A friend of mine brought me some 15 watt T8  bulbs, a GE 20 watt Chroma 50 and some `9 watt appliance bulbs. The appliance bulbs are now toasted, the 15's won't finish off nor will the Chinese GE 8 watt which is now on an electronic ballast for 2 32 watt T8s and in overdrive. I thought it was going to EOL on the dual 8 watt fixture with electronic ballast, but it broke the filament on one end ...didn't fling it off, and it went out. But it lit fine on the electronic ballast. The 20 watt C50 won't die yet either, both are JET black on the ends. I guess overdrive eventually will cause a bit of fireworks, just not yet. I am tempted to dig up the electronic HO ballast and see what I can get.

Powell

The electronic HO ballast should finish them off with a good show.

I thought the 20 watt lamp would never die. It finally did. It finally would go red on the EOL end then blue then repeat. This finally got more frequent before cycles. It did this for a good 45 minutes and finally it went BRIGHT orange....and I knew the end was very near. There was VIOLENT striations and snaking....and EOL came peacefully. The air came in so slowly the lamp just faded out.

The 8 watt Chinese GE went another 30 minutes this morning..... and it burned normally until almost the very end. The electronic ballast was making whistling noises in the AM radio and when it started to vary rapidly I went to look at it. At that time you could hear the ballast making all kinds of RF noise in the radio and the lamp went bright orange on the EOL end  and within 5 seconds HHHHSSSSSSSS and that was IT ! !  !
I have a few F15T8 lamps to go, but they won't burn in preheat, but will in the single lamp trigger start ( rapid start for small lamps).

And the Indonesian GE F15T8 CW finally went. I put it on the dual 32 watt instant start, and NOT overdrive and it lit up pink orange on 1 end. It stabilized for a short period and then started flashing orange.  In the last few minutes the EOL end lit up brilliant orange and got brighter orange and so bright half the bulb glowed a bright orange. The CW color diminished while the orange intensified. At the end, the OK end turned almost daylight and the lamp faded, and momentarily there was blue mixed in with the orange...then hissssss and the orange slowly faded out. I wished I could have made a video of that one. I have never seen a lamp where half the lamp was overtaken by the orange and it still took a couple minutes to quit!!   

That would have been a great video. I never seen lamps turn all orange/blue mixed like that. When you find more EOL lamps make a video.

I have no way to do a video.


I currently have an ACE 40 watt lamp at the radio station in one of the remaining preheaters that is getting ready to EOL.

When a fluorescent lamp loses vacuum and air fills the lamp - is mercury vapour released into the room at the same time?

When - no, afterwaerds when the lamp is cooling - probably no (as it is drawing air in as it cools down), later - probably yes a little (most of the mercury is liquid and not vapor but there still is some, and much air is moving through the hole when there is temperature change)

The hole is too small for the mercury to go out. Of course, unless the tube completely break.

To the vapor too ? as in, you hold the lamp in your hands, the air in ot expands, and some comes out of the crack which contain mercury vapor

You will gave to "wash" the tube many times with the air in order to carry the mercury vapor out. But how you could do so, when there is only one tiny crack? After it crack the air goes in and stay there. It may soak with the Hg fumes, but it stay inside. Well, unless you strongly thermally cycle the tube or do any other similar things to deliberately get the vapor out...