Burnt LED Diodes

MustGro said:

They are out of Ontario. I don't doubt they assemble their own boards either. Here's a copy of a recant email
"Honestly, we have been selling these for about a year and a half right now and we only ever had 1 driver fail but never heard of anyone having any of the LEDs burn out or stop working like that, in over a thousand boards sold. It is by far our best LED product."

Thanks
Paul (Sales Manager)
Grow Lights Canada
Coincidentally I'm the cat who had the driver fail. It's a gift....

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Sounds like a Paul response, fuck that guy. He gave me a stupid response once when I inquired about a bulb that was out of stock. I would tell him that’s a cool story, remind him about the one year warranty. And I meant fusion is there name as far as I know, not sure who assembles the fixtures.

You're definitely right about fusion being their name but it's a pretty popular one right now. I'm still thinking about one of their 480 watt Cree boards so I'll remind him about my messed up LED when I place the order.

Best online store I have found is T&T hydro out of Edmonton, I have used it for years, Brian the owner is good, that indoor growing Canada place out east is dumb as well. Ordered a 10gallon jug of micro hard water, they sent the regular and expected me to send it back, pay postage and wait for them to receive it to resend, never did use the micro, fuck that place too.

J232 said:

Best online store I have found is T&T hydro out of Edmonton, I have used it for years, Brian the owner is good, that indoor growing Canada place out east is dumb as well. Ordered a 10gallon jug of micro hard water, they sent the regular and expected me to send it back, pay postage and wait for them to receive it to resend, never did use the micro, fuck that place too.

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Thanks for the recommendation; I'll check them out!

MustGro said:

You're definitely right about fusion being their name but it's a pretty popular one right now. I'm still thinking about one of their 480 watt Cree boards so I'll remind him about my messed up LED when I place the order.

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T&T can’t match growlights pricing, well I assume they can’t, bigger ticket items I always contact him for a better price.

MustGro said:

Thanks for the input. Nice to know there is at least some repairs that can be done to them. If I get a new board wouldn't it be smart to save the old one for parts? Maybe I can practice on it...

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If you know you will be running a fair amount of QB boards for a while it may be worth it to purchase a hot air rework station.
You can always practice on junk boards until your confident to repair your higher value items.
Repairing one board will pay for the price of a cheaper station.

Gardentech.ca sells SF as well, gardentech is good to deal with and also a member here. Good place for dry nutes, jacks, mega crop, cal nit and what not.

if you consider a hotair, get a hotplate too as otherwise you wont have luck soldering a MPCB with just a hotair.

firsttimeARE said:

When my ballast was having issues I emailed HLG 11PM at night. The next day they sent me a tracking #. No questions asked. No communications. Just hey heres the tracking #

Thats the price you pay I guess

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You mean, that's the price everyone else pays who never needed to have repairs or replacements.

Burnt Diodes= Optic LED/Pioneer and all the other re-branded names these lights are sold under , the Optic 6 , 4 and 2 the so called flower-boost array (blurple) burnt out- to the point of not been able to use lights as a safety hazard -

Optic is no longer rebranded

CTGrown203 said:

Optic is no longer rebranded

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you sure about that dude- just one other company- dont believe the charlatan that spins his dribble - these lights are sold world wide under different names - SupertectLED in Aussie as a start have a gander dude you may change your mind

I’m sure look at optic again my friend that’s all of their old stuff not the same

Well my board may have 7 burnt-out diodes, but it works to flower pot. I just pulled a crop and there was no difference in the buds under it and the other boards, as far as I could tell anyway.

LEDs do occassionally fail, but more likely is the integrity of the solder under the LEDs. It is hard to tell from the photos but there could be one of a number of things going on. If you turn the board side-ways you may be able to see if any of the LEDs have lifted off their solder pads. This is not uncommon. There also appear to be blue-green corrosion stains around the affected LEDs that may indicate the copper trace has been exposed, which means there might not be enough solder under them. Or there could be too much solder in places which has spilled off the pads and shorted out on the opposite pads. Those corrosion stains, if they are corrosion stains, may also indicate moisture present. As usual @cobshopgrow could also be on the money about stress to the board being the culprit. It may have lifted the LEDs off their solder pads, breaking the connections. They can be repaired fairly easily with a hot-air blower or reflow hotplate.

MustGro said:

They are out of Ontario. I don't doubt they assemble their own boards either. Here's a copy of a recant email
"Honestly, we have been selling these for about a year and a half right now and we only ever had 1 driver fail but never heard of anyone having any of the LEDs burn out or stop working like that, in over a thousand boards sold. It is by far our best LED product."

Thanks
Paul (Sales Manager)
Grow Lights Canada
Coincidentally I'm the cat who had the driver fail. It's a gift....

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Not laughing at your misfortune, just that last sentence made me laugh.

A chinese knockoff 288 malfunctioned, shocking. Buy a real 288 from HLG, and never worry again

I got a reel of the samsung chips.
Luckily i've only ever needed to solder 1 chip on.
It's not easy but it is possible to replace.

GrassBurner said:

A chinese knockoff 288 malfunctioned, shocking. Buy a real 288 from HLG, and never worry again

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Yeah that's a valid point now isn't it. HLG is top of the heap no doubt. I'm torn between the Scorpion Diablo and the 420 boards from @Grow Lights Australia for my next light. You got an opinion on the Meanwell drivers @GrassBurner ? I'm pretty sure they're designed in Japan but made in China too. I killed an HLG 240 watt already.

Did the driver come from the same place as the light? I feel like I read something about a bunch of meanwell drivers meant for scrap, were used by some of these knockoff companies. Ive got 3 Meanwell drivers, and 1 Delta. Theyve all been trouble free so far. If you get another driver, snag them from JameCo or TRC, both have excellent customer service.
If you can diy, you can build killer light using HLG qb120's. HLG also has excellent customer service.