Plain coloured LED Strings

kool-lites

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Firstly, I am not sure if this is in the correct place - so mods move as appropriate.

This year I am after a close on 60 to 80 LED strings and am wondering is any one for recommend a Chineese supplier. ( Ray Wu does, do PO Strings).
My preference is for:
waterproof strings, if they exist, as I prefer more than 2 or 3 seasons
single colour strings
24VDC ( other voltages are OK)

So can anyone recommend a seller (preferably one you have done business with) I can start a dialogue with?
 

AussiePhil

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Hi,

Moved to the lights area, you may get a better response.

Both Dave in WA and Tuppet brought in lights this year and may be able to help

Cheers
Phil
 

Dave

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Yes i did buy LEDs from china.

Before i go too much further, i'm currantly away at work and when i get home i was going to start a new thread on chinesse lights and how they preformed during the season.
So please give me a day or two here as i'll be home on Thursday.

However the company i did use was MYSOLARLED.COM and the contact is Kelly, she is very good with the sales process.

fj may chime in here as well as purchased from a differant company.

Dave
 

TimW

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I think Ray is in the process of sourcing some strings... will be interesting to see what he comes up with (as I find him pretty reliable!)
 

tuppetsdad

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Yes we purchased about 80 Kg of LED strings which we had custom built and also went with 24V. Mixture of strings and icicles. Overall we were happy enough. Hard to say what life we will get out of them. A few general comments:

Shipping cost is a high percentage of the cost so buy from companies on the Chinese mainland closer to Hong Kong and you will save.
Australia is an unusual case as Christmas is in the summer where UV is an issue and we are low voltage so many OEM's have various voltages (have seen 12,18,24,28,30,31, 48 etc). You are better to pick one like 24V and try to get everything to match this.
OEM's can source other products from other suppliers for you but generally are poor traders so don't know much about other people's products.
Make sure they are suitable for 24VDC and not AC.
Buy them complete with plugs and extension cables and get them to mark the cables so you know which one is positive and negative.
Think about what lengths you want for the strings and the extension cables etc so that you end up with a modular system. In our case we had a lot of 80 LED lights with 100mm spacing 8m long with 5m to the plug and then purchased 10m extension cables with plugs both ends plus 1m cables with plug one end and other end to connect to the Dimmer output terminals. Works very well. For Icicles we had similar but just 2m segments of icicles each with 96 LED's
Get double lens caps to improve water resistance.
UV rating needs to cover the wires and the sleeves that they shrink onto the lights. Our wires seem OK but some of the sleeves have changed from green to gray in the sun.The plugs are injection moulded and a few are a bit dodgy but work well enough and are IP 66.
Colours are very nice (Red, Blue, Warm white and Green)
Send your supplier a diagram showing the lengths spacing etc of what you want as Chinese people are graphical and not verbal in their understanding and you will find it much easier.

We will buy more this year (maybe 40-50 Kg) but probably at the end of March. Some we will probably buy from the same supplier but some chance I will go to the LED lighting exhibition in China in March so will look then.
We paid about $4.50 per string including extension cables etc plus shipping. There are cheaper ones but we were keen to get them made how we need them for fast installation and this was the main focus.

If you can wait till end of March then we can probably let you know a few more suggestions on suppliers. Ray Wu is a dealer and it's likely that he will control the quality well but you need also to be very clear with him on what you want.
 

Pyrotech

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I have to back up the statement that the Chinese are better with graphics than written words, in 1998 we had as part of a large consignment, some excellent rockets and all bits of the packaging were spot on, In our 1999 order, Millennium year!!!, we re-ordered. Most bits had specific details , the rockets just had "same as last year please" Five months later a container arrived with 1,000 rocket packs all bearing in large letters the name "SAME AS LAST YEAR PLEASE".... they sold ,and I laugh now, but had it been another detail our Health and Safety guys could have grabbed the lot.

Be very specific, I've always found them willing to help, but don't let them guess on your behalf.
 

AussiePhil

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One think to keep in mind......

Around March/April this year I should have access to space in a shipping container coming from China, so it may be possible to bring some heavy orders in at a much better freight rate.

Phil
 

kane

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Hi All,

I'm also keen to get an amount of LED strings (and curtains) from China - I've contacted both MySolarLED (still no reply after 5 days), and also Jason @ KaxLed (who has come back very quickly)

I'm looking at approx 12,000 LEDs in total (4000 in strings, 8000 in curtains), across 38 items, revised down from my original plan of approx 20,000. Pricing from Kaxled has come in a bit more than FJ's pricing from last year (per 100 LEDs: red: $5.08, green: $7.20, white: $6.97, versus red: $4.50, green: $6.50, white: $5.80).

The biggest kicker, as feared, is the postage. My quote came back as US$840, plus shipping, either by air or sea (obviously at this stage there's no real hurry!), would be around US$440. Apparently my order would be around 60kg..

I did ask if the shipping would come down with an increased order, but that didn't change things much - he said for double the order, it would increase to US$750

For those that have ordered these from China, does that postage sound about right?

AussiePhil said:
Around March/April this year I should have access to space in a shipping container coming from China, so it may be possible to bring some heavy orders in at a much better freight rate.

I'm guessing for Perthies, any savings gained will be wiped out by shipping over our way?
 

tuppetsdad

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Yes shipping with the usual freight companies will be about this amount as it is handled as for this size will come as air freight which for a casual one off order will be approx $7-$8 /Kg. Only way you can reduce this significantly is bulk sea freight where they come by container but you need a lot more goods. Freight cost is calculated based on a combination of size and weight. LED strings are heavy due to the copper and so weight is the main influence. Just take some care as import duty and GST are not charged for imports under $1000 including the freight cost. Most times though the quoted price is door to door and includes all charges.
 

fj

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kanebullen said:
Pricing from Kaxled has come in a bit more than FJ's pricing from last year (per 100 LEDs: red: $5.08, green: $7.20, white: $6.97, versus red: $4.50, green: $6.50, white: $5.80).

The biggest kicker, as feared, is the postage. My quote came back as US$840, plus shipping, either by air or sea (obviously at this stage there's no real hurry!), would be around US$440. Apparently my order would be around 60kg

gee, that's a pretty big price increase - that's about 10%+ !! i wonder if the fact that some are icicle lights has anything to do with it? also, didn't China just have some mandatory wage increases or something? maybe that kicked up the price a bit. i do remember that they were cheaper the more 'sets/strings' i ordered - because i got 120 sets/strings, maybe that got the price down a bit more. i can email Anthony if you like to get some clarification.

i ordered 12,000 last year (120 strings of 100 LEDS) for a cost of $646 USD...then the real pain came from the $300 USD postage (i think my boxes were quoted as about 40kg)....almost half the price of the strings.
 

kane

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fj said:
gee, that's a pretty big price increase - that's about 10%+ !! i wonder if the fact that some are icicle lights has anything to do with it? also, didn't China just have some mandatory wage increases or something? maybe that kicked up the price a bit. i do remember that they were cheaper the more 'sets/strings' i ordered - because i got 120 sets/strings, maybe that got the price down a bit more. i can email Anthony if you like to get some clarification.

I think you mentioned that your 100 strings were $5.80 for white - that was the only product we had in common, and those were quoted to me at $7.50, so that's close to a 30% increase.. Perhaps the efficiencies of many strings the same did bring the price down for you as well..

The sales@ email address for Anthony didn't work - needed to use sales1@ which went to Jason - perhaps Anthony is not there anymore.

fj said:
i ordered 12,000 last year (120 strings of 100 LEDS) for a cost of $646 USD...then the real pain came from the $300 USD postage (i think my boxes were quoted as about 40kg)....almost half the price of the strings.

Interesting that I'm looking at around the same total number of LEDs, for 30% more (and an extra 20kg??)

Cheers

Kane
 

kane

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tuppetsdad said:
Yes shipping with the usual freight companies will be about this amount as it is handled as for this size will come as air freight which for a casual one off order will be approx $7-$8 /Kg.

Cheers - good to know. So the pricing is probably about right, assuming the actual weight is correct.

tuppetsdad said:
Just take some care as import duty and GST are not charged for imports under $1000 including the freight cost. Most times though the quoted price is door to door and includes all charges.

Jees, for some reason I was always thinking that the $1000 cut off excluded shipping costs, but I've been mistaken - definately includes postage. http://www.ato.gov.au/businesses/content.asp?doc=/content/13193.htm
 

fj

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kanebullen said:
The sales@ email address for Anthony didn't work - needed to use sales1@ which went to Jason - perhaps Anthony is not there anymore.

sales3@ is Anthony...sorry if i got that wrong in my other thread. i emailed him last week so he is still there.

kanebullen said:
Interesting that I'm looking at around the same total number of LEDs, for 30% more (and an extra 20kg??)

that doesn't sound quite right does it? maybe the curtains have more wire in them. question Kaxled about the prices and why the big increase in per string cost and postage.

also, try BigVics supplier for prices too and go from there.
 

Goldie

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May 22, 2010
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Just My 2 cents, I had to throw away over $1,000 net lights 2 years ago due to the wires rusting, as I spread them open from the previous year, all the wires broke, leaving them useless
 
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