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ArcticMyst Security by Avery

High Pressure Mercury Lamps

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Ah, I see, they're still being sold for disco lighting. New in fixture is about $170.

Looking at your photo now on my pc instead of phone it looks more like the 435nm is pretty attenuated, wouldn't happen to have a spectroscope, would ya? Probably a good source for the 405nm though. I do wonder how much 365 is actually making it out though if they used a normal borosilicate envelope.
 





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My mistake! I didn't realize you had the same lamp.

And it does look like there's a fair amount of 435nm getting though. Plus it seems the borosilicate passes 365nm just fine.

I'm going to have to pick up a lamp like this one day when I've got disposable income again. All these HID lamps have been budgeted into the electrical renovations I've been doing for my wife's mom.
 
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Plus it seems the borosilicate passes 365nm just fine.

Why wouldn't it? Even regular "soda-lime" glass passes near UV okay. It's acrylic that doesn't pass UV. Googled image of borosilicate transmission:

curve_bo.jpg


Incidentally, I lol'd pretty hard at "millimicrons"
 
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I must've been misremembering the transmission spectra, for some reason I thought the cutoff frequency was around 380nm. I see now that I was off by 100millimicrons :p

Yes that made me double take, haha.
 
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Okay, lots of pics!

I installed the 100Watt Metal Halide lamp and ballast in the car garage and it works beautifully for the area, tons of light and with a 20,000hr lifetime it won't have to be changed any time soon. The ballast is pulse start and can even reignite a hot bulb.

Here is the lamp as seen through a 650nm longpass edging filter (used as an attenuator for my camera to not freak out).
3r27.jpg


ufpg.jpg

Really nice spectrum.

Today I installed the M57 ballast and luminaire where the dinky hanging medium screw lamp was in my office. Here's the results:

22,000K Metal Halide 175W T15 Lamp:
4ypg.jpg


175W DX Mercury Vapor:
74c6.jpg


u2i2.jpg

note: my camera cannot see 405nm so the farthest left line is the 435nm line.

The Hg bulb is what I'm using to light my office for now, it is the same bulb my mother in law grabbed from the local hardware store. I have a protected 4200K metal halide bulb coming in the mail which will be the permanent resident of this fixture though. 3700K from the Hg lamp is a bit too warm for me, and the 22,000K likes to be run horizontal, not vertical, so it resides in the old repaired ballast which is unmountable but stands fine horizontally.
 
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Giving this thread some life and saving from the eternal doom that is the 2nd page!

I was driving around earlier and spotted some white looking lights so I pulled up closer, and took a look at the spectral lines using the highly technical method of putting a CD up to my eye. The bulbs were behind a frosted bowl/lens so the lines were fuzzy but it looked like mercury to me, probably colour corrected - violet, green and orange/red lines. I got out the camera and started snapping pics, had to be done!!!

this one had split personalities, the lantern on the right having had this SON most likely at a later date:
These are dual back to back Thorn Precinct Lanterns
Mercury-SONatHospital_edit_zps8a7e0015.jpg


this one's pure mercury, but going rather green with old age:
It is again a dual Thorn Precinct.
pureMercuryatHospital_zps62b72810.jpg


the fire station, SON and two mercury, the SON which was probably newer than the mercury was cycling on and off, and it wasn't the only one doing it!
SONampMercuryFireStation_zps45a6851d.jpg


Then finally spotted this lantern, most probably a Thorn Gamma 6, and one of about 10+ in a caravan park, all running mercury! This particular one was mounted far too high to be of real use, except for lighting this tree!
HQHV-1ofmanyHgGamma6_zps47abd4a1.jpg


Echoing what I've said elsewhere, I love the technical aspects of mercury but as a light source it's a bit pants! Doesn't really seem to light the ground well unless it's really close to it.
 
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Excellent bump to a fine thread ( XD )!

Your camera gives those SON lamps a gorgeous golden hue, were they actually that color to your eye or were they rather pinkish?

You can tell the normal Hg from the white Hg as the white ones have a phosphor coat which produces a red continuum and not sharp lines.

Btw, I apologize for all the huge images. It seems that when imageshack converted to paid service from free and kicked us legacy users off they resized all our images to be gigantic.
 
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Excellent bump to a fine thread ( XD )!

Your camera gives those SON lamps a gorgeous golden hue, were they actually that color to your eye or were they rather pinkish?

You can tell the normal Hg from the white Hg as the white ones have a phosphor coat which produces a red continuum and not sharp lines.

Btw, I apologize for all the huge images. It seems that when imageshack converted to paid service from free and kicked us legacy users off they resized all our images to be gigantic.

Aye that golden colour is generally how they looked. A SON lamp in fine fettle should look predominantly yellow anyway AFAIK, the ones that are really pink are near end of life. There are several on the road here that are probably about to go pop because they have turned so pink they look like an altogether different source of light. Lumen dropoff is also very noticeable when they go overly pink.
 
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Ah, that is very good to know! I've only seen very pink ones in person. I had been tempted to pick up a new bulb and run it off my metal halide balast. The current and voltage profiles would probably be off, but I have an excessively good igniter on the ballast so it would still run. When I decided to grab the 18W SOX I decided against trying the SON on the MH ballast though.

Anyway, by to HPHg; I prefer the uncoated pure Hg spectrum for external lighting, as its strong green color complements plant life, but for indoor use I prefer the color corrected phosphored HPHg lamps.
 
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Christ that's a lot, do you use them for anything specific?

I think I'll get myself an SB lamp to whet my appetite for mercury a bit, I'm supposed to be getting an MBF street lamp off a guy but considering he takes 2 weeks+ to reply to each PM I suspect it's going to be a long wait....
 
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Christ that's a lot, do you use them for anything specific?

I think I'll get myself an SB lamp to whet my appetite for mercury a bit, I'm supposed to be getting an MBF street lamp off a guy but considering he takes 2 weeks+ to reply to each PM I suspect it's going to be a long wait....

got'em just for collection mainly , I found a 1Kw SB mercury lamp and looked on eyes website after giving them a ring the largest SB lamp and the only one available was a 1.25Kw flood style so I got two of them .

They are nice SB mercury , Good way to heat and light a small room :p
 
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Any ideas roughly what rating capacitor I'll need for a 50W HPMV ballast and lamp? My reckoning is around 6uF. This is on 240V.
 
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They're just for PFC, so it depends on the inductive reactance of the ballast, which is hard to guess. Make sure you use motor RUN caps and not motor START caps, or actual PFC caps for it. If you have a Kill-A-Watt or similar you can check the power factor with different values of capacitance.

Here's an example of HPHg used in rural areas:
https://www.google.com/maps/@46.419...ata=!3m4!1e1!3m2!1sPI7U9m3l0NYqo4dQI0Ug0Q!2e0

Just a simple down-facing lantern suspended on a cable. There's no reflector, and the side cover blocks more light than it diffuses.
 
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lol that's... basic? :|

it's all good re capacitors, I didn't want to risk buying one not for constant running so I actually bought proper PF caps from an electronics wholesaler website. I erm, also came away with a rather large shopping list also...

1x Capacitor 30 micro farad 240 volt
1x Philips BHL 80 L32 80w HPMV Ballast
1x Mercury 80 watt ES
1x Capacitor 8 micro farad 240 volt
1x SON E Eliptical Internal Ignitor 70 watt ES Clear
1x Philips BSN 70 L307 70w High Pressure Sodium Ballast
1x Capacitor 10 micro farad 240 volt

...and got it all on next day postage !

So many attempts to get actual street lanterns lately has fallen through and I realised that for the price of a couple I could just get the components myself.
 




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