Anyone else collect unusual lights?

[photonaholic]

For years whenever I saw an unusual light of any kind I would always wonder what made it tick, and sometimes I'd collect another strange or just different light or fixture.

Even now I collect different and unusual CFL lamps, and of course LED bulbs. Neon flicker bulbs, electroluminescent glow strips, odd blacklights and whatever turns up.

Here is a 35 watt sodium lamp I built from junk items, the box had an exciter for a tesla coil in it once, but the primary coils smoked, so I gutted the box.

The ballast was small and compact so it fit right in that box like it was made for it.

The cutout on the top was just the right diameter for a porcelain socket, and the bulb was intended for a small light commonly used under bridges and in tunnels.

I have a few other unusual lights that I can photo sometime.

So does any one else "collect" strange lights? (besides lasers)

 

[rocketparrotlet]

Wow, that's cool! I don't have any "unique" lights myself, but obviously as a laser fan I am interested. When I get my own home I plan on buying lights of all different colors so that I can adjust the ambience in the room.

-Mark

 

[aryntha]

Actually, yes. I have some old 1950s vintage Mercury Vapor streetlights (and I stocked up on them before the ban -- figure that one out) ; cases of Self-Ballasting (half incandescent half MV) bulbs, and I have three LPS (low pressure sodium) lights.

I also have wierd LEDs from wherever I could get them. This includes strange LEDs from Opto-Diode and Marktech Opto, odd wavelength LEDs from Roithner Lasertechnik (700nm, point-source LEDs, metal can LEDs, a Cree white LED whose emission looks exactly like incandescent light -- I even have a laser diode in an epoxy 5MM case (looks like a normal LED but isn't) -- and even several ZnSe non-phosphor white LEDs.

So yeah, I think a bunch of us just like photons.

 

[photonaholic]

One of the coolest light bulbs I ever had got destroyed in a house fire.

During the early 80's I worked at Phillips lighting, we made a small batch of specially doped metal halide lamps.

The plasma tube was made of fused quartz to withstand enormous temperatures and pressure, Spectacular when they fail during initial burn in, if there is a hairline fracture in the quartz, the bulb explodes like a 1/4 stick.

Inside the plasma tube was a proprietary mix of mercury, metal halide and I think some variation of strontium, however when the lamp came up to 100 percent, the light output was almost the same colour as a green laser pointer.

I talked engineering into letting me take a couple home, I put a ballast in a box behind the couch, and put the lamps in my end table lights. (When your the guy with the tool cart, the folks at the plant treat you pretty damn good.)

The whole room looked like emerald city Oz.

 

[aryntha]

Damn. What I wouldn't give for one of those...

... and... House fires.. Off topic, but one of my greatest fears... Do you mind saying what caused it?

 

[photonaholic]

Damn. What I wouldn't give for one of those...

... and... House fires.. Off topic, but one of my greatest fears... Do you mind saying what caused it?

Aquarium, The filter pump locked up, overheated and set the curtains on fire.

The house was really old, the walls has plaster mixed with horse hair, and the insulation was shredded newspaper, on a hemlock frame, once the flame got into the walls it was moments before most of the house was ablaze.

cases of Self-Ballasting (half incandescent half MV) bulbs, and I have three LPS (low pressure sodium) lights.

I have one a 400 watt self ballast. The design is crude, yet effective.

A "normal" mercury vapor lamp has a ballast with a starter circuit in it, when first switched on, the start circuit sends a HV spike to the arc tube, this pulse ionizes the gas mix, once ionized, the mercury vapor is highly conductive, the resulting plasma creates almost a dead short on the supply, so the starter circuit stops pulsing, and the rest of the circuit amounts to nothing more than a large heavy duty choke coil to absorb the current.

A self ballast lamp has a starter circuit down in the neck of the bulb that is very similar to the old mechanical fluorescent lamp starters, and a heavy filament in series with the arc tube.

When first turned on, an incandescent filament starts and heats the mercury, mercury has a low boiling point, so the heat vaporizes the mercury, then the mechanical contacts "bounce" sending AC spikes to the arc tube, since it is pre heated, the resulting spikes are enough to fire the lamp, then the heavy series filament absorbs the excess current.

 

[aryntha]

That's spooky... We were just talking to a friend about horsehair plaster in his house and its fire vulerability about two hours ago... Odd how little regard we pay to the fire resistance of something as pedestrian as gypsum drywall nowadays.

Anyways, back to the topic at hand: Was green the only variant of these odd bulbs, and did they have a specific purpose? - And what's your opinion on Mercury Arc Rectifiers? Not exactly an intentional light source, but one of my favorites nonetheless.

 

[photonaholic]

Never got my hands on a Mercury Arc Rectifier, so I cannot honestly comment.

Those green halides were for a proprietary (hush hush) project, I am sure as a light source in some kind of machine or analyzer.

Since I was a mechanic / set up tradesman, I worked closely with engineering, and this engineer named Hugh (R.I.P. you rocked Hughie!) a Dutchman (Phillips is based out of Holland, so he was high up) sort of took a liking to me, especially since I wanted to know every facet of the plants operations and machines, Gas mix ratios, pressures, what temperatures the ovens needed to be at when we manufactured polycrystalline Alumina tubing for the sodium lamps, current draw, etc.

I was the geek mechanic that never stopped asking questions.

Anyways, I still was never told exactly what those lamps were for, They were ultra small, there was a 250 watt metal halide core (doped) inserted into a test tube and sealed, rather than the standard "BT" glass,

 

[Cyparagon]

The plasma tube was made of fused quartz to withstand enormous temperatures and pressure

As are all metal halide and mercury vapor lamps.

cases of Self-Ballasting (half incandescent half MV) bulbs

Those are COOL. I've got four 160W. Here's a transition of one warming up:

Inside the plasma tube was a proprietary mix of mercury, metal halide and I think some variation of strontium, however when the lamp came up to 100 percent, the light output was almost the same colour as a green laser pointer.

I've got one of those. 400W. And by the way, for those of you who don't know, 400W of metal halide is as bright as 2000W of incandescent. It looks more of a greenish white to me as it has the mercury lines in it as well as a strong strontium line.

A "normal" mercury vapor lamp has a ballast with a starter circuit in it, when first switched on, the start circuit sends a HV spike to the arc tube, this pulse ionizes the gas mix

eh?? a pulse start mercury vapor?? Not until recently were those available. MOST have a starting probe next to one of the main electrodes. Initially, the voltage isn't high enough to make the jump across the arc tube, but it IS high enough to jump the short distance from the probe to the main electrode. This smaller arc is what starts the larger arc between the main electrodes. A resistor (and sometimes a bimetal strip) regulate the starting probe's operation.

Here are two illustrations:

 

[FireMyLaser]

I only collect discrete LEDs.

 

[photonaholic]

Cyparagon - Your knowledge of this subject is impressive, Did you ever work in the lighting industry? or fascinated to the point of desiring the knowledge?

If I remember correctly it was the feedback from the arc jumping the smaller gap that made the ballast "spike the tube"

TRIVIA - at the plant, each worker has a small hand held tesla coil to "tickle" lamps that refused to cooperate for the initial burn in.

I attended a class at Phillips once, and the engineer hooked up a 175 watt mercury vapor lamp without a ballast, it was on the end of a very long cord, there was a HV "tickler" positioned close to the lamp, when he turned on the power (from a safe distance) the bulb exploded violently.

He then went on to explain that the excessive current that would have been otherwise absorbed by the ballast created a "short circuit condition" resulting in the bulbs failure.

Like I said in one of my posts, we used to have a handful of bulbs each shift that would explode in the seasoning rack (the proper name for the row of sockets that we used for initial burn in.)

My favorite was the 1000 watt metal halides, those damn bulbs are HUGE, and when the arc tube fails, the "bang" is loud.

When I first got hired, I was in the seasoning department, after a few months of that I got transferred to PCA (Polycrystalline Alumina) plant, the jub sucked, I spent 8 hours a day sitting in front of a diamond cut off wheel sawing PCA tubes to length with a jig.

There was green lubricant that sprayed on the wheel the whole time, and after 8 hours of that my hands were not happy.

So then they had a test for potential mechanics, the union required that they seek candidates from within first, and only if no existing employee qualified was the company allowed to hire from outside the plant.

I scored a 98% on the test, and wound up with a tool cart with my name on it within the first year of employment.

I just found this..

My mom retired from that same factory, They made her this bulb to take home.

When mom passed away, my sister took this home and hung it in her living room. (I got the house and truck, so who am I to argue with her over it)

Look down the middle, it says PAT where the arc tube should be.

All of those trinkets are spot welded to the internal frame and then sealed in the glass.

 

[HIMNL9]

I have around some old lamp and torches, but nothing special ..... old mercury and sodium tubes, a 130W UV neon from an old heliocopy machine, some "strange" lamps that i don't know what they are, collected in the years ..... also a GE lamp made with two spirals of wire that don't touch and filled with neon, and a small filament lamp that have a strange high resistance filament and that is filled with mercury gas instead that in void (but is not a self-ballast, is a small lamp ..... when you power it with 24V, it start with the filament, but very low, almost IR, the filament warm up the mercury gas, and then the plasma ignite through the electrodes that hold the filament, and it shut off ..... it emits in the UV B and C band, and was for some sterilization machine, if i recall correctly) ..... a pair of strange projection lamps too, and a pair of "neon zeners" (big lamps with two concentric metal cylinders, filled with some neon gas mix ..... when you connect them to a voltage through a resistor, they stabilize the voltage at their leads at 70 V, like zeners ..... more voltage you give, more part of the tubes become luminous) ..... and lots of xenon tubes, and somewhere, i also have one of the prototypes of FL lamps that had no internal electrodes (GE started to produce them years ago, then stopped, don't know why ..... this one was mounted in my "courtesy light" place at the shop .....worked 17 years always on, then i substituted it with a more luminous one, but it's still working .....

But all stored in boxes and shelf, not a real collection (i'm a poor man with few space and also less money, cannot plan a collection )

 

[Cyparagon]

Cyparagon - Your knowledge of this subject is impressive, Did you ever work in the lighting industry? or fascinated to the point of desiring the knowledge?

I like light, and light sources. I kinda switched from lasers to lighting when I was laid off last march because it's quite a bit cheaper. It also has more applications, and I now employ HID lighting in my home.

My favorite was the 1000 watt metal halides, those damn bulbs are HUGE, and when the arc tube fails, the "bang" is loud.

I've got a couple of those. One crammed in a BT-37 outer bulb (same shape as your trophy) and one in a conventional BT-56 outer bulb. This bulb outputs one hundred and thirty times as much light as the regular 60W bulb I'm holding. The ballast required to run it is about 30 pounds.

I spent 8 hours a day sitting in front of a diamond cut off wheel sawing PCA tubes to length with a jig.

For high pressure sodium lamps?

a small filament lamp that have a strange high resistance filament and that is filled with mercury gas instead that in void (but is not a self-ballast, is a small lamp ..... when you power it with 24V, it start with the filament, but very low, almost IR, the filament warm up the mercury gas, and then the plasma ignite through the electrodes that hold the filament, and it shut off ..... it emits in the UV B and C band, and was for some sterilization machine, if i recall correctly

I think what you're describing is a germicidal lamp. Most fluorescent tubes are preheated like that when they start, but it's not really to heat up the mercury - it's to heat up the electrodes. It's like preheating the cathode in an argon laser. This is done so that the "thermionic emission temperature" is reached so that the voltage drop across the electrode itself is much lower. This allows the open-circuit voltage to discharge across the tube. It's like a regular fluorescent tube, but with a quarts wall and no phosphors.

 

[ZRTMWA]

The most unusual light I have is one of these:



Except I've never put it in the microwave.

Actually I take that back. Our family has a full size leg lamp that stands in our front window in honor of the movie "A Christmas Story":



It looks exactly like the one in the movie.

I also have a lava lamp in my room.

 

[photonaholic]

For high pressure sodium lamps?

Yes the PCA tubes were for the sodium lamps. You can operate just the tube without the glass shell, they get so hot you can light a fire with them.

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Gathered some more up. (My stuff is more of a pack rat nature rather than collector, collector just sounds better than "dumpster diver")

This one I want to put a blu ray diode in the base, and fill the bulb with GID liquid, the end result should be cool. the driver can be hidden in the socket, and since it's firing into a pool of GID liquid, the lenses or optics will not be needed, the BR is just to excite the fluid. a small transformer can power it all.

The one on the left is for a bug zapper, but I use it for my lizard, it has a high UV index.

The centre lamp is for an antique projector, and the last is a blacklight

My neon purple cat

blue neon dolphin

mercury vapor 30 watt "eggs"

Par 20 LED (I have these in red/green/blue and want to get those cool color changing ones out now.

 

[aryntha]

Huh. Is that the normal color (red) of the MV 30w on the left, or is that the penning mixture/startup phase?