WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA
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HID, LPS, and preheat fluorescents forever!!!!!!
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This is why you should never ever ignore EOL fluorescent tubes and stuck starters in preheat fluorescent tube fixtures: https://youtu.be/fR4kgrV1XVs?si=RSJEGkDCbEEo2-Ik |
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« Last Edit: October 26, 2023, 03:14:34 PM 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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RRK
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Roman
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| Well, back in 1970's-1980's, when manufacturers not yet started to extremely save on copper and even iron, it was an usual sight to see EOL tubes with stuck starters for months and nothing really bad happened, so no one bothered... An installation might have roughly half of the tubes with glowing ends, the only problem was of course dropping light level. A burned-out choke was in fact an extraordinary find.
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WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA
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| In one of the comments, I see that one of our LG members said that the ballast that failed likely had aluminum windings inside it. If that was the case, I wonder how series choke ballasts were more prone to failure if they had aluminum windings compared to choke ballasts with copper windings.
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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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RRK
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Roman
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| Over the years, manufacturing standards slipped to allowing higher ballast losses leading for cheaper units. This probably is not justified in energy costs in a long run, but helps winning a purchasing price.
Aluminium wire sure has much higher resistance, but is much cheaper than copper. Higher resistance is partially compensated with slightly larger wire diameter (material is still MUCH cheaper, but there is a limit for coil space on the core) and running at higher temperature by using higher thermal class insulation. Running at higher temperature definitely leaves smaller gap between normal operation and catastrophical failure from overheating and destructed insulation. And this is already compromised by selecting a smaller physical size...
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« Last Edit: October 26, 2023, 07:38:09 PM by RRK »
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HIDLad001
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Alex
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| Aluminum also expands from heat I believe, so that makes the situation of the crowded ballast core even worse.
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Officially returned to Lighting-Gallery!!
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joseph_125
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I'm guessing these ballasts didn't have any thermal protection either. Thermal protection has been pretty much standard on most magnetic ballasts here for decades, although since auto resetting thermal protectors are used here, lazy people tend to let the ballast cycle on and off until the thermal protector welds closed rendering it useless.  Interestingly, some of the older ballasts from the 60s here had "one shot" thermal protectors. They weren't resetting so if the thermal protection blows, you have to replace the entire ballast assembly. |
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WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA
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| As far as I know, North American preheat fluorescent tube ballasts from the 1940s and 50s would be very prone to failure from stuck starters due to the lack of thermal protection.
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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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RRK
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Roman
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| Can not say about American or European ballasts, but Soviet chokes of 1950s-1980s were rather resilient to stuck starters even without thermal cutoff, which was never used AFAIK. Fireworks definitely started with 'optimized' Chinese designs of late years.
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arcblue
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| Yikes. One really shouldn't ignore any light that is not operating properly (goes for LEDs too!), but I think often the incandescent mentality is still present, that if a light is "burned out" and not lit, that it's not drawing any power and is OK to be left alone until someone is ready to fix it. Of course, in the case of a stuck starter, it visibly IS drawing power, but maybe people still think it's fine to leave it like that.
The manual reset starters are not easy to find, but they would help minimize the chance of a stuck starter and stressed ballast. They could still fail, but usually the starters fail after a lamp has been blinking for days or weeks and that won't happen with the manual reset starter. I use those on fixtures that I might run unattended. Maybe adding inline fuses at the ballasts would also help - I have done that on a few vintage fixtures that don't have thermal protectors to avoid fires if there's excessive current draw in the ballast for some reason.
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I'm lampin...
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WorldwideHIDCollectorUSA
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HID, LPS, and preheat fluorescents forever!!!!!!
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| Oddly enough, Europe also has manual reset starters made by Osram. They are known as the “Deos” starters. Additionally, some electronic fluorescent pulsestarters also do a decent job at protecting magnetic ballasts from failure by only attempting to start lamps with only one try.
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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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