Yeah, sorry for the panicked message, the transformer scared me, I thought I blew my light up lol

@stillaintjeff24
No problem, I am certainly in no rush lol

If we can count fluorescent starters as "ignitors" (and I think we can - things designed to ignite a discharge in a lamp) and if we can count them also as "standalone", there were a few electronic starter designs actually relying onto the FEC principld to generate the striking voltage, so the answer to the question in the title would be "Yes,they were made and used"...

Functional wise taking the few components forming the ignitor circuit and placing them into a separate boxwon't be that big a problem (provided the distance limitation could be adressed).
The problem with the very simple FEC starting circuit (a resistor, sidac and the FEC itself) is, it could sometimes enter a thermal runaway mode, which means the thing becomes red hot. It comes from the tendency of many ceramics turning into conductors once heated.
Containing something that becomes red hod within somethinb that is already designed to house way bigger things that is more than red hot during normal operation, is not that difficult, as it would be to contain something that may become red hot in a separate plastic box.
Plus even when the runaway event by itself may not be directly destructive, it definitely becomes that way when occuring more often. And mainly at the lamp EOL the liklyhood of the runaway happening becomes way greater, so much it becomes very likely such simple ignitor circuit won't survive the lamp EOL. And combine that with the FEC being rather cheap to produce (compare to any more complex electronics), it kind of does not make much sense to just not design the ignitor as disposable part of the lamp assembly. Then you don't need to care whether it survives the lamp EOL, it is quite easy to utilize the manufacturing techniques that are already used to make the lamp and which make the thing safe when it goes into the runaway mode and quite important factor, the thing is inherently separated from atmospheric oxygen, so more likely to actually survive the high runaway temperatures whan it gets triggered before the lamp EOL.

Also @RRK: The vacuum solid state getter is intact. I don't see any problem with it.

Indo Sicura

Happy new year people! 

I am not certain about that, but my first thought is that the FEC ignitor sealed in the glass envelope is better protect from the environment, allowing a weaker housing?

Hey, I haven’t forgotten about this, just couldn’t get my setup going. I will have the results for you in a bit. Sorry for the wait!

@James
Ahh I see, so it has to be pretty close to the arc tube for it to work. Maybe a device that incorporates the ignitor into the fixture's socket would be better. But that seems unnecessarily complicated.

I wonder why Iwasaki didn't have their ignitors all in the lamp cap. Of course the lamps look cooler and are more identifiable when the components are visible in the envelope, but it seems like a lot of work just to have it in the envelope.

Not easily possible with a standard lamp. For the Iwasaki FEC’s they only work in conjunction with a resistor (a tungsten coil in the outer bulb) and a sidac (hidden in the base to help keep it cooler).  The stems of these lamps have a third leadwire to build the necessary circuit.  Without that it will not work.

The Sylvania design lamps do manage with a 2-wire stem and they comprise both the FEC and Sidac in the lamp cap, in parallel with the arc tube.  The voltage spikes are quickly lost with increasing distance, maybe it could work if very close to the lampholder.