found a few trisonic cfl's in a bunch of electrical stuff from an auction.
i was after the 500' spools of #12 thhn in the lot.
got the lot for $23.
there were a bunch of new cfl's in the lot.mostly 6 packs of 26w ge 2700k which i passed to a neighbor who needed some since i run 5000k at home.
found 2 trisonic 20w.
lit one up for grins and it was rather dim.left it run awhile so it could warm up.
about 5 mins later snap pop fzzzt.
well it made 3 sounds!lived up to its name.
the other one was dim too.looks like halophosphate phosphor daylight with nasty color rendering.
i tore them both down and they are nasty cheap inside.
for an example a cold nvision 14w is brighter than these 20w are warmed up.

those trisonic CFL are crap i used to buy them for a buck apeice. I like the haloposphate daylight color
but I keep the tube but ditching the electronic ballast convert it to PL set up.

these have awful color rendering.
i looked closer and these are dangerous trash.no fuse at all.no fuse,fusible resistor,fuseible trace,nothing.thats why the one that blew up was such a black mess inside.i already tossed it.but the other i will take pics of and post here.
these probably came from a dollar store or flea market.pathetic!

these have awful color rendering.
i looked closer and these are dangerous trash.no fuse at all.no fuse,fusible resistor,fuseible trace,nothing.thats why the one that blew up was such a black mess inside.i already tossed it.but the other i will take pics of and post here.
these probably came from a dollar store or flea market.pathetic!

question: what are the differences between 120v and 230v cfl?
I live in Italy, but i haven't seen any lamp catch fire: the worst i saw was an 8w cfl with burned diode.

question: what are the differences between 120v and 230v cfl?
I live in Italy, but i haven't seen any lamp catch fire: the worst i saw was an 8w cfl with burned diode.

Most cheapee CFLs, fuses their electrodes at EOL, and in the US, most cheapee CFLs severally overloads their electrolytic capacitor in their integrated ballast when the lamp reachs EOL by this EOL protection fashion because of the use of a voltage doubler.
To be honest, i don't know how in most american CFLs the lamp electrodes reach EOL before the ballast, while in Israel for example, all CFL ends their life with a dead electrolytic capacitor or other electornic components in the ballast when the tube is still intact.
While balloned or exploded electrolytic capacitors can be happened also in a 230V CFL because of a ballast overheating during operation or because of low quality building, this is usually much less severe than the 120V CFLs when that capacitor being catch fire because of several overloading during lamp EOL.

I was quite surprised seeing videos of the way US lamps spark and fizzle when they burn out. I find that some CFLs here trip the breakers when they fail however so could have gone bang without me knowing.


BG

Quote from: marcopete87 on April 01, 2012, 04:12:51 AM

question: what are the differences between 120v and 230v cfl?
I live in Italy, but i haven't seen any lamp catch fire: the worst i saw was an 8w cfl with burned diode.

Most cheapee CFLs, fuses their electrodes at EOL, and in the US, most cheapee CFLs severally overloads their electrolytic capacitor in their integrated ballast when the lamp reachs EOL by this EOL protection fashion because of the use of a voltage doubler.
To be honest, i don't know how in most american CFLs the lamp electrodes reach EOL before the ballast, while in Israel for example, all CFL ends their life with a dead electrolytic capacitor or other electornic components in the ballast when the tube is still intact.
While balloned or exploded electrolytic capacitors can be happened also in a 230V CFL because of a ballast overheating during operation or because of low quality building, this is usually much less severe than the 120V CFLs when that capacitor being catch fire because of several overloading during lamp EOL.

Instead of making purpose-built ballasts, it seems they take 230v ballasts and adapt them to work on 120.  As long as it lights I guess.  Also, cheapee CFLs have a bad habit of not using flame resistant plastic for their casings, so if something overheats, it can catch the plastic on fire.

If the ballast is acting as a current source, it actually _will_ be able to power a wide range of tubes at about the correct power, as the power of them is roughly proportional to the tube length and that is roughly proportional to the voltage

So it actually make sense to use the same ballast in many CFLs

As for ALL CFLs being EOL by ballast failure this is not correct - The better CFLs i see (Eurolux and Jeko for example, and i have few Jeko's in use) are usually EOL by tube EOL and not ballast failure

i opened up the one that didnt blow up to see its poor build quality and found one of the lytics was not soldered.hmm maybe it will be brighter if i fix that.nope.it lit ok for about 5 seconds and arced in several places with a loud BRAAAAAA POP.
tripped the breaker on my workbench power strip.lots of burned parts.
no fuse of any kind inside!wait till someone puts one in a really cheap lamp with #22 lamp cord.
i have seen this.fat chance of the breaker tripping before the cord melts.

Some of them count on a component blowing up (resistor, PCB track....) to stop the destruction. And most of the time their fusing is inappropriate at best - using too small resistors, other components touching them (so the arc will just continue going between the blown resistor and other stuff).....

All this arcing will easily burn for a while especially if there is some other resistance in the circuit (thin #22 lamp wires, bad connection .....) that limits the current just enough for the breaker to not trip immediately. Then you can have a fire

As for cheap power cables, we had couple years ago a batch (i think 1000's) of IEC320 computer cables sold in many computer shops, where the conductors were perhaps 0.2 MM^2 Cu (comparable to headphones wires in conductor thickness !) and the strands were torn apart in several places all the length of the cable, so circuit held up just by the strands touching each other and bridging over each other's breakages in the conductors. The scary part - This actuall woked very well and most of those cables are still around and in use. I have seen one of them powering a computer just go arcing inside suddenly and melt a hole in the cable just "nowhere" (not even near the plug). Arcing is series to the computer (which is very good "ballast" for bright series arcs) so no breaker tripped either. Each of those cables is a fire waiting to happen

Some of them count on a component blowing up (resistor, PCB track....) to stop the destruction. And most of the time their fusing is inappropriate at best - using too small resistors, other components touching them (so the arc will just continue going between the blown resistor and other stuff).....

All this arcing will easily burn for a while especially if there is some other resistance in the circuit (thin #22 lamp wires, bad connection .....) that limits the current just enough for the breaker to not trip immediately. Then you can have a fire

As for cheap power cables, we had couple years ago a batch (i think 1000's) of IEC320 computer cables sold in many computer shops, where the conductors were perhaps 0.2 MM^2 Cu (comparable to headphones wires in conductor thickness !) and the strands were torn apart in several places all the length of the cable, so circuit held up just by the strands touching each other and bridging over each other's breakages in the conductors. The scary part - This actuall woked very well and most of those cables are still around and in use. I have seen one of them powering a computer just go arcing inside suddenly and melt a hole in the cable just "nowhere" (not even near the plug). Arcing is series to the computer (which is very good "ballast" for bright series arcs) so no breaker tripped either. Each of those cables is a fire waiting to happen

wow, cfl, cable & other stuff are burning. Do USA have strict regulations as Europe? 
(i don't want to start an flame war, but some questions are rising)

these cheap CFL should not be sold begin with. as most of them should bear UL lables on then incating that it pass the under writers lab. but I think the UL need to do stricter job of regulating them. such as EOL test
and protection measure to assure they are safe. Insurence company are allsway looking for finger pointing to blame and dicide not to pay for the damage cause by unlisted CFLs. i bought a few cheapie trisonic few years ago
the ballast are junk. but CFL tube ran ok on home made low voltage electronic ballast.
i think it was neat to have some haloposhor tubes in CFL. esp a daylight halo tube.
I wish i could find another halo CFL tubes.

I guess you can order some from DealExtreme....

7+ years ago we had a variety of halo CFLs here, they are all triphosphor now

Some of them count on a component blowing up (resistor, PCB track....) to stop the destruction. And most of the time their fusing is inappropriate at best - using too small resistors, other components touching them (so the arc will just continue going between the blown resistor and other stuff).....

The "fusible resistors" (in fact certified fuses with controlled resistance) are usually working as the best protection I know for the low power devices, mainly their resistance limit the fault current, so allow small size.
But there is one problem: They look like other metal film 1..3W power resistors, in schematics are drawn as resistors only with note about their fusing property, they are usually called with the world "resistor", rated as resistors use to be (resistance, tolerance, power) so many purchasers, mainly of the cheepee equipment makers, tend to "find cheaper alternative" in regular metal film resistors. And this "alternative" is obviously not able to protect anything...
Companies, where such replacement is allowed to happen without the design engineer approval (mainly cheepeese "copy house" makers), this pass to the production line...

There are 2 cases of problems which i seen to happen even with proper fusible resistors :

The resistor is installed vertical on the PCB, and the longer wire bent so sharp that its allmost touching the cap of the 1st wire. The arc from the resistor when it is blowing up, will easily jump over and continue to burn across the small distance to the bent wire

The resistor is too close to some other component so it can arc to it, or a wire in thin isolation (often the AC input wire) is resting against the resistor, the heat will burn the wire's isolation and the wire come in contact with the resistor's metal cap, again just closing the circuit again bypassing the blown resistor