Amazon Shipping Time

[Steve Dwyer]

One of the LED shop lights has been flickering so I decided to replace the driver. Yesterday I took the light down, removed the driver and tried to find a replacement 100 W 24 V unit locally. It's not a common size off the shelf item I quickly discovered. At about 11 AM I placed an online order with Amazon, it said to expect a delivery next day before midnight. Well at 1:00 PM today I received a text saying the package was at my front door. Thats an amazing, it was a 24 hour turn around. There are two storage centers here in Syracuse, but how is it possible they have such an unusual item in stock especially since there are a gazillion varieties being made. I'm baffled and overly impressed, what a system they have. UPS and FEDEX would still be printing the shipping label. AND I had free shipping because we are a Prime member.

Steve

[Dave_Trible]

They amaze me too sometimes.  There are at least three big distribution centers here in the KC area-one son-in-law drives for them- and one of those is about 2-3 miles down the road.  Several MONSTER buildings about like stadiums.  Delivery trucks by the dozens come and go from there around the clock.  I can get McMaster Carr stuff in about 12-15 hours no matter what I want.  I'd think they have to have a great deal of stock in those buildings-or a squadron of F-15s pulling a trailer.

Dave

[Dan McEntee]

  What kind of LED lights take a "driver" ?? The ones I have in my house, and really have ever seen, are all self contained and just need 110VAC power either direct or through a switch to one prong and common to the other. I have two different brands bought a few years apart and both are the same. I bought enough tubes through a place called UltraBriteLEDs or something like that on the internet, to replace every 48" fluorescent light in my house,  and their warehouse/facility was right on my way home from work. What a difference in light and the electric bill!! As the old tubes started to fail, I just gutted the original fixtures of any ballast and un-necessary wiring and wired the new LED units in direct. I love the instant on, bright light, no matter what the temperature is, and no flickering of any kind. I'm six or eight years into the original 4 or 5 fixtures I reworked and no issues. They are supposed to be good for 50,000 hours!! These type were all I really saw when I was shopping around, and don't recall seeing any that required a starter of any kind. That is one of the things LED lights were supposed to eliminate.

    Amazon warehouses and distribution centers are ALL over the St. Louis area. You can find them in just about every warehouse complex in any part of town, especially if they are near the interstates. When those start springing up, the next thing you see if gas stations and convenience stores start popping up near then so the delivery trucks can gas up a couple of times a day. There are some of those Rivian electric trucks at some of the location, and even those clog up the gas stations with the drivers just goofing off I guess. Most of the time I just see them parked all in a row and they are not charging. I would like to know how many delivery trucks are on the road at any given time each day, and those wouldn't include the privately owned vehicles that the independent contractors that deliver for Amazon are driving??
  Type at you later,
   Dan McEntee

[Steve Dwyer]

I have several LED lights in my shop that have drivers, I also built a display cabinet using LED striping lighting that uses a driver.

Steve

[Dwayne Donnelly]

I buy all my RC lipos through Amazon now, delivered to my door the next day free shipping,  can't beat it

[AMV]

  What kind of LED lights take a "driver" ??

Any kind of LED that by design can't self-contain the "driver", aka the Power Supply.

For example -- LED light strips, such as those used for under-cabinet / accent lighting, typically use a separate power supply.  Sometimes such a PSU is just a wall wart, sometimes it's a whole hard-wired brick installed some distance from the lights, e.g., the basement.

I have 2'x4' flat panels in my workshop. They come with the power supply strapped to the top side, and -- what I really like about the concept -- are replaceable.  All those consumer screw-in bulbs and fluorescent retrofits have the power supply built-in.  If I could, I'd wire all the lighting circuits in my house so that they'd run on low voltage, with one or two AC/DC power supplies in the basement to rule them all.  Over the years, the promise of "LEDs will run forever!!" has not quite panned out in practice.  What actually happened is that cheap-a$$ Chinese mfg's were quick to flood the market with cheap-a$$ retrofits that damage the LED element over time, or contain cheap-a$$ AC/DC electronics that give up the smoke before their tungsten equivalents would, and you're left with no choice but to buy another "forever" self-contained LED unit prematurely.  The cheapest method of driving an LED that I've seen is a simple dumb resistor.  It's sized so that the peak voltage is baaaarely below the maximum reverse bias voltage of the LED.  Remember that the "D" in LED stands for "diode".  LEDs only conduct current in one direction, so they don't handle 120V AC out of the box.  They can handle reverse current/voltage, but only up to a certain voltage. Once you drive them in reverse beyond their rated Reverse Breakdown Voltage, they let out factory-sealed smoke and somehow fail to light up again.  Hence, having a quality driver is essential for longevity of enjoyed use.  The LED elements themselves can potentially run practically forever.  Again, the built-in drivers either fail in their internal circuitry, or their design is so cheap that they ruin the LED over time.  It pays to have a decent separate driver if possible.  If the driver fails, just replace the driver while keeping the LEDs in place.  The drivers themselves are generic enough that they're easy to find.  The installed LEDs, however, may be time-consuming to replace (in-cabinet or under-cabinet lights, for example).  Or they may be a one-of-a-kind design that's hard to find a few years down the road.

Just my $0.02, 
-Andrey

[AMV]

Back to the topic at hand:

1. The other week, I ordered a spool of Spectra line, rather late on a Friday night (just after 10PM).
2. Amazon estimated delivery by Monday. Okay, I'm in no hurry.
3. Amazon picked it up somewhere and reported that it arrived at their facility (about 70 miles from me) around noon on Saturday.
4. It was delivered to an Amazon locker by noon the next day.
5. I picked it up at my own convenience a couple hours later.

The cool part?  I don't even have Prime, and this happens to me about 60% of the time.  In the other 40%, they deliver exactly on their estimated schedule, which is usually about a week.  I find that it really depends on the item(s) in the order -- but I couldn't predict that any more than the next guy.

The best part about online shopping in general is not the shipping.  It's the variety and availability of selection.  My local big-box sporting goods store can only stock so much.  I checked them first -- they only have Spectra up to 65 lbs.  I needed 100 lbs.  Amazon has it any day of the week via multiple vendors, so guess who won?

Cheers, 
-Andrey

[Dennis Leonhardi]

Amazon has a very sophisticated system; my wife picked and packed items for a few weeks between her usual employments.  Pickers pretty much stay in place as 4-sided devices come to them, while lights and a monitor show them exactly what to pick and what bin to put the item(s) in.  Conveyors bring items to a packer, who then chooses the packaging and prepares it for shipment.

Not at all surprised by the speed of delivery; few items we've purchased over the years required more than 3-4 days.  As has been said, the real beauty is the selection.

If I'm not mistaken though, about 60% of items sold by Amazon are actually sold and shipped by independent sellers.  Some years back I spoke with a large store-front and mail-order hobby supplier, who indicated meeting Amazon's demands was costly and very time-consuming.  And returns were very high.

Dennis

[Steve Dwyer]

Two points:

First:  For AMV I noticed some of the drivers online were called variable drivers. The cabinet strip lighting I installed has a variable light switch to control the brightness in the cabinet. What is the difference between a variable and non-variable driver? I thought the wattage load the driver sees is maintained constant by a "rheostat" in the slider switch?

Second: It would appear because of their sheer volume and buying power Amazon is growing toward becoming the leader on online purchasing sales. At least that's no doubt their goal. Sure, there will always competitive sources that ship direct, but shipping costs and shipping times drive consumers. This experience has now prompted me to stop and consider Amazon where before I'd simply scroll down looking for the product manufacturer below.

Steve

[AMV]

The technical term is "dimmable".
There's no rheostat -- leave that for the high school physics experiments with incandescent bulbs and DC motors.
The dimmable LED driver is just a PWM generator with a variable duty cycle. The peak voltage supplied to the LEDs remains at the same level; the length of time that it remains there varies according to the duty cycle level, 0%-100%.

Cheers,
-Andrey