On Wed, 14 Oct 2020 17:48:16 -0400, wrote:



Just a rant ... a long one - sorry folks
but wondering if anyone else has any bad or good
experience with this type of lighting ?
And - buyer beware if you're outfitting your whole shop !

Less than a year ago, I installed a 4 ft. LED
self-contained plug-in light fixture in my back-basement
storage room. It was a very very decent looking item from
Lee Valley made by Armacost and more than double-the-cost
of the common cheapo units.
It failed last weekend ... after ~ 5 hours of ON time ! if that.
... so much for the 10's-of-thousands-of-hours of LED bulb life !

I looked-it-over closely - checked the 120 volt cord & connectors -
everything was A-OK ; I pulled off the end-caps to check internal
wiring connectors A-OK ; pulled the ON-OFF switch ;
- everything was A-OK.

Guess what ? - Lee Valley doesn't carry them any more ;
Armacost says that it's discontinued and that it was probably
an internal power supply failure ... gee thanks !

The polite refund from Lee Valley meant that I was not out-of-pocket -
but it was little consolation - now I need to go shopping for
another fixture... again looking at the cheapo's that I avoided !

https://www.leevalley.com/en-ca/shop...?item=99W7681W

Plus - I'm hoping that the replacement fixture can be matched to
the custom-made little 45 degree corner-mounting-blocks
that I made for the original fixtures ...

Geeeze ! thanks for listening :-)

Early life failures are a fact of life for all electronics. Some
better than others but it happens. The failure curve looks like a
bathtub (hence called a "bathtub curve"). Lotsa failures up front,
almost zero in the middle, rising after some time (lotsa time for most
modern electronics).