Ken Coker Posted August 12, 2014 Share Posted August 12, 2014 Comrades Anyone have a good supplier for 5W B22 golf ball LED lamps? I'm looking for 50+. Thanks KC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImagineerTom Posted August 12, 2014 Share Posted August 12, 2014 You won't find a 5w golfball LED that actually looks like a golfball bulb; they need a chunk of heatsink which forces them to be more like the shape of a traditional bulb with a long body that doesn't illuminate. The heatsink also makes finding weatherproof versions very difficult. You need to decide what you actually want them to do - if it's purely cosmetic then the 1w bulbs are fine; they look completely authentic but (obviously) don't produce much general illumination. If you're actually using them for illumination then you really need to be looking at CFL bulbs if you want something that produces decent light levels. We've got a few thousand of the 1w LED golfballs in warm white and found that using these purely as eye-candy and dropping in a discreet (warm white) floodlight in areas that actually needed illuminating was the most practical solution for us. The "visible filament" LED bulbs look a lot more natural (you have to look very close to see they're not a real bulb) but all the ones we've played with so far haven't been very durable and it's going to be a while before they get one that's happy on a dimmed power supply or messy generator feed. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Coker Posted August 12, 2014 Author Share Posted August 12, 2014 Thanks Tom They don't need to look like golf balls, but they do need to output light - I'm trying to "Village Idiot" proof the village festoon.....the ultimate solution is for it to fail its PAT.. KC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
ImagineerTom Posted August 12, 2014 Share Posted August 12, 2014 Then you're stuck in the middle of technologies - the LED world just isn't powerful enough/durable enough to do what you want to do unless you go for something like a "corn bulb". CFL's are readily available with more than enough illumination but will have to be de-bulbed every time it's taken down as they are very fragile. Whatever solution you go with do just test them out on your power supply first as we've had some weird side effects from certain types of internal circuitry not liking certain types of power (it's a sine-wave thing apparently) produced by some generators, resulting in flicking or even full on flashing of bulbs despite it being a "solid" power supply. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigclive Posted August 12, 2014 Share Posted August 12, 2014 The corn lamps would not be a good idea outdoors, since they would not seal properly to the festoon holders rubber sleeve. At the moment the most common LED festoon lamp seems to be the generic 1W golfball lamp which is best for visual effect and not ideal for high level illumination. That said, the light given off by a string of them is still useful. The circuitry in the little golfball lamps is usually still a capacitive dropper which is expecting a sinewave to allow a continuous flow of charge back and forth across a capacitor that is then rectified and shuffled through a series string of LEDs with a resistor to try and limit peak current at switch-on scenarios where the capacitor suddenly jumps from zero to a high point in the sinewave. What absolutely KILLS these lamps is a dimmer. Since the continuous series of current transients at each point the triac turns on will result in excessive dissipation in the limiting resistor and pulses of high current through the LEDs. Like turning them on 100 times a second. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
top-cat Posted August 12, 2014 Share Posted August 12, 2014 I don't suppose there's much money on the table? The IMS Festoon bulbs are very good, and LED, and screw into your existing festoon. However they are quite expensive as the lamps are individually controllable for interesting chases / colour changes etc... you can do lo-res pixel mapping pretty nicely. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gyro_gearloose Posted August 12, 2014 Share Posted August 12, 2014 We've got some of these LEDs in some festoon outside our box office. They've been up there for a while and seem to work quite well. They're a bit brighter than the 1W golf balls we've got on our canopy. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ken Coker Posted August 12, 2014 Author Share Posted August 12, 2014 We've got some of these LEDs in some festoon outside our box office. They've been up there for a while and seem to work quite well. They're a bit brighter than the 1W golf balls we've got on our canopy. Ideal, GG. Any idea who supplied them? Thanks KC Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
gyro_gearloose Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 Sorry, no idea where they came from. We had a local electrical contractor install the festoon. He most likely got them from our local branch of Edmundson Electrical Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
david.elsbury Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 No idea about those bulbs specifically but +1 for Megaman as a brand - they are a bit pricier than a cheap eBay special but they are well engineered, in my experience. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
adam2 Posted August 13, 2014 Share Posted August 13, 2014 I have been impressed with the 4 watt LED golfball lamps made by Crompton and sold by International lamps. Said to be for indoor use only, though I might be tempted to use them outdoors short term and only cap upwards. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
LXbydesign Posted August 15, 2014 Share Posted August 15, 2014 Ive just prod lx'd a site specific show and although the LED option was considered, in the end - and also because of the required design look - we went for 110v. Worked a treat :) Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
bigclive Posted August 16, 2014 Share Posted August 16, 2014 On a side note I've just taken apart one of the new Tesco LED fridge lamps (1.4W SES) and was surprised to see that it actually had a thin silicone o-ring seal. Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Recommended Posts
Archived
This topic is now archived and is closed to further replies.