Lumileds told that it contacted all customers affected by this return request, which constitute about 5% of its total customer base, within one week of discovering the problem.
Lumileds has temporarily suspended production of LUXEON K2 with TFFC emitters. The company said that production will remain on hold until it has resolved the issue. This is a packaging problem that arose in Lumileds’ packaging facility in Malaysia. The company says that verification of the exact root cause of this quality issue is under rigorous investigation.
Lumiled has “identified a batch of non-conforming epoxy material used in the production of LUXEON K2 with TFFC products…This non-conforming epoxy material has the potential to cause the TFFC die to crack and fail during short-term operation.
We have seen a failure rate that exceeds our specifications. Specifically, under normal operating conditions, the affected products experience infant mortality failure within the first 24 hours of operation with failure rates of 10-30%.
Lumileds is continuing to manufacture LED chips, so it will be able to rapidly restart production on the TFFC production line after testing, corrective action and qualification have been carried out.
A Lumileds spokesperson told that, while the affected customers were likely to be unhappy about the recall, they would probably appreciate the proactive nature of the action