Argon Bulb

[Cyparagon]

I'm pretty sure there's no nitrogen in it (or at least very little). It was difficult to tell - most of the nitrogen lines are very close to an argon line. I checked a few places where I would expect to find a nitrogen line and no argon line, and I saw nothing.

 

[piferal]

According to the information that I have, this bulb is filled with 10% of nitrogen approximately.

 

[Cyparagon]

^Yeah, I just found this. It is there to extend the life of the lamp and enhance the UV output. I didn't check the UV lines.

 

[piferal]

^^ Yes, the two options are fair possible, but I do not know which of the 2 may have more relevance,
I am inclined to think that adding a small amount of nitrogen improves the stability of the
discharge and emits the nitrogen 2nd positive band UV light (around 310~360nm).

But those who decided to include this amount of gas mixture know exactly why.

Courtesy of ledmuseum website, here is the spectrographic analysis of This bulb.

 

[532 with Envy]

Thanks for the heads up.:beer:....I was going to pick up a couple of these, and then the seller upped the price by 50%. None sold for some time so I figured he would drop them down back to $10 each again.

 

[grenadier]

Not as cool as the Ne-34

http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/thumb/c/c9/NE-34_LAMP.JPG/800px-NE-34_LAMP.JPG

 

[T_Warne]

I'm partial to purple, so I disagree.:na:

I found this info that might be of interest.
The lamp contains a pair of pressed nickel electrodes, the front surfaces being coated with barium and strontium for good electron emission, and a coating of aluminium powder on the rear half preventing occurrence of the negative glow in that region. Argon is the active gas filling, however it was found that the admixture of around 10% nitrogen greatly extended lamp life and enhanced the UV emission. The principal effect of the nitrogen is to improve the bonding of the Ba and Sr to the surface of the electrode. A gas filling pressure of 10-12 torr was found to yield the strongest UV emission. Due to deterioration of the glass bulb employed in these lamps, the UV output unfortunately falls off quite rapidly during life. The rated life of this argon lamp is 1000 hours to 50% output, much shorter than the 8000 hours of its neon equivalent. Smaller argon lamps, where the bulb is closer to the UV source, have lives as little as 150 hours.

 

[cheech226]

thanks for the info, i wanted one too but saw the price had jumped. now the price is back and i'm gonna get one.

 

[LtKernelPanic]

Bah. I bought two of these on 6/11 and the box arrived with only one in it. Time to contact the seller.

 

[LtKernelPanic]

Pardon the double post but has anyone else recently ordered any of these bulbs? I ordered two but only received one. I sent him an ebay message on the 20th and haven't heard anything back. I'm going to send one more message tonight saying if I do not receive a reply within 48 hours I'll be initiating a paypal dispute.


Update: Before sending a snarky second message I checked my email to see if I got a reply and noticed I never received a copy of the first message like ebay claimed I would. After resending the message I got a reply within an hour apologizing for the mistake and a second bulb is on the way. I was hoping it was a simple mixup and the seller indeed made it right.