Possibly the worst ai prime melt I’ve seen

[LxHowler]

So I have a reputation with my friends at being alright at fixing electronics so it came as no shock when one of them asked me to swap the lens on their ai prime.

Well 10 minutes and a beer later it was fixed as I’ve done a few of these but this is by far the worst I’ve ever seen. Anybody have any ideas what would have caused such a bad melting?

Old lens next to the new fixed lens. All the leds seem to still be working fine and his par reading seem okay so I can assume no real damage to the light itself

 

[dangles]

So I have a reputation with my friends at being alright at fixing electronics so it came as no shock when one of them asked me to swap the lens on their ai prime.

Well 10 minutes and a beer later it was fixed as I’ve done a few of these but this is by far the worst I’ve ever seen. Anybody have any ideas what would have caused such a bad melting?

Old lens next to the new fixed lens. All the leds seem to still be working fine and his par reading seem okay so I can assume no real damage to the light itself

Can you ask him what intensity he ran his light at and for how long each day? And how old the light is.

 

[Garf]

I’ve got 2 in a similar condition.

 

[piranhaman00]

This is what high end leds get huh?

 

[MoparMike97]

Holy crap! It's amazing the diodes are still functional after that. Is the cooling fan functioning normally? That sucker must have gotten really hot.

 

[oreo54]

So I have a reputation with my friends at being alright at fixing electronics so it came as no shock when one of them asked me to swap the lens on their ai prime.

Well 10 minutes and a beer later it was fixed as I’ve done a few of these but this is by far the worst I’ve ever seen. Anybody have any ideas what would have caused such a bad melting?

Old lens next to the new fixed lens. All the leds seem to still be working fine and his par reading seem okay so I can assume no real damage to the light itself

There are a number of ways that "That" can happen.
EITHER organic impurities that absorb high energy photons (blues/violets) and melt.
This concentrates the energy into a small area.
These impurities may be baked into the plastic itself. Some more UV transparent plastic formulas seem to be more prone to this "IF" I remember correctly
OR
Could be plain old heat.

As a guess AI used a "sensitive" plastic for the orig. lenses.

Sooo IF AI actually fixed the problem it is because they switched polymers in the lenses themselves or found the offending impurity(ies)

Most normal plastics are poor at passing UV (<400nm) photons unless designed to do so.

SOOO as my GUESS they just tricked themselves here. Not that even the less uv transparent lenses can't do the same thing though.

A more scientific take on it..
https://humble.fish/community/index.php?threads/cases-of-lens-deterioration-in-popular-lights.9463/

See the salt spray (and other contaminants) section in particular.
One comment on this and the fact that a UV led put in a FW AI did not have the lens melt.
Going back to my orig. "idea" regarding the polymer used in the lens it is possible, though unlikely, that the sw lenses are made of a slightly different formula than the fw one was.
This was necessitated by having to pass the low UV wavelengths.
Both PMMA... but slightly different.

 

[LxHowler]

Holy crap! It's amazing the diodes are still functional after that. Is the cooling fan functioning normally? That sucker must have gotten really hot.

Yeah the cooling fan span up fine and has been running fine. It did have a lot of dust in it that I cleaned out but didn’t seem to affect it too much

 

[LxHowler]

Can you ask him what intensity he ran his light at and for how long each day? And how old the light is.

He said he was running one of the signature profiles that he “modified slightly” so I’m guessing he’s turned something right up and melted it. He wouldn’t tell me what he had modified

 

[MoparMike97]

Yeah the cooling fan span up fine and has been running fine. It did have a lot of dust in it that I cleaned out but didn’t seem to affect it too much

Wow, I'm really curious what caused this then! I've had 6 or 7 Primes over the years and the only 2 failures I had were fan related. I've always loved AI's products, particularly Primes, I've run them exclusively for the last 4 or 5 years. Just recently switched to Viparspectras to give my tridacna clams more light. Hopefully this isn't a sign of slipping quality from AI.

 

[oreo54]

He said he was running one of the signature profiles that he “modified slightly” so I’m guessing he’s turned something right up and melted it. He wouldn’t tell me what he had modified

It is not exactly "heat "as you know it..

While the UV and VI LEDs do produce the most heat of all the LEDs on most boards and sometimes sit at the center, which is the hottest point of the fixture, the lens material typically still has a melting temperature of around 160ºC, or 320ºF. At no point do the surface temperatures of the LEDs reach 160ºC.

Given the high melting point of the plastic and the fact that other colors such as Royal Blue LEDs which run cooler also have their optics distort, temperature cannot solely be the cause of the melt. Furthermore, users who run their UV and Violet channels at relatively lower settings of around 45% also report cases of lens melt.

Maybe think of it as photon friction against the plastic.
And that friction from the higher energy "blue plus" photons is concentrated on certain chemicals/impurities in the plastic lens.

Working temp of pmma is 120C, 248F.. So boil any water lately on your lights?

Chemical resisitivity
• Polymers are (partly) organic materials
→ less resistive against environmental
stress (gases like ozone, nitric oxides,
hydrogen chloride, nitric acid,..)
• Outgassing components can damage
or degrade the plastics performance during
production/operation of a lighting system
• Elevated temperatures promote the diffusion
of aggressive chemicals into the material
• Many plastics show a considerable loss in their light transmission during use
(yellowing/haze due to high-energy radiation (environment or LED))

https://www.energy.gov/sites/prod/files/2015/02/f19/huebner_optics_sanfrancisco2015.pdf

As I understand it.


Make em out of glass.. Problem solved..

 

[LxHowler]

Well he’s just sent me his schedule and now it makes a lot more sense. He’s now changed it to be more sensible. He doesn’t have any coral so I’m not sure what he was trying to achieve with this

 

[Antaguana]

Well he’s just sent me his schedule and now it makes a lot more sense. He’s now changed it to be more sensible. He doesn’t have any coral so I’m not sure what he was trying to achieve with this

Perhaps they are planning to open a tanning salon? Or an epoxy nail salon?

On a more serious note, I am totally new to this and must say I have found the myAI app to put a lot of power in my hands with no guidance on how to use said power, a dangerous combination to be sure. What is "a more sensible" profile? Their "easy setup" just puts everything at 60% for daylight hours with a 1hour ramp up and down. Is this "sensible". It seems a bit foolish that they have put moonlight LEDs in this product and then the easy setup uses them all day and turns them off at night...

It would be really helpful if someone can post their profiles with some info on why they set it the way they have.

 

[piranhaman00]

Moonlights are a gimmick, all lights off at night.

If the light is capable of high power the lenses should be able to handle it

 

[LxHowler]

Perhaps they are planning to open a tanning salon? Or an epoxy nail salon?

On a more serious note, I am totally new to this and must say I have found the myAI app to put a lot of power in my hands with no guidance on how to use said power, a dangerous combination to be sure. What is "a more sensible" profile? Their "easy setup" just puts everything at 60% for daylight hours with a 1hour ramp up and down. Is this "sensible". It seems a bit foolish that they have put moonlight LEDs in this product and then the easy setup uses them all day and turns them off at night...

It would be really helpful if someone can post their profiles with some info on why they set it the way they have.

For his tank that’s fish only and not very big I got him to download the Tony Rodger’s profile from the signature series and run it at 50% as he didn’t need to really worry about the par level as he has no coral to worry about.

I use the David saxby running at 75% for my mixed reef and used a seneye to get a rough par reading in my tank for this level and I don’t bother with the moonlight led

Both these profiles are available to download or in the mobius app to activate onto the light

 

[excaliber]

I was looking at these lights for my new tank but there were too many of these posts everywhere. Has AI figured this out yet or is it still ongoing?

 

[CBonito]

If salt spray sits on the lens it will melt like that no problem. Anything like mentioned earlier that will absorb photons and heat up on the lens will cause it to overheat and melt. These lenses are polycarbonate resin, usually with a coating to make them durable like headlights.