Can LED Drivers Which Have Certified EMC/LV Testing Be Re-certified in the UK?

I know nothing about the questions of your first two paragraphs.

As to the capacitors, I have seen many instances where low quality or underrated capacitors are failing after periods ranging from a few weeks to several years. If you want to keep a good reputation and make products that will last as long as quality LEDs, then use high quality capacitors!

Thank you for taking the time to reply it is much appreciated we have a good product with a 3 year warranty but I am trying to get it up to five years hence up-grading capacitors and using coated wires, I am going to go for it, but was concerned that I have no way of checking the capacitors are fitted and that is why I was trying to find out if they would show up with any testing?

Cheers Richard Rinn

I certainly commend you for trying to make a 5-year warranty possible. That would definitely convince me to try your product, should it become available in the USA.

I have seen electrolytic capacitors fail in several devices, but the one I'm most familiar with is the Apple iMac G5. That particular iMac is notorious for failing with bulging capacitors. I have repaired several, simply by replacing bulging capacitors... (I have also failed on others, probably because I missed one or more that were failing but did not yet have obvious bulges.)

For whatever it it worth, a few years ago I analyzed some failed LED traffic lights: every problem was a bad solder joint, not a bad LED. Just this month I had a white LED floodlight fail after only a few months of use. I could have returned it, but I decided to take it apart instead. There were two sets of 30 LEDs, and a single LED had failed in each set (the LED itself, not the solder joint, and not the driver circuitry).

You are correct, we have had problems with the soldering of the led's to the circuit board strip, our product is a flexible strip which comes 5M long and you can cut it to length in intervals of every three led's.

We had a problem which because it is easy to replace small sections rather the whole length of strip, meant we were lucky that the costs of repairs were a few thousand pounds, spread accross 25 clients, it was traced to the soldering lines and lack of QC we had to change suppliers as they said they had never had anyone else complain about this before, by the time they agreed it was a problem, we had tooled up with others and now have had no problems at all with 500 roles x 5M long.

The capacitors we want to fit in our drivers are rubycon which after looking through many articals I found that they are highly rated, I would like to know if any test equipment can tell the differance from low quality capacitors, perhaps not.

Cheers for now Richard Rinn

One test is the ESR (Equivalent Series Resistance) meter.

This circuit is from the internet. I think I have previously posted it somewhere on CR4. I presume commercial units are available, although I've never seen one. I have built this one, and it works quite well. If you don't find a commercial unit and want to build one, I have a PC layout available.

Go to the link for more information. I have used it to find bad caps, but it should give some indication of the quality of new ones, as well.

Obviously, measuring the actual capacitance should be useful, also.

Finally, take a few and apply a gradually increasing (or stepwise increasing) DC voltage until current over the charging current starts to appear. With steps, each time the voltage is increased, a charging current will surge, then decrease to close to zero. When it no longer decreases to zero, you have leakage current. The higher the voltage before leakage, the better the cap. Use eye protection when doing these tests, as some will likely explode! Have good ventilation available, as they smell terrible when they explode.

Cool link, GA from Me!

If the product is certified by an accredited "CB" Test-house to an international standard that is compatible with the EN Standard then the data should be accepted at face value as there are international agreements (ILAC) between countries and their approved member test-houses to accept one another's work. This is to prevent barriers to trade.

Hi Greg M thank you for your imput I am having this checked now, I am sure the UK clients will be ok with the certification even though it was done in China, I am trying hard to build our brand and I feel that more confidence would be acheived by UK clients if thet see confirmation of some sort that UK testers confirm that the certification is valid.

I was actually thinking what is to stop any company from sending a competitors driver re-labeled for testing and then using the certification to back their own non certified product.

I suppose that happens and unless we do regular Audits on our supplier we will have no way of knowing this.

Cheers Richard Rinn

Dear Ledzep,

Presently, we (in India) too are grappling with the problem of test certification of LED based light fixtures along with their drivers. We are insisting for OEM's certificates for LEDs and drivers. We in India have little infrastructure in terms of opto -electrical testing facilities (particularly optical tests) for carrying out various tests on LED based lighting fixtures conforming to International standards. But it may in future be specified to re-certify the drivers and LEDs in the customer's country. This would be required to ensure that all mischief of sneeking in of fake things is eliminated between its source (supplier) and final destination (the customer).

Any modification /upgradation etc. would require you to get the product retested and revalidated. Second important thing I would like mention about warranty is that since drivers are used for LEDs and LED manufacturers claim minimum 10 years warranty on LED chips and hence the entire LED fixture, your driver must meet that specification otherwise the vendors may have to bear the cost of replacement of drivers after say 3-5 years (for example, in your case).

BB Raina

Hi

BB Raina that is the downside of Led's, that so far I have not found any company who give thesame life for drivers as the do with the Led's and that is even the case with one of the largest companies in the world.

The best warranty is five years for both

We do advise our clients that two drivers will be required during the life of the led's although in our three years of marketing them, we find that Usefull life of High brightness led's operating 12 hours a day are more like 36,000 hours,we have done many tests and have some good information on our web site, I am not sure if this site allows names to be listed, but back to certification EMC/LVD the company who certified our products in China are a world wide company and I am hopping that the UK company who are part of the same association can just produce a verification type of report rather than us having to spend £36,000 getting them all re-tested

Cheers from Richard Rinn

Fraudulent Certification is the bane of all importers/agents dealing out of the Asian market.

A local Oz retail "Electronics" company has encountered several times that the equipment being offered as having certification by various internanational agencies as not really having done so.

Yes the equipment has all the logos, and yes the accompanying paperwork seems kosher but it was just "marketing" according to my associate.

You should for your own piece of mind inspect the items you are distributing to ensure that they at least comply with the regulations. If your not a technically competant person then hire such a person to do it for you. The UK has similar draconian regulations and penalties as Australia does. It would be an expensive liability for your company not to ensure compliance.

I don't envy you as retail electronics is all about designing/supplying to a bottom line/profit percentage points. It also has to look pretty...

The main thing is I now have three years of our own on going tests coupled with the fact that Driver failure of products sold to our clients todate, are only 9 out of around 4,500 units, this is providing good re-assurance that the products are of good quality and the longer this continious the more confident I am becoming, my main concern is I have no way of checking if any components inside the driver are changed in the future, so I suppose it is down to trust that the more important my sales become to the supplier the less chance of them them risking the loss of my sales by fitting cheaper parts, I may look into some sort of insurance to see if I can take out cover which perhaps for $1.00 a driver would mean any major fault resulting in many claims could be covered by an insurance.

Thank you fou your reply which is much appreciated Richard Rinn