Old LED Light Bulbs Give Up Filaments For Spider Web Clock




41 thoughts on “Old LED Light Bulbs Give Up Filaments For Spider Web Clock

        1. Cross-hatching is an artistic technique where you lay and layer a series of lines and criss-crossing lines to create a cross hatch. To depict shadows and shapes. In this it’d be either replacing the shadows (or their absence) with lights laid in a cross-hatch pattern.

    1. Yeah. It is mentioned in the write up though; “There is also a lazy element (it glows, but dimmer than the others) The LED itself is good. I fear a problem with the driver chip but I will try re-wiring the enamelled copper first. (in fact I will probably just run an extra wire)”

    1. These are COB (chip on board) LE modules. They’re available in a huge assortment of sized and shapes from our usual friends in Shenzen. If you search for COB LED, you’ll find the data you need.

      There’s no need to massacre decorative LEDs for a project like this. Cool as the final result is.

  1. I’ve been seeing LED bulbs like this in stores for awhile, glad to see somebody came up with a creative use for the LED filaments. It’s one of those things where you know there should be something cool you can do with them, but can’t quite put your finger on.

  2. Is it possible to bend the filaments without killing them?
    For a less dangerous version you could put the whole lot under a glass bell jar, which seem quite popular in supermarket interior decorations.

    1. The particular ones used here do not bend at all, The LEDs seem to be mounted to an especially frangible substrate.
      The article rather over-states the danger, running from a floating power supply it seems perfectly safe to touch the frame with it turned on (something I have done many times while assembling and testing it). It ought to be possible to actually ground the frame and run the cathodes at -80V with the Arduino and logic powered from -75V.

  3. They will bend (curve) a little, but I would doubt they would “kink”. They can be bought on ebay as separate ‘filaments’, usually in rows.
    Judging by how most LED bulbs fail, the LED part is just fine and it is the power supply that dies. Hence, lots of filaments should be coming ‘to market’ anytime soon!
    Only problem, they are usually 50 to 70 volts to turn on. But with a low current limit, they look quite nice. At full current, they are just too damn bright!

    1. I picked up 20 of these bulbs with candelabra base for 25 cents each on clearance at Walmart. Should’ve bought all they had. Unfortunately they had less than 20 that were dimmable. But they did have lower power, non-dimmable ones. My mom’s house has two 10 arm brass chandeliers so with 10 15 watt bulbs they were 150 watts each. I installed the non-dimmable bulbs in the chandelier in the kitchen dinette and the dimmable ones in the chandelier in the living room, along with replacing the switch with a dimmer.

      They work great, provide more light than the incandescents did while using much less power, even with the dimmer all the way up.

  4. Could you imagine something similar but instead an etched pane of glass coated with ITO and conductive glue to hold the led filaments on to the clear “traces”? It would for all purposes look like the digits are floating. Saw these led filament bulbs at the local dollar store with two bulbs with 4 filaments each for … $1. Gonna have to give them a shot. I have bought loose led filaments off ebay in the past and the likelihood of them surviving postage is terrible (I bought around 30 of them from various sellers and only about half weren’t DOA). At least buying two complete, tested bulbs for $1 and smashing them for the filaments will guarantee all of the filaments work.

      1. I’d assume since they are a series string that at full brightness they’d pull 20-30mA, but for a visual indicator application like this they’d probably be plenty visible at a more modest 5mA or so.

  5. I bought a couple of these bulbs from a local store. They were quite expensive (philips branded), but very good.
    I really liked them but not so much the price. So I bought some that looked the same off ebay, and they were junk. They were half the price for sure… but also half the brightness and twice as power hungry (yes, proper tests were done).
    In other words I was better off with the name brand.

  6. has one here earmarked for a Casio portable TV (770?) with a slight problem in the power supply.
    Incidentally they are perfect for this if you rewire the secondary on a similar coil (burned secondaries are very common in inverters on portable gadgets) and simply put two filaments back to back.
    If you want to be really sneaky backfill a glass “tube” made from an old pipette with gas to replicate the original bulb and make some LCD panel backlight replacements with them: would love to see someone try that.
    Has to be Ar or He but as long as its oxygen free it will work.

  7. > form a lacy filigree …
    > … but nicht für der gefingerpoken

    Way to use your word skills, Dan! Seriously, I enjoy your prose as much as I enjoy the actual project.

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