Repair 'The Christmas Workshop' path LED's
ID: 157243
Description: These decorative outdoor path LED lights...
Steps:
- Shows the working led lamps working. There are 200 LED's in parallel with a power supply rated at 3.5V 1.5W, which was confirmed as approximately correct (3.4V off-load).
- In the non working state, the on-load voltage was 1.8v, and using 1W, explaining why the LED's were not illuminating (They need a threshold of about 3v). This suggested there was a slight short somewhere, but nothing was obvious.
- The short was easily found in a string of 200 LED's with a thermal imaging camera. (You don't need one, it just explains how I found the location of fault )
- The red arrow shows here the location of the electrical short, which is where the top bunch of LED's are soldered (two wires) onto the LED string on the spirals.
- There are four such locations which need to be carefully inspected preferably with a hand lens.
- What you are looking for is some slight discolouration around the solder joint or the transparent shrink-fit transparent insulation over it. In my case it was very subtle. Also look for spiky solder which is trying to punch through the transparent shrink-fit insulation.
- If you find a suspect area, tease the two wires apart and hopefully the LED lights will come on when plugged in.
- Use glue or hot wax or some other method to hold the two wires apart.
