I need help finding some white 6” econolight trims for my flourescent cam lights. I have 4, and I forgot to buy them when I got the cans themselves. They are 4 pin 2x13 watt cfl cans.

Last year i bought (for a bulk price of 1 ILS/lamp) the entire remaining stock of REALLY old MR16 LED lamps from my wholesaler. Anything from a bunch of 5mm LEDs in an MR16 housing (some are in fact glass ones from Halogen production), to the somewhat later ones with finned aluminum body and 3..4 "1W" LEDs in the front. I have not put any of them to a life test (and dont plan to)

Back in the day those and similar lamps had lifespans in the order of 3..8 years. Faiure modes were usually due to capacitors :

The lamps with many 5mm LEDs were virtually all powered by an X capacitor ballast. The most common failure was EOL of that capacitor by repeated fault clearing, which would make the lamp go dim as it ages. Some had also single LEDs fail (possibly due to current spikes during the capacitor faults ?)

The ones with higher power LEDs do have a small switching power supply inside. Most of those would fail from failing electrolytic capacitors and sometimes from LED failures as well

Virtually all new LED lamps i see fail are LED failures - Be it in filament lamps, snow cones, tubes, or the lower end of integrated luminaires

Snow cones i haven't seen any that last for a reasonable time OR put out good light. To me they are as good as "a lamp for temporary use without risk of glass to smash". With this said, i have some stock of snow cones i got for this exact use in a festoon string. (Globalux, the cheapened down version of Eurolux from the same company, but still a whole lot better than the $1-grade ones)

On the good side - i have a 4W E14 golfball filament, that had been running for its 5th year of 24*365 in a large enclosed globe. (recently taken out of service due to moving things around and intentions to repurpose the globe for something else, the lamp is still good)

K-lite (Philips) has been horrible to me. Once Philips switched away from their purple-and-white toned packaging, quality turned to crap. Any modern glass K-lite product WILL fail within a year.

For example, I installed 6 Philips high-CRI, high-efficiency WarmGlo glass LEDs. Lo and behold, 5/6 examples failed within a 6 month span. The previous Ledvance 8.5W Snowcones? 6 years. And I only replaced them because they were starting to dim out.

My advice is to source NOS products from the likes of Philips, Osram-Sylvania, Feit, and even TCP. Because the modern stuff is simply not good. The best luck I've had with modern LED products are Ledvance's line of A19 glass and snowcone LEDs.

All of our "legacy" LEDs are still lighting, 10 years later at this point. FEIT 11.5-13.5W BR30s in the white-and-gold 4pks are in every recessed can in the house and REFUSE to fail. Etc.

I would go for something old enough to still be built to a good standard, and something new enough so it at least makes ~70lm/W.

Oh, and right as I was typing this out, the middle Philips SceneSwitch flickered wildly and then went out. Quite poetic.

E plug can not fit into F (the grounding pin is in the way) and vice versa, F-only plug can not fit into E socket (the ridges on the edge and the grounding contacts are in the way of the round plug shape).
Only the combined E+F plug (virtually the only one produced for class I devices for continental Europe market since way before 90's) can fit into both, but then it receives the PE connection in both E and F sockets properly.

For the assumption of polarity: Yes the standard may state that the N needs to be isolated the same way as Live, but people are often forgetting that and tend to wrongly assume the N as "safe to touch".
With nonpolarized plugs/sockets it is clear from the start there is no guarantee which one would be live, so people are really careful and treat both properly.
Of course assume people who know at least some basics what the electricity is. If someone has really no idea at all, then nothing can save them if they start to poke inside...

@Ash
Very interesting view on polarization, I haven't heard it described in that way. I always assumed that insulation requirements for neutral were equal to the requirements for live, but I could be wrong.

I had no idea that MCBs were energy limiting!!! I wish we had those in the US. I can see how that would definitely make a difference in terms of the "bang" of faults.

6kA is not a whole lot... Lowest I have seen here is 10kA.

My viewpoint on type F Schuko is kind of mixed. They can fit perfectly into type H, K, L, O, older round type C, and sometimes type D sockets, but won't receive a ground connection by doing so. The same applies for the type E French plugs.

As to Italian type L plugs, I am so far a fan. 16A, unpolarized, protruding ground pin, shuttered sockets, shrouded pins, seems good. Reminds me of a stage pin connector, but not stuck in the 1930s lol. Europlug compatible, which is nice. The problem still stands with it's compatibility with type E and F that won't get a ground connection, but yeah I can see how this is a good choice.

BS1363 has its own safety/performance issues

1
Wiping a flat blade with a flat (in one dimension) socket contact results in moderate pressure, for the same amount of force the user inserting the plug feels from outside

In European plugs with round pins, the pressure from the socket contact is concentrated to a narrower spot, resulting in higher pressure, so the contact is wiped more forcibly in this spot to break surface dirt and oxides

The same contact spot is then elongated into a line when the plug is fully inserted. The final contact area is similar to the BS1363, except in the European ones the line is along the pin (along the same area that is wiped on its way in and out), while in BS1363 all the area that was wiped during the insertion of the plug isn't even in use and the benefit is wasted



2
The plug is polarized, which gives the appliance manufactuer (or DIYer) a sense of security that a certain conductor at their end has no voltage on it. This sense is false. It takes as little as pulling the plug halfway out and a little to the right to make the appliance live on the Neutral as much as it is on the Live

Anyone referring to this as a safety feature (outside of some industrial applications maybe, which would then use IEC 60309 plugs anyway), does this because in their thinking, they treat the Neutral with less caution than the Live. Which means their entire application is less safe regardless of the plug

Schuko and the Italian types are not polarized, and while the French plug itself cannot be inserted in reverse, there is no consistent code for the polarity of the wiring in the wall receptacle. (Besides, the plug itself is usually the same plug made to fit both the French and Schuko). This means that all 3 are essentially non polarized

Then manufacturers and DIYers using European plugs can have no expectations regarding the Neutral, cannot treat the Neutral in any way less carefully than the Live, and insulate everything properly

This have nothing to do with the switch of the appliance having 50% chance of being on the neutral. When this happens, when switched off, the appliance internal wiring and components will remain live, but they are still fully insulated and enclosed



3
If an appliance connected to the plug has a short circuit in it, there will be sparks and the breaker will trip or fuse will blow

MCBs (European type circuit breakers, used both in Europe and UK) are all energy limiting. When a short circuit with high enough current happens, they interrupt the current before it reached its Ohms-law expected peak value, and respectively the energy. This effect is most significant when the short circuit current is high, ie. house near
the transformer, socket on a short wiring run from the DB inside the house

This reduces the arc and melted metal blown from the contacts that were closed to complete the short circuit (the plug, held in hand at the moment this happens)

For exact specs see https://www.eaton.com/content/dam/eaton/products/electrical-circuit-protection/circuit-breakers/xeffect/eaton-xeffect-industrial-switchgear-range-catalog-ca003002en-en-us.pdf plots on p. 152-153

I have not been able to find similar data for BS1362 fuse

The BS1363 plug is inserted into a receptacle on a 32A breaker, the European on a 16A breaker. At high currents, the 16A breaker will significantly reduce the "bang" compared to 32A

Back in the day when BS1363 was designed, short circuit currents in homes were small (probably in the <1kA range), and the only means of upstream protection was fuses - but in the UK they were often not sand filled - just user replaceable wire between 2 screws on a ceramic cartridge, so the BS1362 fuse performed better than the upstream protection



4
Any short circuit interruption device (breaker or fuse) has limited interruption capacity, and will blow up if this capacity is exceeded. For BS1362 fuse it is 6kA, same as circuit breakers mostly used in homes

Maybe holding the interruption device (plug with the fuse in it) in hand while it is failing (for example, if the ceramic was cracked during installation into the plug), is less safe than having it installed remotely in the DB



5
Additional connections in the plug mean additional possible points of failure (bad contact and heating), which cannot be seen by the user from outside, and cannot be felt by the user from outside (the plug won't feel loose in the socket when inserting). The plug with loose fuse may be plugged in behind some cupboard, in a hidden location where it can keep heating and melting until it causes a fire

Any other plug is safer here just because it is simple, there is lower chance that something is bad inside

Same for the switch in the sockets (Australia too). Besides, i wonder how well that switch is protected from molten copper shooting out around the button edge if it is switched on into a short circuit



Does this amount to make the plug bad/dangerous enough to avoid it ? No, it is a fairly safe plug, as are most others used around the world, many of which do or dont have some safety features in particular

Just cut the hype already



If i would be choosing one plug of the existing ones for "home" uses in e.g. a new country (without compatibility considerations to existing everything), it would be Schuko (best) or the Italian (more compact, allowing to fit 2x more sockets in the same space)

In Italy they actually do use both for those very reasons

There are other European plugs with similar quality - the French etc, but they dont have the feature of being possible to insert both ways (for convenience and for reducing strain on the cable in some cases) which is a nice to have

Swiss 3 phase and 1 phase combined sockets are also nice to have. With minor changes the swiss combined socket can be made to accept also the italian plugs, and the Italian and schuko sockets can be made to accept the 1ph Swiss plugs

Hey everyone! I was wondering when all the Wide-Lite style fixtures, like the Aktra II, were discontinued. All info will be appreciated, thanks!

If the 100w MV ballasts and the heads are in good condition, I would be interested in "buying" up to 3 RMA heads. No lamps, photocontrols or (polluting) refractor assemblies needed, just the heads. "Buying" meaning the cost of shipping plus something for your trouble/handling.

I only have a single ultra efficient 200lm/w lamp (Philips, 230v) and it runs very cool. But the light it produces is color-wise comparable to a 29/530 fluorescent lamp. A very dirty greenish yellow. The shift away from the white point is visible in their own data sheets' color coordinate information. 
Technically better color rendering but the hue is somewhat similar. I don't know if they're all like that from all brands, but these things are only usable as security or utility light in non-living spaces.

So far i've had good experiences with Osram/Ledvance/Philips LED lamps. But because they last so long, the experience i have is with lamps of many years ago. In the 5 years since i bought them, the design might have changed multiple times already.

The current LED lamps i run are only a year old by now. No failures. But it'll be a few more years before i can say anything about the 2024-2025 generation of their LED lamps.

Passed a semi today with one fully purpled-out headlight, while the other was a crisp 5000K.