Amazing ten-volt mercury discharge UVC lamp. (GTL3) 

Clive now has the distinction of being the only guy on the Isle of Man with sunburnt fingertips.

Very noble to take care of your mum!

As a watcher of the bro from canaderp, can confirm, its an audio triggered focus.

Clive, Every one of your videos that I've seen so far has been both hysterical and SERIOUSLY informative! Thanks for making these and I hope you continue for a very long time. Cheers!

Normally used on a 28V supply via a sodding big 27R resistor, to provide the ballast resistance. There is also a 82R resistor across the lamp in this application. This is used as a illuminator for aircraft instruments that is not visible to the human eye, yet provides a bright phosphor display on the dials, with a very dark UV pass filter ( Woods glass) to keep the UV level to a safe level. Used to be a part of older aircraft where you had to read regular instruments during night flight yet keep your dark adapted vision for navigation and flight.

My Grandpa had a 110VAC Mercury Arc discharge lamp in his home for living room lighting. Seemed self-ballasted, may have had a dry capacitor in the base, but it seemed very nice as a design. Wish they still made stuff like that.

I'm reminded of the time, many many years ago, when I was pulling bits out of a scrapped washing machine and ended up with something that was labeled as being a "germicidal lamp", the socket, and an inductive ballast that went with it. Applying line voltage to this did get it to light up, and I don't think that I did too much damage at the time.

Oh yeah, so good to have you back at your bench. All the bits to hand. The soothing tones recorded by the mic.

"it's more dangerous in this area", he says, stroking it with his fingers

SAFETY SQUINTS ENGAGE

Welcome home Cline, glad to see the old bench. Nifty little light.

They look and sound just fine, great to see the old bench back!

E16 fittings are incredibly rare. There is one ancient porcelain fuse size that uses it (Siemens Diazed/NDz/… DL E16), and some sewing machines, microwave ovens, and refrigerators seem to favour them for illumination. For the latter ones, I've only ever seen the lamps, but short of going out and ripping one out of a used appliance, the fittings themselves so far have eluded me.

Ahh. I've always wanted to see one of these in action since reading about them in the past. I never understood how a gaseous discharge could be sustained with only a 10v supply. Time to grab a beer, and learn something new. Good choice of topic, Clive.

Big Clive, just a quick thank you for sharing all of this with us. Inspirational.

Cool! I used to collect discharge lamps. I've still got a couple of GEC self-ballasted mercury vapour lamps installed on the sides of the house which have outlived every LED floodlight that my neighbours have had.

Yay, your back at your home bench! So glad. Back to normal videos again. Hope the new camera will work out.

I have an old refrigerator that uses this lamp. It took me a while to figure it out, because the bulb was missing. Apparently, the 'Magic Ray' lamp used UV and ozone to prevent foods' flavors from mixing in the refrigerator (think before tupperware and ziplocks existed). I was able to find the bulb a while back, but I have no way of testing it, because it's wired in series with the condensate heater - which is also missing. I wondered why they would wire in series, but now I know - it's 10 volts (ish). Apparently they must've used the resistance of the heater as the ballast for the bulb. Interestingly, if the bulb ever burned out, or you just removed it, the fridge would have no way of evaporating the condensate water, and it would just pour out onto the kitchen floor! But hey, instead of resistors, couldn't you just use a choke coil for a ballast? I wonder how an appliance (humidifiers, apparently? O_o) would be wired to power this bulb.

I just received same product, but it was sold as 220v. And you were spot on! they both produced quite a bright but really short flash. They also reliably triggered BOTH segment and entire apartment breakers! I guess time for an ebay claim... Thanks for great content!

Thanks for that Clive, most instructive. I've been experimenting with some of these and have managed to destroy 2 so far. Back in the mid 60s I had a little ozone generator using a Philips bulb marked something along the lines of OZ4W. Unfortunately it got broken and I've tried to find a source of them for a long time, it seems that they are no longer made and a recent search found an old stock one for some $100! So I was delighted to find these on Ebay. I tried a capacitive dropper from 110 v not being aware of the 'sputtering problem but like the idea of a 240/24 volt transformer with a resistive dropper. I found that, provided one was happy with a 'unipolar' glow, a 3 - 10 watt, 300 mA LED driver worked well.

As Bernd says, power was one issue for mirrorless vs. DSLR - an issue in the field or on longer shoots. Another was viewfinder lag, until recently. Also, autofocus. Sensors now have phase-detect AF on the image sensor whereas before it was (or is, in a DSLR) a separate sensor in the bottom of the camera. Straight contrast AF through a normal image sensor can give good results but needs abundant light, and can get confused more easily.

That is digital zoom for you. Zooms in a lot at the expense of quality. Optical zoom is the only way to go.

Good coverage of a very interesting lamp! I've powered mine with an electronic fluorescent lamp ballast that has a 600V OCV and 0.2A lamp current. Works great.

Actually, it seems the filament is only HALF coated! Seems that it is part of how it operates. Neat little device. Keep up the good work, Clive.

I wonder if that would work for combining hydrogen and chlorine to make hydrochloric acid.

Sold before end of video. Ordered 10 from Big Rock Candy Mountain for same cost as UK seller. Might be good to power from solar cell for keeping water fresh after the apocalypse.

Welcome back Clive !!

These bulbs do emit a strong ozone smell. I used four in a Styrofoam "sanitization box" with E-17 "patio light" sockets powered by 18VAC and capacitor ballasts, on a delayed start 5 minute timer. I read a number of UVC warnings and have never seen the direct illumination - just the purple glow through the Styrofoam. Russell's page was invaluable. I used AC to balance the wear of the electrodes. Thanks for the video!

Ok, so i was drinking my tea when you said "focus you fuck" now i have to clean up, as it's now all over my desk xD

So when you discussed the spatter effect I knew exactly what you were talking about because I learned that on your channel. That is why I'm a patreon.

Back around 1982 I needed an EPROM eraser. I found the last clothes dryer germicidal lamp in the city. A 40 watt incandescent lamp in series worked really well to limit the current. Mounted the UV lamp inside a coffee can and erased EROMS in about 20 minutes.

Thanks for all the stories you told us when we were exploring the Lake of Nine in our little boat. I liked the one about that time Skadi and Fenrir took apart a cheap Chinese LED lightbulb the best. -Kratos

My dad has gotten addicted to your videos too! Now we sit in the theatre room together and watch them on the big tv P.S Try a Hasselblad H6. I use one and I love it.

The square plate acts as an anode. Its tapped at the midpoint of the filament, so it will always be ~ 0V. The ends of the filaments (tied to each terminal) will follow the AC input 180 degrees out of phase of each other. The one that's in its negative half of the cycle, will be the cathode, and there will be a thermo-emissive (sp ?) current path between that cathode, and the plate. That path, thru the mercury vapor, excites it and emits UV light.

I watch a lot of your video. I did buy the exacte same lamp and I spend a evening finding the good ballast resistor for the transformer I have. That 3 week ago. Tonight browsing YT I find this video where you explain me that I lost a evening because you end up with the exact same solution I end up with ,thanks . I also agree that a capacitor dropper is a bad idea. Inductor will work but a transformer with a resistor ballast is much simpler.

Nice to see you back at the bench. I enjoyed the videos from your workplace at the tattoo.

Emissious is a perfectly cromulent word!

I've found a high frequency in a tilt switch produces a neat effect, little uv line, looks like when a rocket fires, only in eye scorching blue/violet

Thats a very fascinating uvc lamp indeed ! many possible uses of low level uvc. thanks for vid

Hello , BigClive. Very nice presentation re: the GTL3 low voltage discharge lamp. The construction of the lamp is not new, however. Back in the late 50's, refrigerators had ozone-producing mercury bulbs in them to reduce odors in the 'fridge. The lamps ran off the 120VAC mains, with a series ballast to limit the current when the arc struck. The lamps had almost perfectly spherical bulbs, made of quartz (to permit the ozone-generating lamp radiation to pass through the bulb). The lamps were made by GE, and the packaging was marked "OZONE LAMP", with an appropriate warning about the rays. The package also warned of needing a ballast, lest the lamp shatter. The bulbs were 1.34" (34 mm) in diameter, the base threads had a major diameter of 0.635 (16.2), and were designed not to fit a standard Mazda-based socket, nor the 7 1/2 Watt "Christmas Tree" light sockets. When the bulb is cold, you can see droplets of mercury on the inside of the quartz bulb. The filament is almost identical to the one in your video, including the ends that had the coating. The major difference is that the peak of the filament in your low voltage bulb pointed down toward the base, while the GE bulb's filament pointed away from the base. When the GE bulb was running, the ozone production could not be missed; no need getting your nose next to the bulb! The package further warned that not more than 3 were to be run per 1000 cu ft. Germicidal bulbs are usually designed to block the ozone-generating lamp radiation. Today, one use of the GTL3 is in a toothbrush holder that sanitizes the brush part of an electronic toothbrush.

The advantage of a DSLR with a viewfinder you put your eye to, versus a camera with a screen at the back is that with the viewfinder you can block out the light when you shoot in daylight. It can be hard to see what's going on at a screen. Well, if you have a camera where you look at a display through a "viewfinder-hole", you get that advantage too without a flipping mirror. I don't know if cameras work like that nowadays, have only used a phone-cam the last decade.

The camera aficionados are wondering why you only spent 120 quid on a phone when you could have spent easily £950

Thanks clive. Now I know why my Toothbrush-cleaner glows in that lovely blue. Read the manual and wondered if the shield makes it visible and blue. But it's the actual lamp. No wonder they are so fussed with a switch killing the lamp when you open the enclosure. neat and now I know which lamp I need if mine ever breaks down.

Oh Clive, you're playing the SLRhut lottery. Good on you.

Re mirrorless vs. DSLR: I know some pros who swear by mirrorless, but I like my Nikons just fine. On the one hand, there's a feeling of reality in what you see through the viewfinder that certainly can't be replicated in a screen and I don't really believe can be replicated in even the finest electronic viewfinder. On the other, a lot of what I shoot is wildlife, especially birds in flight - and there are some shots you just can't get if your shutter speed and FPS aren't there. For my purposes, those are the specs that count more than anything else, and they're much more economically achievable in a platform that isn't spending hundreds of dollars on features, like an EVF and zero shutter blackout, that I really don't care about at all. Of course, none of that's applicable in the slightest to your totally different use case. But you mentioned that you can't imagine why anyone would want even a digital SLR today - and now you know at least two reasons. Enjoy your Sony! I look forward to seeing the no doubt stellar results it will produce.

After all your coverage of the UVC lamps. I have to get some just to smell the "smell".

Your AUDIO is really good !

Just been checking out your website and shop Clive. Cool stuff! Thanks for yet another great video. :-)

Big Clive shout out to AvE!

Every time I hear "Enhance" on film and TV I am now going to hear Clive say "Zoom in far too much!"

My main camera is a Fuji X-T1. Takes fantastic photos. Recently sold my right leg and kidney to get the 80mm macro lens for it. A perchise I am very happy with.

Clive, this is a "blacklight" to some degree. At least, I know certain minerals will react to UV light. But it depends on the wavelength. Some react to UVA, others UVB, or UVC. If you ever come to the USA, check out a cool mining museum called "Sterling Hill Mines" in northern New Jersey. They have found a large collection of fluorescent minerals. It was accidentally found in the zinc mine one day, when the power lines shorted out, and the arc flash created UV light. The walls of the mine tunnel glowed a pinkish red!

mirrored camera's. Massively increased battery life if you don't use the screen, and a much clearer image, allowing you to focus better

Melanoma and cataracts for everybody! PARTY!

I have one of these "intermediate base" (a common size for reading lamps in the USA) germicidal lamps socked away, but I also got (in an estate sale) a 275-watt combination mercury-vapour/incandescent "sun lamp" from the 1950s, which screws into a standard socket & goes right across the 115-volt mains supply. Of course you want to use a ceramic socket for that! I don't know any good use for it other than discouraging the mold in the bathtub, but it's a real champ at that.

Yes, neat. I've got an air cleaner from 1947 with 4 of those in it. Works very well.

A mirror camera lasting much longer in battery and the finder is more accurate

EBay search .. 3W Ozone

Ive replaced similar bulbs in newer cars climate control systems. its weird how some last forever and others constantly blow. Ive suspected over voltage or burning them when the hvac is not running. On your shipment from the US lets hope it was shipped before hurricane season started, its ready to blow on the east coast. glad you are back to your regular broadcasting. lol

Have you seen James Hooker's website Clive? Thorn and Osram made similar lamps, some with a woods glass envelope. They were used on 28v supplies to illuminate cockpit instruments painted with UV reactive paint. Thermionic discharge lamps have been around for a long time. In the USA a large version was offered as a sun lamp. These sort of lamps are very commonly used in small UVC filters for aquaria and also in air purifiers.

A Panasonix GH5, if so, it is a beast…

Full frame? Is it a Sony A7III? Panasonic GH5? As some said, it can't be a mirrorless dSLR, because the mirror part is in SLR. xD Single Lens Reflex, the reflex comes from the mirror and pentaprism pair. But people get it. I'm not totally sure it'll help Clive... you'll definitely get a higher res, more quality in low light, plus a bunch of other capabilities, but at the same time these types of cameras are just harder to handle and to prop up a workflow. It's always a tradeoff... convenience for potential and quality. The real advantage of pro cameras vs smartphones these days also comes up with extra costs - like buying extra lenses, investing on post production, etc. It depends on how you shoot, edit and publish your videos... for instance, if you do it all on the smartphone, a pro camera will add extra steps and devices. You need to either shoot, take the memory card out, edit if necessary and then publish on a laptop/desktop, or you need an extra smartphone or tablet to connect to the camera via app and do similar steps. You could also shoot thethered, which means you'll need to have the camera connected to a desktop or laptop... eliminates the extra step of pulling files from the camera sd card to another device, which is super annoying. Anyways, the experience will be good for you to decide. Personally, I think the current quality of your videos are already great, no need for gear upgrade. But if the pro camera route doesn't work for you, perhaps a higher end smartphone could also be a good investment... LG V30, Samsung Galaxy Note 9, Google Pixel 2 or the upcoming 3, Huawei P20, those will all offer you a better image quality, manual controls, better low light capability and whatnot. There are also some better mic solutions coming out for smartphone vlogging from brands like Rode and Shure.

I bought one of these bulbs a few years ago and it is a powerful ozone emitter.

Thanks for the great explanation Clive. I guess Clive has taken out a mortgage for his new camera. I hope he ordered a lens too! I'm drooling in anticpation of seeing explosions in 4K.

GTL3: Grand Theft Lamp 3

So a note, at least on US Spec cameras, digital still cameras are limited to 19:59 on recording video for tax reasons. For shooting continuous hours of footage (or more than 20 minutes) you need a VIDEO camera

Good as always clive :) loved all the behind scenes of the tattoo :) hoping to get there next time :)

Yesterday i found exactly this UVC-Lamp in a Philips Supersonic toothbrush chargingstation, i immediately hat to think of your video and kept it, i think i'll make a mobile water steriliser out of it

..."lamp"? Hmmm. "Murder Bulb" sounds so much better...

You still can't beat an SLR for shooting fast-moving things like wildlife or action sports. They focus faster, and there is very little shutter lag. But for your work, a mirrorless camera is fine.

I have that same lamp mounted in a Phillips electric toothbrush charging station with sanatizing chamber for the brush tip. The holder is more of a clamp you push the bulb in sideways than a threaded mount.

Bought 2 of them on aliexpress, they work well. After nome time one of them had somehow wrapped the filament on the metal plate, still works.

Moto is not moto anymore. Lenovo is churning shitty phones with large profit margin... Xiaomi phones are better, especially with some which have Sony ExmorR sensors.

If you don't just shoot static scenery, the mirrorless designs are actually really annoying, because they introduce a few 100ms of lag, which if you started out using a lag-free reflex mirror, is a big enough pain in the ass to constantly work around, that many professionals prefer to stay with the mirror design. I think I might know which camera you're talking about: is it a Sony? If it is, just be *really* careful about cheap sellers. I've personally seen some really convincing (in everything but the quality of the delivered image) fake copies of the Japanese DSLRs being sold for just a few grand, so if you find something like that, it's probably going to be a fake.

Another good one Clive. Thank you as always. I have a few of these and like you I've tried various ways of powering them. For DC it's essential to limit the current as you so rightly say. I've found that 300mA is about right. The mains via a 4uF cap does seem to be the best driving method though and I've had one running for days with a capacitor in series and there doesn't appear to be any sputtering. Your thoughts on sputtering in neons are quite correct of course, but these UV lamps are not working in the same negative glow principle, rather thermionic emission ionising the mercury vapour and not negative glow. Anyway, I'll leave one running via a capacitor for a few weeks (out of sight because of the UVC) and see what happens. Once again thanks for producing so much wonderful and well presented scientific stuff for us all to enjoy!

Interesting little lamp on a side note I've got the G5 and my daughter has the G6 with has as good a camera as the G5 if not better .. looked at the G6 play for her couldn't see any good reason to get the play over the full fat G6...bugger all difference in price around here.....my work mate got the new samsung note 9 ...now that has a really good camera but costs ~£1000 for a bloody phone. waiting to see the improved video quality with your new camera when it arrives ....keep up the good work....your vids keep us night shift sparkies going at times

Sweet Mary, mother of Jesus!!! A proper camera??? Holy hell, what are you going to do with that???? Hahahaha... Eh, you could shoot your videos with camera pulled off a $20 Ebay drone and I'd still watch it. And for some reason I really want one of those bulbs, though I fear it wouldn't be a terribly wise thing to have laying around for me to fiddle with.

It's been so long since we've seen those burn marks. Ah, home sweet home. Also, don't turn that UVC on for too long, you'll get a Donald Trump face tan.

I ended up buying a couple of these for experimentation (with sunglasses on of course), as well as a bench power supply. They seem to start discharge at around 15ish volts, at which point current regulation cuts in, kicking the voltage down to around 10. Exactly as described in this video. Now my plan is to create a low power ozone generator out of a pringles can, a small PC fan, and one of these. I have an old 16v transformer laying around, so i'll try to utilize that.

you always find the coolest stuff dude thanks cool video

Yes... your lamps won't last longer than a month or so !!! I don't think you are supposed to touch them with bare fingers, like halogen bulbs. The glass isn't glass but quartz, isn't it ?? Hence the oils and acids from the skin tend to penetrate the quartz envelope and form microscopic or electron-microscopic holes in it and let O2 inside and the filament slowly burns out. Someone do enlighten, ​please...

welcome back to your home bench ... and cool bulb

Im so happy to see your dirty , scorched work bench again

Built it thanks. Used 24v/1A tran 2x82R. Didn't measure anything. Works great.

I absolutely love my Lumix G85. Insane video quality for a sub-$800 camera. I would assume your new cam is one of the G series as well.

I restored a vintage ozone generator that had three of these. Great little machine.

I bought three of these for use in my 1950's/60's-era air purifier, known as the "Puratron." These were the modern-day replacements for the discontinued, original lamps, which produced more ozone. The base, BTW, is the US E-17 intermediate.

Worshiped the Sony Alphas back in the day. Still great cameras, would love a brand new a7-R-III with all the accessories, but don't really shoot many photos or videos in my line of work anymore so I could never justify buying one when I've got a cell phone that really on a day to day basis works just as well as my A77 did. Of course with a lot less flexibility in terms of more advanced functions and professional level controls, but you really only need that (and might even not want it) to a certain extent depending on what your use case is. Hope your new camera works out for you!

Lumix something, G7 perhaps? :) I've personally always found the image quality of your videos absolutely spot on.

That 'mini' or 'medium' Edison base is often found in microwave oven lights, occasionally fridges, and older clip-on little work lights from more incandescent by-gone days (Thrift store score). Used for better heat removal than the smaller 'candelabra' (old style x-mass) bases.

When you said "kept on" I heard "kapton" xD . About mirrors: They make the camera more versatile. It's easier to do things like astrophotography, when you don't have a dedicated camera for that. I doubt the preview of a mirrorless cam would pick up any stars in the vincinity to focus on or align the telescope to the nebula you don't actually see. Real mirror + eyes could. However, I admit that this is a pretty special application. Let me have another go: The preview screen has a resolution so low you cant't really see your exact focus. Focusing a 20 MP image on a 3 MP screen is like building a watch with an excavator. It doesn't matter much for artistical images since there usually is at least a tiny bit of stuff in both dorection of the spot you want to focus on, but for technical images where you want to image a plane, like astro, mikro or repro, you wan't to be sure that the focus isn't even 0.1 mm off. Autofocus isn't accurate either, not even on the EOS 5D I work with, not to mention that it doesn't work under even what I consider medium-to-low light conditions.

About UVC production with mercury vapor: The spectrum of mercury discharge changes with pressure. At low pressure, the hard UVC part responsible for O3 production is much more pronounced than at the high-ish pressures of an Arc like in the video. The range of 160-240 nm can create O3, but the higher wavelengths will destroy them again. Because of this there is a limit for the concentration of O3 that you can reach with any particular UV lamp. (around 1% for lamps designed to produce O3)

I'm glad I found this video. Almost ruined my little bulb.

Extremely interesting! Thanks a lot!

I have gotten the metallic film on my fog h3 bulbs on my 18 year old 4runner was very intriguing clive

Neat, but dangerous little bulb. Also wanted to say I really enjoyed the videos from the Tattoo.

Oh, I so long for a GH4 also, good buy on you mate!

These are also used in some electric toothbrush recharging stations for sanitizing toothbrush heads.

I bought these and they're amazingly beautiful (and deadly)

This is a lamp worth revisiting five years later.