If you have a wire going from an ignitor to a special tap on ballast choke or transformer, then yes, you have semiparallel ignitor circuit that uses ballast windings to get high ignition voltage.

Hey everyone, I have a bunch of ballasts I’m looking to get rid of in the near future. If anyone is interested let me know. They are still sealed with a few open box. Complete with mounting gear, cap and ignitor if necessary. These are 4 tap, and made within the last 6 years if you need ballasts to test lamps or want something you don’t care about. Probably looking to do 20-30 a ballast, maybe lower depending on wattage and if shipping gets high. I have uploaded the pictures on my gallery in the gear section. Selection ranges 39-1000 watt metal halide.

What kind of lamps?

It seems to have the same ignition correct as any other American ballast would.

How bad is a cycling lamp for a fixture? I have a Hps Wallpak, and the lamp cycles. I think it’s cool looking, but I know it is hard on the components. How bad is it to have it running for maybe 2 or 3 hours?

Inexpensive American luminaire is probably using a tap on the ballast choke to generate HPS HV ignition pulses. So yes, cycling HPS is stressing choke insulation repeatedly. How bad is this in practice, hard to tell, as HPS ignition voltage is typically low, less than 2kV.

 

Though, looking more carefully, it seems that ignitors should be ES/CT version to have timed cutoff.

ZRM 4.5-ES/C marketed as ignition cut-off, not sure if smart enough to prevent cycling, too.

Ignitor being TOO smart is the source of its problems in practice unfortunately...

@RRK: Are the Tridonic ignitors you got, anti-cycle or regular?

I know once there was a fire caused by neglecting to use a regular not-HV rated cable from ballast box to luminaire in the case of non-igniting MH lamp! So far, so good, ask me how I got four combos of nice NOS Tridonic 150W chokes with nice NOS Tridonic igintors for VERY cheap haha!

We had a rainfall today: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YPjPBihIw58
But it is the only one we will have this day.