Lightingguy1994
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| Hey so Im in the thinking stage about how i may ballast my halfpipers. Could make them 4 lamp RS but that might be too typical and i prefer lamps to be independent of each other. T8 is not gonna happen. Maybe preheat but with electronic starters? It needs to be EOL safe so if a bulb goes i can ignore it for a while. It also would be kind of neat. To do this i need to find 4 modernish 2bulb preheat ballasts and 8 or more electronic starters. Are these easy to find for good prices?
Any thoughts welcome.
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« Last Edit: May 02, 2020, 12:29:02 PM by Lightingguy1994 »
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joseph_125
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| The ballasts you'll have to import from the US. I pretty much never seen any loose F40 preheat ballasts sold here in Canada. eBay usually has a handful of them but prices and shipping will vary. As for the starters, the old style cut out FS-40 starter is another option you could consider. They have a resetable cut out mechanism in them that shuts off any strobing lamps. You can usually find those eBay for decent prices. The electronic ones you might have to import from outside North America as they never really took off here.
Also for added safety when running the old ballasts, some members like to add individual ballast current fusing and thermal protection to the vintage preheat ballasts. I usually fuse my two lamp preheat ballasts at around 1A. Thermal protection is a bit harder, you'll have to fasten a thermal fuse either to the exterior of the casing and electrically insulate it or install it inside the ballast casing. I usually don't run my old preheat lights unattended so I only have current protection fitted to my units.
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Ash
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| Step up autotransformer + 4 standard European 230V 36W chokes. If you choose lowloss chokes (rated EEI=B1) they can handle stuck starters for a while with fairly light overheating, that won't damage them unless left for very long periods
Use them with ordinary F40T12s and FS4 starters or electronic starters
They will underdrive the tubes somewhat due to 50 vs 60 Hz but you can make up for it by using an autotransformer that will step up to 277-ish V instead of 240V
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Lightingguy1994
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| Sorry for spelling in my initial post, typing on a phone is a pain.
I like the electronic starters, if I were to get some from the UK, would they work on our preheat ballasts? As for the ballasts, I was thinking of finding the more modern universals that are standard can size, basically the last ones made before it went to all RS.
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WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA
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HID, LPS, and preheat fluorescents forever!!!!!!
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| European single electronic starters would work very nicely on North American autotransformer preheat fluorescent tube ballasts very nicely and European series electronic starters would work very nicely on 120v preheat fluorescent tube choke ballasts pretty nicely as well.
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Desire to collect various light bulbs (especially HID), control gear, and fixtures from around the world.
DISCLAIMER: THE EXPERIMENTS THAT I CONDUCT INVOLVING UNUSUAL LAMP/BALLAST COMBINATIONS SHOULD NOT BE ATTEMPTED UNLESS YOU HAVE THE PROPER KNOWLEDGE. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INJURIES.
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dor123
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Other loves are printers/scanners/copiers, A/Cs
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| He need a 4-22W series operation electronic starter. It will work on 120V as a single operation starter there.
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I"m don't speak English well, and rely on online translating to write in this site.
Please forgive me if my choice of my words looks like offensive, while that isn't my intention.
I only working with the international date format (dd.mm.yyyy).
I lives in Israel, which is a 220-240V, 50hz country.
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WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA
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HID, LPS, and preheat fluorescents forever!!!!!!
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| The 4-22w electronic starters will have problems starting and operating F40T12 tubes on autotransformer ballasts, but they will start and operate F20T12 tubes fine. For F40T12 tubes on autotransformer ballasts, the 4-65w single electronic starters are needed.
The assumption that the 4-65w electronic starters will NEVER work in North America is a fundamentally wrong assumption to make because the autotransformer ballasts are able to provide the correct OCV for such starters to be able to ignite the tubes properly.
Whenever a fluorescent starter or an ignitor has a voltage marking printed on it, it does not necessarily mean that it is the required input line voltage of the fixture, but it actually refers to the required trigger OCV for ideal operation.
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« Last Edit: March 14, 2022, 03:43:39 AM by WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA »
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Desire to collect various light bulbs (especially HID), control gear, and fixtures from around the world.
DISCLAIMER: THE EXPERIMENTS THAT I CONDUCT INVOLVING UNUSUAL LAMP/BALLAST COMBINATIONS SHOULD NOT BE ATTEMPTED UNLESS YOU HAVE THE PROPER KNOWLEDGE. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INJURIES.
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exexcollega
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| Do you want the traditional cilindrical starters? I just ordered some Thorn Vivatronic electronic starters on ebay. They look like HID ignitors. I'll give them a try as soon as they arrive. You might try these as well.
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WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA
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HID, LPS, and preheat fluorescents forever!!!!!!
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| One of the downsides to the vivatronic starters is that they are only compatible with lag circuits only, but they do a good job at starting tubes reliably.
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Desire to collect various light bulbs (especially HID), control gear, and fixtures from around the world.
DISCLAIMER: THE EXPERIMENTS THAT I CONDUCT INVOLVING UNUSUAL LAMP/BALLAST COMBINATIONS SHOULD NOT BE ATTEMPTED UNLESS YOU HAVE THE PROPER KNOWLEDGE. I AM NOT RESPONSIBLE FOR ANY INJURIES.
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exexcollega
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| I use parallel compensation on my bigger tubes, but the ones I ordered should also work for leading circuits. But I have to wait until they arrive to check it to be sure.
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