Philips eoclick fluorescent starter

[Sylvia Else]

Tritium glow thingies are cool. This one keeps us from smashing our
heads on the stupid bedpost:

Sylvia lends John her chain saw.

 

[josephkk]

We certainly have a whole class of citizens that are so ignorant they
hear what they want to hear. On this side of the pond we call them
Democrats ;-)

...Jim Thompson

And republicans and libertarians and tea partiers ad nauseam

8-(

 

[josephkk]

In my experience, a glow switch starter is normally open. The glow
heats a bimetal strip, causing the starter to close. Once the starter
closes, it is no longer producing heat, so it opens.

Something seems screwy with that explanation.
IME (cold) starter is initially closed; power goes through old old style
filaments in FL, in fraction of a second bimetallic strip heats up and
contacts open, FL starts. Lamp current keeps FL filaments hot, glow
current keeps starter contacts warm and open. By experiment over 40 years
ago as a kid.

 

[Sylvia Else]

Why don't you buy an electronic ballast to prolong the life of the
lamps? They come in many sizes and shapes so you can replace almost
every existing ballast.

Well, I could, but that really wasn't the point.

Sylvia.

 

[Baron]

kreed Inscribed thus:

It cant work as a normally closed (at cold) circuit. If the starter
was normally closed initially, then it would
keep turning the filaments on as it cooled down and closed again,
killing the current through the tube and turning it off.

If it somehow was kept hot enough to stay open when the tube was
running, this would be a waste of power, and probably
reduce the life of the starter a lot.

I agree ! I've never seen any with normally closed bi-metal contacts...
However I've seen a few that failed with the contacts welded closed !

 

[Don Klipstein]

Something seems screwy with that explanation.
IME (cold) starter is initially closed; power goes through old old style
filaments in FL, in fraction of a second bimetallic strip heats up and
contacts open, FL starts. Lamp current keeps FL filaments hot, glow
current keeps starter contacts warm and open. By experiment over 40
years ago as a kid.

If you remember that correctly, then your starter that you observed
was not a usual glow switch starter.

There is the possibility in a few cases that a glow switch starter
may glow while in parallel with the lamp, since the glow has positive
resistance between a few milliamps and an amp or so. But I have
observed a lot of glow switch starters and never seen that. That would
be waste of some of the power that would otherwise go into the lamp.

I have even connected a few glow switch starters to ~150-300V limited
to about a milliamp - they glow right off the bat. FS-4 usually needed
more than 150V, but FS-2 and most others did not. On an ohmmeter, every
one I tried came up open.

 

[TheGlimmerMan]

IIRC, that was to enable them to ionize at a reasonable voltage while in
the dark.

John

Someone is in the dark alright.

It enables them to "age" better. IOW, they do not change performance
as much through a given time window of operation.

They do change horribly, which is what this is supposed to flatten and
compensate for a bit.

 

[John S]

Someone is in the dark alright.

Of course, DimmerMan. You would know - not.

 

[josephkk]

If you remember that correctly, then your starter that you observed
was not a usual glow switch starter.

There is the possibility in a few cases that a glow switch starter
may glow while in parallel with the lamp, since the glow has positive
resistance between a few milliamps and an amp or so. But I have
observed a lot of glow switch starters and never seen that. That would
be waste of some of the power that would otherwise go into the lamp.

I have even connected a few glow switch starters to ~150-300V limited
to about a milliamp - they glow right off the bat. FS-4 usually needed
more than 150V, but FS-2 and most others did not. On an ohmmeter, every
one I tried came up open.

Very well, it seems that i may have misremembered.

?-(

 

[josephkk]

Take the cover off one, and watch it from the side when starting. You
can actually see the contacts bend and move to each other, in that
purple glow. you might have to extend it out of the fitting to get a
good look in it.

If i ever come across an old starter type fixture to play with i may just
do that.