STROBES going out on me!

I didn't do anything under the board. But if it's blinking under the board I don't know how to fix. I just covered the top with super glue to cover the chases.

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I too have had multiple failures out of 20, 10 have failed. It is a board issue. I have 20 from another retailer that have a black octagonal base and have not had 1 failure in 3 years.
 
In Houston, we have high humidity and a lot of rain this time of year. It was suggested when I first bought my strobes (6 years ago) that we drill two weep holes in the top of the strobe (two holes on either side of the end of the tube, away from the socket end), so that when they hang down, the moisture can run out. I also bought mine from Darryl, and had a couple of failures at first, but by drilling the holes I have lost 4 out of 30 over a 6 year period. I think that is a good failure rate. I'll find a pic and post.
 
The ones from DIYLEDEXPRESS were failing before even going outside. I screwed them in and turned the string on and 50% stopped working within 1min. I live in a dry climate so that may be why the other one work better.
 
The problem appears to be the high voltage pulse is finding a way to arc across the board instead of going to the tube.

Get liquid rubber and coat the board.
 
burtonmadness said:
Todd just replied to me, and I say great support offering refund on the failed units.

I've bought $100s of stuff from them so in the end they honored their side of this fiasco.


They've offered a refund in the failed units, so I hope they get the same from their suppliers since they're putting themselves on the block for this;


/BM (Fran)
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Ok.. offered a refund of the failed units.. so did you have to ship them back? If so, who paid to ship them back? who paid to ship them to you in the first place?

I my case I have no plans to even use these until 2017 so I asked Todd if these are from the same batch, and if so would he warranty them that year if I keep them or should I send them back.. I explained that i didn't care about 1 or 2 failures but 20-50% was not going to work. So...now assuming they are the same batch that you are having high fail rates on.. His response was that it would be best if I send them back and buy when I actually needed them.. So that is OK.. EXCEPT he wants me to pay shipping back to him.. because that is his policy. So that means I would be paying $40 in just round trip shipping for $90 worth of a defective batch of product that I never even took out of the box but was found to have a very high defect rate. I would not say that is such a great deal from a vendor.

I also said I will pay the shipping back if he refunds the original shipping charges.. I have not heard back from him yet but it has only been a few hours.. Somehow I am sure it will get worked out..I would be happy if he just replaced them with known good product and I would just toss these.. I would rather have good strobes than nothing at all for the $40.

With that said. Still don't know if they are from the bad batch.. but I assume they are...

In all honesty, a good vendor would investigate and if the fail rates where that high, they would recall the product and or refund and tell you to dispose of them. Being a retailer, he takes that chance with the product he sells. We all should have expectations that a vendor has vetted what they sells.. and should that not work out, stand behind mass defects including the cost to get them back if he needs to do that. I also hope he gets the return credit from his vendor, but again, as a retailer it is his responsibility to deal with that.

I know when I made DMX cards for the laser industry and sold them for a very small margin, I had an issue where someone in England got two cards that tested good here but for some reason had the wrong resistor packs in them. Those packs came out of a bag that came straight from a US vendor that had somehow put two different ones in the same bag... and the numbers were only one off. Our testing didn't show the particular issue they were having, but I paid FedEx international 2 day air to get them back and send him new ones. Yes.. lost my ass on that product for months because of those parts.. but I made it right by every single customer.. It wasn't the customer's fault and it wasn't just warranty failure. It was a manufacturing issue.. just like the strobes...

Perhaps I just have high expectations of vendors since I was once one myself.
 
Skunberg said:
Do they need any repair under the board? If I'm going to take the effort to open them up, makes sense to cover all the bases. Reddy, what is that dope on ebay like? Watery, syrupy? Dries hard, sticky, doesn't dry? Do you just brush it on?
Click to expand...

Corona dope, is a generic term like super glue... From what I remember.. the stuff we used.. brushed on and was similar to liquid tape but was a little softer and has better high voltage insulating properties.

-Craig
 
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not sure what is going on but i am definitely going to test them in the garage this week end as i dont need them this year but if i used them next year the subject matter will be too far gone and over ..they are still in the box and let hope the failure is not that high ..more to fallow.. cheer
 
I bought 20 this year and have had 3 fail at this point. Still an unacceptable failure rate. After seeing that I can get a better effect with the strobe effect in nutcracker I will probably never use strobes again. It is obvious that the manufacture of these really screwed up somewhere. I also bought from DIYled express.
 
ukewarrior said:
I have these strobes from Darryl, mine are U tube Xenon based.
I have had a 50% failure rate in the first year.
Obvious water intrusion.
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I have lots of these.. I have had them for a few years now. I usually get 1 or 2 failures a year but they don't seem to fail while out. Only seem to fail after I put them away for the season and pull them back out the next. Could be the water inside corrodes the internals... haven't really looked at them once they go bad..
 
I have some of the pre-order strobes as well. Guess I should check them out.

That being said, I'm not worried.

Granted I'm not nearly as active as I used to be, but I don't recall anybody ever being dissatisfied with Todd's service. I do remember people blowing things out of proportion because they didn't give him tiime to figure out what was going on.

I also recall other vendors offering a 60-day warranty on an item you bought in July.

Just saying, give DIYLE a little time Unforutnate this happened, but by and large it's the vendor, not the product, that we stand behind.

Tim
 
Bought 10 this year and 2 have failed. One that's still working has a long lasting warm glow emitting from the base se real seconds after it is turned off.

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