Thor Forums

[Beacher]

Originally Posted by blw2

....I remember him saying once that LED's still have a very high infant mortality rate and a high half life, or some such thing.... but that there were fastly improving.....

In one of my recent past lives, I have worked as an Engineering Manager at a Southern California company that manufactures LED assemblies of all shapes and sizes for government, military, aerospace, commercial, industrial, entertainment, transportation and automotive applications.

Essentially they ALL use the same commodity LEDs, (except for government and military contracts that explicitly require the LEDs to be domestically produced).

The big difference in the finished product, (besides the quality of the individual electronic components), is the testing. The LED cluster used on the control console of the F35 fighter jet is going to use top rated resistors that cost about $5.00 each. An almost identical cluster used in a Chevy Corvette is going to use resistors that cost $0.45 each. The similar LED cluster you can purchase on Ebay and made in China uses resistors that cost about 25 for $0.01.

As far as testing goes, (the only method to weed out infant mortality)...... The F53's LED cluster is going to be burn-in tested for over 80 hours before it's packaged. The Chevy Corvette's cluster is going to be tested for 3 hours. And the Ebay LED cluster will be burn-in tested as soon as you install it into your application.