performing nowadays? Has its frequency shifted, is it just less efficient (less emission) or a combination of both?
PRETTY. I always thought you're not supposed to leave things turned on, I always turn my LED stuff off. Do I not need to?
Hello 👋
Much peace ✌️ love ❤️ unity and respect ✊
What about thermal pads like what they use in GPU's vram and other areas? It comes in different thicknesses and I don't think will creep, its a bit squishy so it would ensure the front part pushes the lenses more properly onto the LED's (from behind). At least I think.
Pcs and other parts suffer from the same problem. Most of the time you just don't notice
Thinking it lasted this long as it has ran continuously without too many heat sycles and because power suply is in the coolest position
OMG! Flashback! UC Berkeley, 1967!
I’ve seen silicone based thermal compound creep and start to separate over long periods of time. Even some thermal pads can start to emit a thin oily residue around them over time.
That roscoe glitter still lives in my nightmares…what a foookin mess!!!🤦♂️🤷🏻♂️🤣🤣😂😂
The compound probably got too hot and spread like it did, which is why it probably helped that it hasn't died yet.
not bad! OH CRAP, I just realized I watched you do that, 8 years ago...dang, I am such a voyeur, been watching you that long...geez...
Yeah. The timescale surprised me too.
Big Clive is the bob ross of electronics
I miss those metal no-name GU10 LED lamps, I found them quite reliable and super easy to repair if they fail.
Still available from a few eBay sellers. I just ordered some.
Nasel inhaler? you mean a bottle of poppers 😎 Interesting light, just shows when the LEDs aren't run at 100% or more, they last a good amount of time. 2x👍
Clive, re your own glitter lamps not working/destroying the glitter; have you tested the PH value of your solution?
Also, Glitter lamps would use Anhydrous Calcium Nitrate as a basis.
From memory the heatsink compound is Boron Dioxide. I'm not surprised that is crept based on how far a tiny blob goes when you don't realise it's on your cuff.
There's an effect called pumping that happens with the expansion and contraction when heating and cooling of materials that can cause thermal compounds to creep out from between the 2 mated surfaces, but seeing as this light has stayed on 24/7 i don't think this is the case here as the temperature change in this unit should be next to none.
Interesting. Might be interesting to put two blue LEDs in and only one red one, or, yet another color (green? Red and green for Christmas? :)
Speaking of fixing things... I fixed 2 $300 dollar dell monitors 2 days ago and surprised the old tech guy i think i earned points! Just a few bulgy caps on the psu. Replaced them and boom 43 inches of HOLY SHIT THAT'S CLEAR! only the 3rd time I have ever soldered in my life!
Nice work my dude! (Old tech guy here as well lol)
@@zyeborm Kind if curious why it was the same 5 caps on both boards(seperate monitors), is that an overload symptom? or Just a common failure point?
And thanks for encouragement!
@@jayare1933 heat is the killer on them these days. Same design, same problem. They were probably working hard which gets them hotter which shortens their lives.
@@zyeborm I was informed they were on ebay for a total of an hour! I'm glad I gave them a new life! I feel bad taking some of the stuff apart! It was nice to do the opposite. Urban prospecting is fun! Today I learned about the bios password jumper!
So guess who saw the title and calculated how many years that would be of continuous running; only to hear Clive give the same figure within a few moments of the video
I have a set of LEDs from RapidLED that have been running on my aquarium for 10 years. 10-12 hours a day (depending on the time of year) on a sunrise-sunset controller. I would have thought two years then they would fail.
Bigclive, I’m sure you understand the lot of your followers are competent when it comes to electrical components, you may want to be inspiring many others being as primal as you can be within context! Lots of new ears these days!
I imagine the surface on close inspection will be quite rough and the stuff just capillaries or 'wicks' itself around, maybe ?.....cheers.