I have a nasty habit of picking up bolts, nuts and other ‘trash’ lying on the ground.
A few days ago, I was walking on the road (which also leads to a local waste collection centre) and found a drywall LED spotlight. It looks like it fell from somebody’s trailer.
I picked it up, maybe I could fix it.
A week later, on a cold Sunday morning, I found time to check it. Disassembly was easy. Removed 2 bolts on the side and unscrewed the body with a hand.:
Firstly, I wondered what was the specifications. The metallic body has a small print: 3W, 85-256V. Ok, this means I could connect it to 230V AC, right?
When I disassembled it, I saw there was only a simple circular plate with 3 LEDs soldered on it. There was no transformer though.
The good news was the LEDs were the same I have in stock :). I bought the bag of them a few years ago on Aliex… Just look at my stash:
Then I checked each #LED using a very sophisticated technique. I pulled an old 6V (300mA) DC transformer from my magic box of old transformers and touched the pins of each LEDs with + and – wire.
2 of them blinked, but the left one didn’t. So I unsoldered the faulty LED, scraped away the old thermal paste, added a drop of new one and re-soldered a brand-new LED. I burned my fingers only once this time 🙂 Firstly I used my gas solder iron, but it wasn’t powerful enough to melt the old solder, so I used my slightly more powerful (40W?) electric one.
This fix was easy.
Probably I’ll use this light in the workshop or in my daughter’s room. I just remembered there is one similar drywall LED that died beyond #repair (it has integrated micro LEDs on the plate).
A big thank-you to the person who wanted to throw away this (easily repairable) LED light. It got a second life.
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