LED Testing

This is one of the main reasons not to buy those tempting, ultra-cheap LEDs that you see on Amazon, EBay or the many pop up websites that appear one day and disappear the next who stock nothing and rely on cheap imports with no guarantees. 

Everyone knows that incandescent and halogen bulbs generate a lot of heat, but what is less well known is that LEDs do the same. This means that any light bulb put in an enclosed light fitting (e.g. a downlight) is going to generate a lot of heat unless there is a way of letting that heat dissipate. 

The hotter an LED gets the more rapidly the chip that is giving you the light will degrade. This will mainly reduce the light output and colour that the LED bulb is producing but it will eventual reduce the life of the bulb. 

But to keep safe in your home do not just assume that because you have fitted an LED you have instantly reduced your fire risk. Where necessary downlights should be fire rated or fitted with a fire hood and any bulbs near curtains or other soft furnishings should be carefully monitored.

In the rush to get the latest cheap wave of LEDs from factory to shop floor many of the new distributors or LED brands have skipped the testing part. This is why we have so many poor LED products washing around the UK, damaging the reputation of all LED products and under investigation from Trading Standards. We understand that with falling prices everyone needs to sell their LEDs fast, but we at Casell Lighting are a bit more patient. We know that if we supply a poor, untested product, it will cost us hugely as we stand by our 2 year guarantee. 

LEDs MUST be tested and tested to proper UK and EU standards. All the bulbs that we design in the UK and make abroad are fully tested before sold. All our testing is done in The Netherlands by a third party company. 

All our LEDs are tested using the Everfine GO SPEX500. This beast (shown below) gives us a report on every single one of our bulbs. Countless times we have had to reject designs and adapt to produce a light bulb that will pass our own stringent tests. This is the main reason it has taken us over nine years to develop our range of 450 different light bulbs. 

The GO SPEX500 can test all LED, halogen and incandescent lamps up to 3000 Watts AC and DC ("in-house") tests. 

On an ongoing basis, from every delivery of LED bulbs we receive we send a batch for random testing and only when these tests are approved, will the bulbs be released for sale. 

If a bulb does not pass these initial or random tests we can then trace the issue back via our stored ISO9001 records and take the necessary actions with our factory partners to correct anything.