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Ancor LED bulb

4K views 21 replies 13 participants last post by  donradclife 
#1 ·
This bulb is a single contact bayonet basr with 12 leds. It is in a new fixture in the head. I seem to get about 30 to 50 hours of service from them before on led starts to blink then two ect. I have replaced it three times, warrenty,one shiped from Ancor. Any ideas?
 
#2 ·
Bad contact, causing resistance and voltage drop. Could be in the fixture, or the wire to the fixture. Low voltage is compensated by an increase in current draw, and heat as a byproduct. Increase in heat, causes further voltage drop, and current draw. It's a vicious cycle until the heat cooks the magic smoke out of the LED.
 
#6 ·
Don, not so helpful, that, and flat wrong to boot. While your advice applies quite nicely to the simple, standard incandescent light bulb, the LED light is a semiconductor device that resides on a circuit board with a voltage regulator.

Mr. Herlihy has it right - the circuit tries to maintain constant output of light. It compensates for low voltage with additional current to deleterious effect. For semiconductor devices, too much current is their worst enemy. The power absorbed (R*I**2) across the high-resistance junction generates more heat per second than it can dissipate per second, which melts the junction. Thus ends their useful life.
 
#10 · (Edited)
Don, not so helpful, that, and flat wrong to boot. While your advice applies quite nicely to the simple, standard incandescent light bulb, the LED light is a semiconductor device that resides on a circuit board with a voltage regulator.

Mr. Herlihy has it right - the circuit tries to maintain constant output of light. It compensates for low voltage with additional current to deleterious effect. For semiconductor devices, too much current is their worst enemy. The power absorbed (R*I**2) across the high-resistance junction generates more heat per second than it can dissipate per second, which melts the junction. Thus ends their useful life.
]boy, that's a lot of big words. I'm not sure I understand completely, but I think you're saying the magic smoke got out? could't you just use the Internet tubes to pump more in?
 
#5 · (Edited)
Touchy, touchy....

How about both of you expanding a bit as to WHY others are right or wrong before you snipe at one another? After-all, this ain't the OT or PRWG pages.

However, loss of the factory-installed smoke is pretty highly correlated with electronics failures.;)
 
#7 ·
The LED's from Ancor are a very cheaply made product, likely made with very inexpensive ballast resistors and cheap orphaned emitters. Quality bulbs will use a DC/DC constant current regulator to feed the emitters what they need for a long life.

I highly doubt the Ancor bulbs have the circuitry or heat sinking to keep the emitters at a temp they like.

You might try a factory made LED nav light built for the purpose from the likes of Hella, Aqua Signal or others..
 
#9 ·
I highly doubt the Ancor bulbs have the circuitry or heat sinking to keep the emitters at a temp they like.
Egads! Thanks for that info, Maine! I don't have personal experience with Ancor and didn't realize the company didn't do a proper job of designing support circuitry.

Ugh. How do people like that stay in business? As soon as clientele catch on their sales should plummet.

Tom
 
#11 ·
I can't find the link right now, but I've purchased Magic Smoke In a Can for just this purpose. Pricey stuff, but you can save a few $$ if you go for the non-marine version.
 
#14 ·
Hi guys! Normally I am talking about what most consider expensive boats (new boats) but in what concerns this I would take the less expensive approach: why mounting an expensive led light if you can do the same with a very cheap camping led light that you can hang on the boom and use for other things?

Normally I have two of them because they are also used to illuminate the cockpit at night while we eat (we eat normally after sun set). The batteries are inexpensive and they have enough power for about 5 nights, including light for dinner and reading on the cockpit and I mean 5 nights for the one that is on all night, the other will last for 15 days.

Do you really are so many days at anchor that justifies a more expensive and less flexible set up?

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Paulo
 
#15 ·
Paulo,

Our anchor bulb (USCG certified in an Aqua Signal Series 40) cost us $39.00. Every time we anchor our anchor light is on all night. We often leave Fri and come back Mon so that's three nights X about 3 weekends per month plus a 10-12 day cruise and a couple of four day weekends thrown in. At $4.00 for four AA batteries and $20.00 for a lantern we'd likely surpass the cost of the USCG certified anchor light, rated for 40,000 hours use, in just one season and still not know if we have a "legitimate" navigation light or not until there's an accident.

We have a battery operated fridge fan that circulates air in the fridge. The batts last about five days. We went through about $60.00 - $70.00 worth of D batteries, in one season, before I hard wired it. The 12V adapter cost me $7.00 about the cost of one round of D batteries..

Good quality LED's are coming way down in price but there's still a LOT of junk out there. I still prefer factory made, purpose built LED nav lights over replacement bulbs and our bow & stern lights are AquaSignal LED. When our bulbs die in the anchor lights they will be replaced with dedicated purpose built units, probably from Aqua Signal..
 
#20 · (Edited)
Ballast resistors? Circuit boards? Voltage regulators?

NOT GOING TO HAPPEN IN CHEAP LED ASSEMBLIES!

Guys, the typical "12 LEDs in this replacement bulb" has twelve LEDs and one (or a few more) voltage dropping resistors in it.

They're not called ballast resistors. There are no voltage regulators--and that's often part of the problem. Ancor or other brand, they're usually cheapo crap from China, because cheap LEDs can cost a nickel while good ones can cost ten bucks. EACH.

And using a resistor to brute-force limit the current to an LED or LED cluster can cost a penny, while a real voltage regulator will cost a quarter or even a buck if it is done properly with other compoments and, yes, a mini circuit boards.

LEDs in clusters like that are common on the back of trucks and busses BECAUSE THEY ARE CHEAP DESPITE BEING UNRELIABLE. A good marker lamp cluster could cost $200-300, a cheapo one costs $20 or less. Look at any city bus or truck on the highway, there are a dozen LEDs in each cluster and the odds are, two to six are burned out.

That's OK when your vehicle gets depot maintenance every six months and your purpose is to stay legally lit in between depot visits. If half the LEDs burn out and the cluster is thrown away every six months or year--that's still cheaper than the ticket for one burned out bulb.

The $200 cluster would last 50,000 hours plus, but anyone with a screwdriver could steal it in thirty seconds, so the cheap crap has a reason to be used.

Have you seen the LED tail/brake light clusters on a Mercedes or Caddy? The cost for all those LEDs is close to $1000 per vehicle, and that's when you buy enough LEDs to build 50,000 cars with them, too. OK, maybe by now it has dropped to $700. There's a reason you don't see mid-priced cars with LED tail lights! There's no cheaper way to do it reliably.

In your head compartment? Odds are that the LED cluster is burning out because of voltage spikes, surges, or a regulator problem on the boat. Check the voltage, if it is over 14.4 volts your regulator is the problem. If the voltage is good, then the odds are you are throwing spikes every time you start and stop the engine, and the spikes are burning out the LEDs.

That's not my opinion. The folks at CreeX, LumiLED, and other premium LED suppliers ($10 each) all specify SPIKE PROTECTION for ay type of vehicular use--or they void the warranty. Guess what? No spike protection in those cheap cluster bulbs, because it costs money. You can add it, for a buck or two (plus minimum order fees) per "bulb" socket. Or hold out for better clusters that have current regulation and spike protection built into them. If you ask the maker about this and they say "HUH?" that just means Chinese crap, which doesn't have them.

No mystery here, you get what you pay for--if you're lucky.
 
#21 ·
Main Sail has it right. It looks like it has a diode and a resistor pre leds. They are cheep and the only one I own. The rest are sense bulbs without any issues. Thanks for the replys everything is worth something cause they make us think. Ancor is calling me back on monday,see if they have any bright ideas.
 
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