replacing 12v halogens with LEDs?

As far as the architectural colouring of LED lamps, ie too blue. As the lamps push forward little heat , its quite easy to tone down the blue by overcoating the glass front with thin red,pink,or orange "filter". Have a go initially with red felt tip pen and then when you get the right sort of pink/orange chromacity for the room, go to a specialist artist supply shop/stationers with a good range of acetate/polyester? A4 overlay/cover sheet material and cut out discs and fit over the LED clusters. Because of the small dimensions of halogen bulbs compared to hot wire, much higher probability of plasma arc creation at the point of fauilure of a bulb, ie near enough full short circuit at the point of blowing, so collateral damage

Yes, I figured that there was some heat related reason why the halogens wer e blowing so often and taking the transformers with them and i keep a stock of them in reserve. But can I render those transformers MORE reliable by putting LEDs in and adding (say) one or two bulbs to the (open bulb type) I kea unit IF I NEED to compensate for the lower current draw? Or is that su ch an oversimplification that it renders the premise wrong?

Or it could simply be that the design life of the small switching supplies have reached their planed EOL and the capacitors are failing taking all the other magic smoke emitting parts with them...

John :-#)#

Mostly, LED replacements will take less current and won't tolerate high temperatures. That's a problem, because taking less current means the transformer will hum, and halogen fixtures are designed to keep the lamps hot (for the self-healing filament chemistry to work).

For best results, replace a halogen fixture with an LED fixture. Bulb 'replacement' is really a kind of redesign, and not optimal from a lighting engineering standpoint.

I replaced all the 50W halogen bulbs in my kitchen and bathroom with

I've yet to replace one. A lot less hassle then having to get the steps out three or four times a year...

Can you get LED drop-in replacements for these bulbs? The Halogen lamps run off constant-voltage AC. the LEDs (internally) run off constant-current DC. The "bulbs" would need to have a rectifier/regulator built into them. You certainly can get these for 120 V Edison-base sockets, not so sure about track lighting systems.

Jon

Thanks guys: The LED vendors (in China) all tout their MR16s as being direct replacements for the MR16 12v halogens

be aware that the light beam can be very different from a 12v halogen bulb ... prefer led lamps that are made of smd leds, they have a wider light beam the lamps that have 3x 1W led have a very directive beam and will really not shine like your halogen lights.

I also had halogen lights long ago, and replaced with led some years ago. when I inspect the wires for changing the lights, I noticed that the original wires where cooked by the heat of the pravious lights... 12v and 20w or even 50w make the wires really be cooked.

I replaced the wires, and used then GU10 led lamps, and now the current flowing into the wires is lower than before.

Thanks for that

This was the sort of reason I wanted to change over the bulbs to LED. It sh ould stress the wires and transformers less.

I know the chinese are mass producing m/billions of these mini-circuits for use in the bulbs. I just dont know what they do yet (or which no-name bulb s utilise which circuits): Do they make the bulbs more receptive to DC or r ectify the current in some way to compensate for the lower draw?

But it is becoming exceptionally annoying changing these bulbs/transformers all the time. I currently have seven transformers in the strip and 3 are burned ouT! I suppose I would do anything at this point to change them!

Amanda Riphnykhazova prodded the keyboard with:

Those transformers are actually high frequency inverters, about 200Khz output or there abouts. They actually feed the halogen bulb with the HF AC. You might find that the 12V MR16 LED doesn't like being fed from them.

I made the decision to just remove them and feed the replacement LED's straight from the 50Hz 240V mains. Changing the bulb holders wasn't a downside because of the heat damage to the wires, though the actual connector to the transformer was fine. So it was just a matter of loosening the terminals and transferring the wires from the mains to the new terminal block, the GU10 bulb holder was already wired into the other side.

All the new bulbs have 12 SM LED's and are cold white and because the kitchen and bathroom has a white colour scheme seem much brighter than the old halogen bulbs. So much so that we now tend to turn on only half of the 12 lights in the kitchen. The bathroom uses all six.

and forgot to say the GU10 is far more easy to handle than the MR16 ... I replaced all my ceiling bulbs 5-6 years ago, still none has died for now. and if one dies, it's easy to find the same and replace it the only thing will be to struggle with the color of the light to find something similar to the others may be I will have to replace a whole room at a time !

So I wonder what this means on a slightly elderly unit?

Amanda Riphnykhazova prodded the keyboard with:

Probably a con ! Look at the carriage charge.

But it is exceptionally unwieldy and heavy!

Just to close out this thread (for the moment)

As to the Ikea question, Ikea says that any bulb with the proper socket will work.

Secondly, I bought a half dozen bulbs on ebay from China, - the ones described as CREE that claim to have a chipset in them, - and they all seem to work fine.