Giving LED Bulbs a Second Chance

Hi people, in this instructable I will show you one of the amazing ways by which one can recycle Nonworking LED bulbs into a useful lamp

It is a coincidence that this project matches the exact theme of the MAKE IT GLOW contest! I understood the assignment and turned this dead LED led bulb into an awesome glowing lamp that is rechargeable and looks fancy too.

Well, everything deserves a second chance!!

Why Recycle LED bulbs?

After the cycle of LED Bulb is over it is considered electronic waste and also plastic waste.

Electronic waste is from the circuitry part of LED bulbs whereas the plastic waste is from frames that make up the LED bulb

Considering all these situations I wanted to contribute something to reduce waste to some extent! (might be in some fractions) But each activity matters, if many people do the same as I did we can see a noticeable change in the reduction of these LED Waste.

Also in the future, I am planning to collect LED bulbs from my local households which does not work anymore and later convert them to these lamps that we will be seeing how to do it in the below instructable and distribute them to some young students who face difficulty in studies due to power cuts in their area.

This LED lamp gives long hours of backup so that the glow does not stop like the spark you got!!

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The LED bulb that we are building has these features

As we are using 2W led bulb it is powerful enough to provide sufficient light to a mid-sized room.

The charging option makes it use again and again

Easy to Carry and place wherever you want

Default safety feature like the tip of an LED bulb that is transparent is made using the eye safety feature, we are just taking advantage of it!

Now let's hop into making these project.

• Old/nonworking LED bulb
• Charging module for lithium-ion batteries I used TP 4056
• Sandpaper
• Scissors or screwdriver
• Soldering iron
• 1 W led bulbs x2
• Aluminum base plate for LED x2
• Some wire
• Switch and lithium-ion battery
• Hot glue
• These are the materials that are required to convert broken LED bulb to a working lamp

To remove the old parts that no longer work we should remove it, to do so we will start with the LED lamp head

You can easily remove it by using the simple method that I used, just insert the tip of a scissor or a screwdriver to the small gap that is present between led heads and base

Push it gently inside and as the gap expands you can easily take it out from your hand.

Once you remove the head we can remove the old led panel

You will find some screws, just remove them using a screwdriver, End of this step you will have a disassembled LED plate.

To remove the base and to avoid the risk of misunderstanding this LED as a normal LED that goes with an LED socket it is recommended to remove the base

To remove the base I will be using sandpaper, just rub the base to the emery paper for some time until the base easily comes out

Once the base is removed we can remove the electronic circuit inside very easily

I made use of a wire stripper that I pushed inside the slot that was made earlier, This made the electronics come out with ease

One advantage of using the default LED panel is it is designed in such a way that it can withstand heat from the LED easily without the need for any additional sources.

This makes it very easy for us to forget the risk of LED heat up, Also i saw the thermal paste on the surface of plate which is a bliss to us

All you need to do is unscrew the screw using driver and remove the panel, you can see these on the images given in the same step

I will be using 2 LEDs, to attach it to the panel we need to first place the aluminum base plate.

Screw it to the slots provided on the panel and later solder the LEDS to the aluminum panel

These aluminum panel help in dissipating the heat from the LED, now for connections we can use the wires

To make it clear make sure to solder wire of specific color so that we do not miss any connections

The circuit is very simple for this project

First, we have 2 led bulbs that are coupled using a parallel connection

Later we connect these LEDS to a battery via a charging board and the control is done using a simple on-and-off switch.

Once you made these connections we can place all these components inside the LED.

I will be using hot glue for the coupling part

Once we have the internal components assembled we can finish the project by adding LED head, as it is a press fit kind of thing anybody can fix it with ease

Using these LED bulbs is very easy, All you need is a USB charging cable by which you can charge these Lamp

Any USB Power source would do, in my case from 0 to fully charged it took me 2 hours

My battery is 2000mah you can also use 2400mah batteries for much longer backup time

Charge the battery to full and carry this lamp wherever you want, it serves you as a light source when you need it, as the LED lamp by default comes with some sort of shield for eye protection we are taking the advantage of it for free

Thank you for showing interest and Happy Recycling this LED bulbs

You can refer to this video tutorial if you have any questions on any steps, if this still didn't help there is always a comments section to connect us together:)

If your browser is unable to play this video directly paste this link on your URL search tab https://youtu.be/aLpCE52xKdw