LED Life expectancy eat your heart out :)

[Robert Lambie]

very impressive and an excellent find!

Here is one I know of, the longest running pulb ever… it has been on for 110 years now. you can see it on their live 30second time lapse streaming video here…

http://www.centennialbulb.org/photos.htm#anchor1234

[Phill Fenton]

How is it that over a hundred years ago they were able to make a bulb that still works today. Yet the expensive bulbs I buy from B&Q are always packing in and having to be replaced? 😕

[Andy Nash]

that’s new technology for you, overrated, under engineered and made to be thrown away.

[Andy Nash]

that’s another thing about neon, it can be recycled, they haven’t discussed that with LED’s yet … electronic component ?

[Robert Lambie]

Would they not outweigh recycling a led over neon due to general LED life over neon tubes, then there’s power usage over same period?
Don’t get me wrong, I don’t think they will ever get the finish, look, feel and consistent glow of neon… but in today’s market it’s all about cheap, quick ease of use etc. that seems to come into play more. Throw in the "dark night" laws and the like being brought in all over the world and it’s no wonder art of creating neon is slowly disappearing.
It’s a shame, but guess the same happened with sign writing when vinyl appeared, with vinyl when digital printing appeared, Neon when LED’s appeared etc.
I have no doubt there will always be a need for all traditonal sign making methods, and I am “glad” of that fact too… many many things just don’t look right done by machine or modern method in our game.

[Andy Nash]

With neon (generic term) there is actually two different forms of creating illumination one is using neon gas the second is using argon gas with phosphor coated tubes.

A Neon tube will last as long as the tube stays sealed 10, 20, 30 even 40 years or more, argon tubes however can sufferer from degradation of the phosphor but generally the life expectancy of the tube is around 35 – 40 thousand hours, depending on the quality of the bombarding process. Or in the case of the posting above which are 2 x argon tubes with white phosphor 77 years life expectancy.

LED’s used to state that they lasted in excess of 100,000 hours … recently that figure seems to have been getting lower and lower, i believe a lot of makes are down to around 40,000 hours.

If you go for initial cost of the LED’s over neon/cold cathode, you can easily choose cheap LED’s but generally they don’t last and they aren’t very good, if you go for good quality LED’s it usually works out a lot more expensive.

Another point is that a lot of LED companies market their LED’s as "Low energy consumption" Which they are as they are only putting out low power levels, but they are also generally outputting low light levels as well.
If you compare neon/cold cathode on a fair basis which is Lumens/watt, cold cathode beats more brands that it loses to. On the lighting side of things, many LED’s don’t even meet Part L of the building regulations.

Carbon footprint ? LED’s come from china, where they have little environmental controls. Neon/ Cold cathode is manufactured here, where we have much tighter controls on pollution and components that go into their manufacture come from Europe.

On the recycling front, the issue is that electronic components have to be carefully recycled (you will have seen pictures of all our electronics dumped in places like India), you cant just throw them in the bin, LED’s are electronic components, currently they are just thrown in the bin.

With reference to the dark night laws, you can always wire in a time switch or dim the neon, and if people have problems handling neon, perhaps some care and attention should be paid.

Neon is far from dying, it may be struggling, but that because people believe what they are told or are too scared to use neon, we manufacture neon but we also use LED’s, we have the advantage of knowing which product is best for which situation.

I am sure more points will come to mind later 🙂

[Liam Pattison]

A very interesting documentary related to this subject, (featuring the bulb Rob mentioned):

The lightbulb conspiracy

$this->BBvideo_pass(‘$8’, ‘$4’, ‘$7’)

Liam