Half burnt out 8ft LED tube lights

Hello,

I work in a metal manufacturing shop, and this past year we switched over our lighting to LED. My boss found some 8ft t8 LED lights in bulk for pretty cheap, so I bypassed the ballasts in all the hanging ceiling lights (probably about 40 of them) and replaced them with the LED bulbs. So now we have about 80 LED tube lights lighting our workshop, and it's great. But we're having problems. About once a month, half of one will "burn out". I opened up one of the bad ones today to see if it's loose soldering on the circuit board, but I couldn't spot anything. I found online that it might also be that the power supply could need replacement. Whatever it is I'm having trouble diagnosing and fixing the problem.


TL;DR We have new 8ft LED tube lights, a bunch of the tubes are half burnt out one side after not much use, can't figure out why. Any way to fix this and/or prevent this from happening more?

well, there's a list a mile long of cheap LED "replacements" for many lighting types and 90% have serious electronic failings incl but not limited to partial total failure, random LED failures, total failure all the way up to flame outs, improper grounding and more. i'd suspect that your tubes are arranged in 2 parallel sets of series LEDs and they are most likely overdriven and under cooled, this thermal abuse causes, among other issues, bond wire breakage which will cause failure of that set of series LEDs (1/2 the tube in your case).
this is not uncommon, you can try and find better quality LED replacement tubes and that may work for you, or you can upgrade to a proper, LED designed fixture with Good Ratings and Warranty.
yes, it's a pay once, cry once, situation.

Yeah I figured that the issue was caused by poor heat management. My boss's management style is go cheap as possible and make it work. So it's my job to do everything I can to make it work, although I figured it would be a longshot trying to fix this. We're a pretty handy bunch, but I think continuing to go bottom line cheap in this case probably isn't worth it with all the bulbs we will have to be replacing. If he wants me to try more I'll suggest we go with new fixtures and better bulbs. But that's an even longer shot than fixing them. I hear Cree is good?

I know the position you're in all too well.
There are ways to mod lighting of course but in most cases it will end up costing you more than just buying proper LED fixtures that were designed around that technology. Most LED shop lighting "high bay" units don't even have bulbs, they are just the fixture with its PSU and LED array and optics. All matched to preform together rather than LEDs in a fixture designed for anything but LEDs.