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When I replace a Fluorescent/LED Tube Light,
(a) When removing the tube light, Which way should I turn, toward me or away from me?
(b) And when Reinstalling, which way should I turn tube light, away or towards me? Or does it matter?
All these websites are giving different directions. Just want to be sure.
I have replaced tubes on easily 20 different kinds of fixtures with a wide variety of tombstones (that's the lamp socket the tubes go into). It's a dog's breakfast.
The upshot is you really have to "go by feel" - remember you are holding onto a glass thing, force hard enough but not too hard.
For what it's worth, the tube ends will have a "dimple" perpendicular to the pins, so when it's square into the socket, the dimple is lined up with the socket.
Once the first tube is out, stop and take a close look at the tombstone, and see how it is designed to work.
Unfortunately I'm not at my site, so I can't give you a rogue's gallery of different tombstone pin paths. Suffice it to say, there are many.
Most LED tubes are aligned so the light shoots out the way the tombstones come out. If you want to get rid of the infamous LED eyeball-burning glare, at the expense of less light, install them "upside down".
You can turn it either way but you want the LED’s to be facing out so it depends which orientation you install the tube.
I usually remove the fixtures to require them and have them face up on my work bench. I pull the tube out of the foam or box remove any pin protectors and then look to see which way is the front if the front is away from me I rotate the lamp towards me , if the front Is pointing at me I roll them away. In both cases 90 degrees until they snap in place or lock.
Some lamps are frosted on these I have found the heat sink is usually attached on the back side and can be seen just reverse the above directions so the heat sink goes to the fixture side.
Turn it on if you have one backwards it will be obvious, turn off rotate the bulb 180 degrees and you are good to go.
Most my lamps are universal hybrid (with ballast, single or double ended without ballast) but rotation doesn't matter what matters is the LED’s facing forward and if a single ended lamp that can only be powered by 1 end you get that right then rotate the tube until the LED’s face forward.
I can say I have done much more than a thousand T5, T8 & T12 lamps conversions to led and never had a problem unless I was not paying attention then I just had to rotate the lamp 180.
Which way should I turn, toward me or away from me?... do you not realize that the direction reverses if you stand on the other side? – jsotola Nov 5 '20 at 0:09