I was at my local Lowes today and they now have absolutely 0 HID lamps or fixtures !!

I'll be honest, in the very distant future I could totally see myself if I or someone else on here if they have the means to, owning a workshop that has everything you need to make a HID light from scratch. Be it housing, ballast, and even the lamp. Then perhaps I/they can sell things like lamps, ballasts, even complete luminaires. To collectors, effects and theatrical designers etc who still wants to use the older tech.

I like to think that this is going to happen eventually too but just imagining the point discontinuations/regulations would be at to justify that is kind of sad. I've actually looked into what would need to be done to manufacture magnetic ballasts and found that the biggest challenge would be finding materials as well as figuring out the secret formulas/math that ballast manufacturers know to calculate things like windings and shunt size. The tooling to make ballasts, however, probably wouldn't be too hard to get. A CNC cutter, 3D printer, and a welder of some sort as well as a few custom-built tools for winding seem like they would be all that's needed.

I was wondering if MV lamps would still be available for porposes other than lighting such as UV light on special materials and therefore made with clear finish.

WHYYYYYYY!!!!
 
All for crap ass LEDs!!

Well , THAT SUCKS !!   This leads me to believe that ALL mercury lamps from ALL manufacturers will indeed go BYE-BYE in short order . And , since mercury is used in other forms of lighting (MH , HPS , fluorescent ) I'd say that they aren't long for this world either !! This will seriously hurt some of the "poor" cities that still run MV that don't have the budget for a completely new streetlighting system . 

Honestly I think that while it probably had nothing to do with any of this, I feel like the covid outbreak in March 2020 seemed to start a general downward spiral for these older technologies. I hope we won't come out of this lockdown in an LED overridden world.

Honestly I think that while it probably had nothing to do with any of this, I feel like the covid outbreak in March 2020 seemed to start a general downward spiral for these older technologies. I hope we won't come out of this lockdown in an LED overridden world.

Too late 

Yeah, as it stands right now. It seems like the other more common conventional sources (fluorescent, HPS, MH/CMH, CFL, and induction) that utilize mercury are exempt from the convention until the year 2025 or so. That being said, mercury limits have been placed on them but the limit is around the limit as what current production lamps use.

I feel like a few reasons contributed to the decision by Eye:

• The Minamata Convention itself which enacted stricter controls towards the use, production, and disposal or mercury and mercury containing products such as lamps. Mercury vapour in particular probably had a bad rap as the word mercury is right in its name. The other lamp sources that use mercury are more insulated from that direct association in that regard.
• The economics of continuing mercury lamp production into the 2020s. With mercury vapour lighting being on a death spiral since 2008 and to a larger extent since the 90s. The dwindling demand meant that it simply did not make economic sense to continue production, especially if the lamp making machinery was also due for a major overhaul at the same time.
• The economic effects related to the outbreak and the response around it. In light of the economic uncertainty, manufacturers would be looking to cut down on costs and legacy low margin technology like mercury vapour would unfortunately be one of the first things to go
• Since mercury vapour has been on a death spiral for such a long period of time, you can see the lack of interest in major lamp manufacturers in keeping it going through things such as the gradual decline of quality in lamps since the 1990s, the outsourcing of production, the shrinking of the range of lamps offered (specialty phosphors like /N were the first to go, then followed by clear lamps in some wattages), and lack of investment into R and D for MV.
• Finally, the massive acceptance of LED and LED retrofit products by people outside the lighting collecting community meant that manufacturers and regulators alike felt that LED is a "good enough" replacement in luminaires designed for mercury and conventional light sources in general. Without that, such a desire to eliminate mercury in lighting wouldn't have been feasible.

Of interest, it seemed like European manufacturers invested in MV for longer than the North American ones. You can see this from HPL-4 line of mercury lamps from Philips, which had a improved lifetime and colour rendering over standard fluorescent mercury lamps. Basically like the swan song for mercury lamps.

I'd imagine specialty mercury lamps such as blacklight blue lamps and lab spectra lamps would remain in limited production as least for now.

As far as I know mercury lamps aren’t specifically banned by the convention. Ironically, some of the items specifically banned by the convention are some of the longest lasting mercury containing products. Leave it to international bureaucrats to ban mercury switches, relays, cold cathode and induction lamps. The problem is that countries are supposed to work to reduce mercury in products, where feasible, which unfortunately means that some countries will use heavy handed bans. Other places would probably just require mercury content reductions, as the US did years ago. The problem with EYE is that Japan totally banned production and sale of mercury lamps. I know China has an exemption for switches for a few years. Countries are supposed to reduce the import and export of mercury products, but I wouldn’t be surprised if they keep making mercury and fluorescent lamps for export for a while. As far as the US goes, we restricted mercury content in fluorescents years ago. I wouldn’t expect any more bans, but the problem is that domestic production of mercury lamps is nonexistent, and the same could soon be said of fluorescents.

Well said, some other hobbies of mine are collecting older incandescent traffic lights and old cassette decks and tapes. With traffic lights, incandescent traffic lights have been pretty much phased out for years and cassettes are a very niche item now and the older hifi decks and higher grade tapes are basically a dying breed.

And yeah, while I have more or less fixed everything from smartphones to older cars and appliances. I definitely enjoy working on the old stuff a lot more than the modern stuff. Whether it be cars, appliances, electronics, even laptops.

I'll be honest, in the very distant future I could totally see myself if I or someone else on here if they have the means to, owning a workshop that has everything you need to make a HID light from scratch. Be it housing, ballast, and even the lamp. Then perhaps I/they can sell things like lamps, ballasts, even complete luminaires. To collectors, effects and theatrical designers etc who still wants to use the older tech.

Yeah when you see a notice like this, the pressure to stock up, especially the upfront investment and storage space needed really is pretty draining sometimes.

I know what you mean about working on the older stuff. I've still got a set of CRT monitors / TVs, analogue phase-out hasn't stopped me . I know especially what you are on about with older cars. I have done some work as a mechanic and am waiting on an apprenticeship. I have worked primarily on later model Japanese and Australian cars and they are very good, reliable only problem is that everything is rammed in the engine bay and makes thing a bit harder. Then we move onto the older cars and holy (...) are they a delight to work on. I worked on an old 1978 Kingswood and I with the flexibility I don't have I could lie in the engine bay. Recently in the past few days, I just bought my first car, 1986 Corolla AE82, and the amount of space I had in the engine bay to work in was the best thing I could ever ask for! Solid reliability too what with it old enough to be my parent and it only needs some new coolant, brake fluid; or adjustments I haven't found exactly what it needs, and a new muffler. It is nice and smooth maybe needing a tweak with the carby but otherwise, it goes alright for its age, goes in gear no problem. You'll get a kick out of this... the cassette deck still works!

I think a reason as to why they are choosing to pull their manufacturing is that there has been a lack of sales and they could be using that as an excuse to pull them. Here we still use them in some volume under 250W but are going slowly. Some of the fittings especially the one that you would see most often, Sylvania B2224 was absolute crap! Mor light made it everywhere but the road. Obviously, there were some better ones but you don't tend to see them anymore.

Is the Minamata convention also threatening to ban North American general lighting mercury vapor lamps from other manufacturers too such as Osram Sylvania or GE?

Is the Minamata convention also threatening to ban North American general lighting mercury vapor lamps from other manufacturers too such as Osram Sylvania or GE?

It also says it wants to ban or limit mercury use, but the US already limited mercury use.

This just sucks. Why do they have to do this? 

With the minamata convention in place, mercury vapor lamps and fluorescent lamps have been sadly banned in Japan.

This just sucks. Why do they have to do this? 

Because they can 

This just sucks. Why do they have to do this? 

Because international bureaucrats who want nothing but  to be allowed for lighting.