traffic lights meltring

Must be made in China.

Signal head looks fine. It looks like the back plate is homemade and that got damaged not melted.

Also that looks like a 15-20yr old early version of the LED heads. The newer ones, you can't see the individual LEDs.

SidecarFlip wrote:
Must be made in China.

:) Hi, I was going to say "Made in Mexico".

The municipio for BCS purchased 400 streetlights a good brand CREE. Weak 9 watt output. These were well made lamps. Connected them to the grid. CFE brought me a dozen to analyze faults. The glass lens was impossible to remove without breaking them. Result. Inside the lens on the driver circuit was "Input 95 volts - 130 volts". They were connecting the lamps to 254 VAC. Ooops...

I consider the country-wide changeover to LED stop lights to be one of the greatest safety improvements in my history of driving here. Even misaligned, the lamps are visible in daylight.

Trillion peso potential industry: Red light cameras. :)

9w isn't weak for an LED. Depends on the color (each is different) but we are running 6w reds and they are far brighter than the old incandescent. Yellows run 12-15w depending on the brand. When we first switched over, we got complaints that they were too bright.

This works because LEDs are better than 10 time as efficient at converting electricity into light. On top of that the old colored lenses ate up more light as the light and that is less of an issue with LED.

The LED are not designed for servicing any more than an incandescent bulb is designed to be serviced, so not surprising you can't remove the lens.

If the old lights weren't visible what wattage were they using in the incandescent bulbs? While not as bright as LED, they were always visible. Standard we used was 150w bulbs before the conversion.

Another issue for retrofits, is does the conflict monitor recognize them turning on and off? We initially had some issues where the older monitors didn't see enough amperage to recognize which lights were on, so it would throw it into emergency flash mode.

Really not a safety thing. More of a maintenance and power consumption savings.
- Typical total wattage for a signal might average around 3600w before and not runs 350-500w. If you have a few hundred signals running 24/7, that's a sizable cost.
- Incandescent signals got replaced annually, because if a light went out (particularly a red), it would throw the signal in emergency flash. That's basically half a day for the electrician with a bucket truck playing in traffic. The LEDs we bought were warranted for 5yrs and the initial installations are going on 12yrs. If they don't fail in the first couple days, they just keep on running. After some research, we are going with 10yr replacement as LEDs don't burn out, they gradually lose light output, but still that's a lot of bucket truck time saved.

You may have overlooked the STREETlamp part. Regardless of anything else the lamp's actual output meaning what you see on the ground is considerably weaker than the 40 watt low pressure sodium lamps they replaced.

Here's some comments :)

IMHO CREE makes by far the most efficient LED chip on the market.

But a 10 watt ROYAL or SHARP chip puts out far more light than the CREE. What's up? The CREE is being underdriven at 6 watts presumably to increase life span.

There are two diameters of common traffic light -- the smaller operates on 11 watts. 12" lamps require 15 watts.

Newer polyethylene signal light bezels are definitely made in Mexico. RAMFA Co Reynosa.

Being an engineer with a full test bench I get to play with this stuff.

Non repairable street lamp modules can be made for far less money if they are epoxied. The new lens are NOT pyrex and when vandals break the lenses there is no way to fix the lamp. Chew and spit stupidity. Four and a half pounds of aluminum for recycling...

The bases down here are not designed well. Aluminum used as a radiator should always be black anodized HARD anodized. 35% better thermal conduction and radiation. The driver should have it's own heat sink interface and be bonded to to the fixture. Next year I will enjoy a 50 watt array of 12 lamps operating 24/7 for year no 10. Critical p/n junction temp reduction results in a vastly greater emitter lifespan. Optimum tradeoff can result an easy 20 year lifespan but it costs money for heatsinking and design integrity.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I love the new semafores. Same for the mobile traffic control (desviacion) sign boards. They need 9 volt solar panels to discourage theft.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
You may have overlooked the STREETlamp part. Regardless of anything else the lamp's actual output meaning what you see on the ground is considerably weaker than the 40 watt low pressure sodium lamps they replaced.

Here's some comments :)

IMHO CREE makes by far the most efficient LED chip on the market.

But a 10 watt ROYAL or SHARP chip puts out far more light than the CREE. What's up? The CREE is being underdriven at 6 watts presumably to increase life span.

There are two diameters of common traffic light -- the smaller operates on 11 watts. 12" lamps require 15 watts.

Newer polyethylene signal light bezels are definitely made in Mexico. RAMFA Co Reynosa.

Being an engineer with a full test bench I get to play with this stuff.

Non repairable street lamp modules can be made for far less money if they are epoxied. The new lens are NOT pyrex and when vandals break the lenses there is no way to fix the lamp. Chew and spit stupidity. Four and a half pounds of aluminum for recycling...

The bases down here are not designed well. Aluminum used as a radiator should always be black anodized HARD anodized. 35% better thermal conduction and radiation. The driver should have it's own heat sink interface and be bonded to to the fixture. Next year I will enjoy a 50 watt array of 12 lamps operating 24/7 for year no 10. Critical p/n junction temp reduction results in a vastly greater emitter lifespan. Optimum tradeoff can result an easy 20 year lifespan but it costs money for heatsinking and design integrity.

Meanwhile back at the ranch I love the new semafores. Same for the mobile traffic control (desviacion) sign boards. They need 9 volt solar panels to discourage theft.

Oops, you changed topic on me and I missed that it was a street light not a traffic light.

I have mixed feelings on the LED street lighting. They save a lot on power but really hard to get even lighting in an area.

Street lighting is in it's infancy. The so called engineers who are designing what I see insist on using Fresnel lensing which is expensive, unneeded and just plain shows their lack of experience of using a flat platform COB device.

The following chip will blow a 70 watt high pressure sodium street lamp into the weeds. Pure floodlamp effect.



I made a tunnel-type shaded 100 watt streetlamp to cover the crosswalk across a federal highway the light was contained so it did not bother drivers. It was said the children never again had problems or close calls when using the crosswalk after the bus left them off 2nd shift.

MEXICOWANDERER wrote:
Street lighting is in it's infancy. The so called engineers who are designing what I see insist on using Fresnel lensing which is expensive, unneeded and just plain shows their lack of experience of using a flat platform COB device.

The following chip will blow a 70 watt high pressure sodium street lamp into the weeds. Pure floodlamp effect.



I made a tunnel-type shaded 100 watt streetlamp to cover the crosswalk across a federal highway the light was contained so it did not bother drivers. It was said the children never again had problems or close calls when using the crosswalk after the bus left them off 2nd shift.

Actually, it's the standard been the standard for a few years and available for significantly longer. Very few large agencies haven't switched to LED street lights (not all have completed the conversion). I suspect you aren't familiar with the considerations. Brighter is not necessarily what we are going after. Limiting variations in brightness is more important. Stare into a campfire some time and then look into the woods. At first it will be pitch black and gradually your eyes will adjust and you will start things. The problem driving down the road is you go in and out of bright areas every couple seconds so the eyes can't adjust. If you have a single light in an unlit area, that will work for a crosswalk but that's not typical streetlight layout.

The problem is LED lights are very directional in nature. That's why they need the lenses to spread the light out (still not nearly as even as incandescent). Otherwise, you will have a small pool of very bright light surrounded by dark areas.

The old incandescent bulbs distributed light pretty much in all directions evenly, so it was pretty simple to provide a spacing and call it good. Light would very gradually get weaker as you move further away but the next light in the row would overlap. Even with the lens, LED still have a much sharper drop off in coverage as you move further away, so area lighting is much more difficult.

My first project a few years back, the calculations were triple checked as we were new to them and while it technically meets the requirements, first time I drove it at night, I didn't like it. There were clear light and dark areas as you drive down the freeway. The dark areas met the minimum brightness requirements but the variation made it harder to see stuff in the darker areas.

That's why I have mixed feelings on them. Great for power savings and lifespan but simply not as good as incandescent.

Different strokes. To me when designed properly an LED lamp over incandescent is like incandescent over whale oil.

Try these chips. They operate at 10.7 volts or 36.0 volts for 20 watts and up.

No different here with streetlight area lighting. This is because the designers of the streetlights are trying to sleaze by with seven or nine watts. Sodium lights in the states rarely are less than seventy watts.

My 30 watt chips glow as brightly as a 300+ watt incandescent by actual eyeball not some perverted lumen measuring meter.

What LEDs do not do is illuminate areas above it. See the pretty ceiling and top two feet of walls -- not.

The highway streetlamp over Mex 200 had vertical visors. Would not blind drivers even twenty feet from the crosswalk. By the time the driver got to the intensely illuminated area the point of origin was directly overhead.

Take a 10-watt chip and hoist it directly overhead and light dispersion is absolutely linear in a gradient from straight down and outward.

Actually examine the lens of an LED streetlight emitter. I know of no design that does not use a FRESNEL lens that utterly destroys the natural gradient of luminosity of the emitter. The reason being is the so-called designer has retained the fresnel lens from high intensity metal emitter lamps. And THAT is not wisely done. Obtuse rings hot spots and shadows. Rather stupid. Even the CREE lamps had fresnel dispersion.

I mused my lighting effect a lot before designing my street lighting. As a vehicle approaches the highly oblique angle of the emitter plus visors concentrate the illumination in a focused manner. Then the hood of the vehicle shades the high luminosity of the target area. Leaving OBJECTS (small children) lit. Leaving the target there is minimal dazzle after effect. People from neighboring pueblos want lights for their crosswalks. Truck and bus drivers have furnished 100% favorable comments.

Now this doesn't say much about the competence of contemporary street lighting engineers, does it? Unlike many folks who think by proxy, agree by power of fiefdom and do not challenge the status quo -- I disassemble and audit performance, circuitry and component quality.

On a scale of 0-10 for commercial LED lighting I see here and in the USA I feel a point seven might be generous. It is pathetic.