LPS SOX Sodium Lamps

Things said:

Need to find a job if I keep buying random stuff like this ... Need one anyway, but this was worth it

Dan

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I second this statement. Im desperately looking for work, and have been for months, but all this awesomeness lately is making it all the more pressing.

Oh and that GIF rocks!!!

The problem with work is I don't have much time to play with my other hobbies!

Ever thought of a career in radio or TV broadcast Things? How much do you know about Audio & high power RF? I just employed an engineer in Wagga and looking for someone in Canberra and possibly the Spencer Gulf in SA.

Radio/TV broadcast sounds like something I'd be right into. I do know a little bit about it in general, and I do know a bit about audio/mixing and that sort of stuff from theatrical work I've done, but don't really have any qualifications in related areas past a cert 2 in productions

Was considering maybe aiming for the technical side of meteorology one day (repairs etc), which would probably end up ultimately involving RF work on the radars. Difficulty is finding relevant uni courses and such here.

Dan

/Jealous.

I sent the apprentice here up to do his Cert-3 in Radio & Electronics, about the closest thing to a BOCP since they stopped issuing them in about 1987. Closest we could find was Wagga TAFE, neither Albury or Wodonga do anything close. He has just finished his 3 year course now.

I got my 2kV power supply and some neon tubes today... pics to follow in another thread...

EDIT: post is here

Been doing a bit of mucking around, and I was bored, so I built up a little light switching unit that automatically turns it on when it gets dark

It uses a solar cell, because I didn't have a LDR, and the phototransistor I had wasn't sensitive enough in low light to work well.

Just uses a LM311 comparator to drive a relay, has both a lowpass filter on the input and feedback hysteresis so it'll well and truely only turn the lamp on once, and won't be effected by things like lightning either.

Not that it's a huge issue with LPS anyway, apart from wearing down your electrodes.

Will post pics and a vid soon.

Hey

finnaly Got my 135/180W Ballast


135W sox by TwirlyWhirly555, on Flickr

Best Picture i could get , 135W Sox , Camera isnt too keen on the brightness level

Hope to have the 180W Goin Soon , But my one is dead , so new one is on the way .

Hehe dayam!

What happened to the 180W one? Dropped it?

Things said:

Hehe dayam!

What happened to the 180W one? Dropped it?

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, No havent droped it yet ...... , For some reason i wont strike , it doent even glow much under HV so i beleive its dead so i orderd a new one to test the theory

Just Got my 200W SIL SOX lamp , Beautiful Lamp , And its working great .


SAM_0649 by TwirlyWhirly555, on Flickr


SAM_0652 by TwirlyWhirly555, on Flickr

Fark, 55W is bright enough, 200 would be insane!

Holy crap, 200W!!! That is incredible!

Shame the 180 isn't working. You've got TC's, try exciting it with one and see what happens. It could be a fill-gas issue, over or under pressure, and the like.

Forgive the double post, but an edit would not have bumped, and I'm sure new members will take interest in this.

I finally mounted the 55W LPS lamp outside.


Above it is the fixture/ballast for a 175W mercury vapor lamp that we'd been using for years in this location. It seems the ballast finally gave out, or perhaps the controller circuitry on it, as it is no longer operating properly. We tried a new lamp but it fails to properly ignite the arc beyond the start cycle. Bulbs are exceptionally hard to come by but ballasts and fixtures are even harder to find. We junked the old lamp since I knew it was near EOL anyway, but now I have a brand new 175W Hg bulb with no ballast or fixture for it to run on. I'd like to make use of it some day, but for now it is sitting above the LPS lamp. I'd love to take the whole thing down off the garage, but I don't have a ladder that can get me up that high. We have a second unit with probably similar issues (or a broken bulb) on the other end of the property, but it is on an electric company pole about 30ft in the air. No chance of getting on that.

I did score a nice 100W Hg lamp + fixture + ballast some time ago that I will be mounting in my office as a bench light in the near future. Stay tuned for it, perhaps in a new thread about Hg lamps.

I decided to finally give this LPS lamp a new life by putting it to real use, and I am glad I did. Holy crap it is brighter than the 175W Hg lamp ever was (granted the bulb was probably end of life and we never got to see it with a new bulb in)! The throw this lamp has is amazing, it lights up the entire entrance way to our road. No wonder they used them in street lamps. 589nm sure cuts through fog like a knife. It is too bad there isn't a good way to make HPS headlamps for cars, would sure help with poor driving conditions.

Nice! I've still got my DIY LPS fixture here I haven't really found a use for - my property isn't really big enough to warrant that kind of light without pissing off the neighbours

I hear ya. I had been using this one maybe once every few months since I started on night shift, just as a relaxed room light, but it really was not doing the bulb justice. I'm very glad to give it real life and use.

You could always mount it facing downwards so that the spread is limited.

Suddenly, rain.

Mercury lamps are ~40lm/W when new, but they're known for being extremely reliable. They might eventually loose 70% of their light output, but they'll almost certainly last way longer than their rated life. That's the main reason they were used for street lights.

edit: disclaimer: "70%" is a figure fresh from my ass. I just know they usually dim with age rather than burn out entirely.