I still think that it will be a long time before Ebay stocks dry out so if ebay is still about in 10-20 years i still think sox lamps will pop up on there but i dont think theyll be cheap and theyll end up being listed for expensive amounts and be listed as Vintage Collectors Items! I cant see any one else wanting them by then

Thatll be about the only place youll be able to biy them. Itll be like SLI/H

Well still best to make sure I have enough proper lamps in stock for future use anyway, wouldn't want to be in a situation where I would have to use LEDisease.
As long as I have enough SOX lamps (and all other HID lamps) for my lanterns especially the 35w and 55w lanterns and fluorescent lamps (both linear tubes, and non integrated CFL) for general use I'll be happy.

I wonder what we will still be able to buy and what will still be being made in 10 years time, in 2027?
Would T8 tubes and 2D lamps go extinct by then, what about HPS?

I think t8 will hold on quite long if they can't make "led fluorescent lamps" as cheap as those. I assume at least the most common wattages but only in few color temps. The quality might be something like barely decent.

He/ho t5 probably is not since atleast in here it broke throught only in public and commercial buildings which are the most eager ones to switch to leds to save energy.

What comes for 2D, I'm not sure. It was never that popular here but I've heard it's pretty popular in UK. I would guess that non integrated cfl selection is going to reduce quite well. I think PL-S and PL-C 2 pin will be going first as I've seen no any new fixtures for those after magnetic ballast were banned.

Hps is probably still available after 10 years, at least in most common lamps since there are still quite lot of those fixtures in use but I would not be so sure how MH would be doing. The problem with MH is that there is quite vast selection of lamp types which mean smaller number of demand per kamp type. MH has always also been kind of expensive and has short lamp life compared to other light sources.

The math was done by the Nichia Corporation, they do know the maximum limit to LED's and by 2025 unless the laws of physics change , both Planck's law, and Rayleigh–Jeans law, we do know the maximum mathematically you can obtain with an LED, no matter how much it matures, and if the LED covers 400nm to 700nm it will only be able to get to 251 lumen/watt, and then you have to add driver losses into those equations because the math only dealt with the LED not the total system wattage, also mathematically you can get a much high lumen/watt with monochromatic light at 555nm we can get 683 lumens/watt at 100% efficiency..

Really there is an absolute maximum efficiency achievable by lights, and with prices coming down there is only so much money to put back into R&D and most of it will be spent on making what is available now cheaper not better so I wouldn't expect to see much more improvement on the lumens/watt then you are seeing currently available...

Of course, those laws can not be stepped over, that is clear. The thing is how to "dance within" all their possibilities.
The hypothetical limit is around the 250 till 350lm/W, the exact figure highly depends, what light spectrum you will be accepting and consequently what are the possibilities to generate it. The 250lm/W is calculated for a high quality, so perfectly white, CRI99+. If you suffice with CRI80 and a bit irregular spectrum (consumer grade general use; e.g. a blue peak, plus some hump in the orange-green range), the limit shifts up to 300lm/W (mainly by skipping saturated red, where you need a lot of radiated power to get very little lumen contribution) And you may continue further, till you end up with the monochromatic green at the 560lm/W (maximum lumens attainable for minimum radiated power).
For the "SOX" market (so just maximum efficacy, don't care about color, monochromatic is not a problem) I would guess the monochromatic green will rule, once the "green efficacy gap" will be sorted out. The problem is, today we know only two basic semiconductor material families suitable for LEDs, one has high efficiency (electric power -> radiated power conversion) at long wavelengths (IR till red), other at shorter wavelengths (blue). Both could be "stretched" towards the green, but by doing so, both significantly loose the efficiency.
So I expect still quite some fundamental development there, the true green chips have just barely 50lm/W, what means less than 10% energy efficiency (compare to about 40% include phosphor losses for the 140lm/W CRI80 cool white LEDs, so for the bare blue chip alone I would guess something in the 50..60% energy efficiency range).

Now because even the white (so inherently less efficient, compare to what hypothetically possible with monochromatic) color LEDs are approaching the efficacy range of the monochromatic LPS, all the LPS advantage is nearly gone. Once there appear some high efficiency green (which should exceed 300lm/W in the long run; assuming similar efficency as todays blue chips), there will be no use for the SOX in public lighting at all.

Yeh but for how long until the Led's colour shift some 2014 ones near me started natural white they are expensive units and are now a warm white

I still think that it will be a long time before Ebay stocks dry out so if ebay is still about in 10-20 years i still think sox lamps will pop up on there but i dont think theyll be cheap and theyll end up being listed for expensive amounts and be listed as Vintage Collectors Items! I cant see any one else wanting them by then

Thatll be about the only place youll be able to biy them. Itll be like SLI/H

If we can still buy lamps made in the early part of last century I'm sure we will be able to still source a sox lamp, but your right the price will continue to go up, but not like older lamps because at least those most people are able to use them while a SOX lamp needs a ballast so apart from the cool look they won't really be collected, and if you search steampunk SOX or LPS you might find one image of a SOX in actual use while you will find thousands of Edison styled vintage lights..

I'd prefer the proper UK made Philips lamps, but I'd rather have a Chinese made SOX lamp, than have no SOX lamps.

Philrams (philips made osram) are my fav, and I couldn't agree more even though I do not like to see jobs leave the UK.

What you think about the more mainstream lamps ?

When a factory closes, there is a significant chance that the machinery will be sold for scrap value. It may not be too far stretched to take on something and keep running it, even if that is not SOX

Honestly I'd just save the 18W and 35W machinery, maybe the 55W machinery, not much use i don't think for the 90W and 180W... maybe I'm wrong...

Is anyone actually interested, at this stage - at gathering the needed information (costs, space needed, possibilities with the space...) and proposing a plan ?

I doubt there is completely separate machinery for each lamp size. It is more likely the same machinery with a changeable set of tools, atleast for a range of lamps which have the same tube diameters. As such, saving the machinery means saving the complete range



Question is about the Philips SOX machienry, Osram HQI machinery (which Max mentioned), and any other lamp machinery which might be of interest

Question is about the Philips SOX machienry, Osram HQI machinery (which Max mentioned), and any other lamp machinery which might be of interest

As lamp machiner, this SOX machinery is probably one of a lifetime thing since it's probably one of the last if not the only one SOX production machinery there is anymore. Based on what I've read on LG, the Chinese company that tried to enter SOX budiness quit after they did not get the lamp life to be even decent.

Unlike for the HQI machinery, there is probably no after market for that SOC production line other than scrapmetal. With HQI and other more common lamp types there is probably more possible buyers meaning the price will be higher.

It may vary..

In my project (not lamp machinery), the machinery i acquired breaks down to 3 groups :

 - Machiens suitable for general use such as press, hydraulic pump, mill etc... such things have general application value and take most of the cost. Now, in my production line there are few places where such machines are used for forceful mechanical operations. I am not sure whether a lamp production line has such machinery in it at all

 - Machines which were intended for disassembly, if they have parts like controllers, motors, ... cost approx. the 2nd hand value of a couple useful components contained in the machine, the rest is not even counted

 - Machines that dont have anything of interest in them (stuff made specially for the product) or where the parts are too hard to reuse/resell (too modified to integrate in this machine, worn, ...) go for metal scrap value

Atleast this is how the stuff i got was priced. I made some bundle deals with the company, and this saved me quite a bit of the costs too (by making discounts for things i take together or adding into the package free stuff)

Is anyone actually interested, at this stage - at gathering the needed information (costs, space needed, possibilities with the space...) and proposing a plan ?

I doubt there is completely separate machinery for each lamp size. It is more likely the same machinery with a changeable set of tools, atleast for a range of lamps which have the same tube diameters. As such, saving the machinery means saving the complete range



Question is about the Philips SOX machienry, Osram HQI machinery (which Max mentioned), and any other lamp machinery which might be of interest

yeah i am, but I'm not making any money at the moment unfortunatly I do know spaces around here that are sitting vacant that could house the machinery though so i may be of some help

I would say that at least keeping the knowledge of how to make LPS/SOX lamps alive at least is a very good idea due to all of the teething problems high power LED lighting has.  LEDs have the problem of needing mechanical/thermal integration into the fixture head for heatsinking and this means that the entire expensive fixture becomes a consumable requiring replacement at intervals not much longer than the service life of a discharge lamp.  Then there is the quite severe glare problem that many LED fixture designs have due to the makers using total internal reflection optics due to their high optical efficiency.  I as well as a number of friends of mine know of a fair number of roads that are quite painful to drive on due to fixture glare.  And then there is the problem of fixture failure modes typically involving strobing which is a rather nasty failure mode in that it distracts drivers who are busy keeping multi ton lumps of metal from smashing into things.

The problem is that the lighting industry is a low margin business and manufacturers with the money to afford bribes will bribe politicians to ban their low margin established product lines so that they can make more money off high margin stuff that is still under patent.  We saw this a decade ago with the EISA that was backed behind the scenes by a number of prominent lampmakers.

That would make sense, they're in business to make money and if making a worse product makes them money that's what they'll do.

I've just submitted a suggestion to how it's made for them to check out SOX production. It would probably be helpful for others to do so as well.
http://www.sciencechannel.com/tv-shows/how-its-made/have-an-idea-for-how-its-made/