What you see here is an experiment that involves me trying to run a 6 foot F72T12/CW/VHO fluorescent tube on a preheat circuit using a 175W H39 mercury vapor CWA ballast. Check out the interesting results as you watch the video.
I'm currently working on an experiment of running a old fluorescent tube with dead filaments on a ccfl driver from a 2w bulb, I just need to figure out some way to get the high voltage circuit out without breaking the PCB
This is not very good for the fluorescent lamp and transformers are not very good for this use! but yes, it's a cheap solution, it's the first time I've seen this lamp, I didn't know it had 165w fluorescent, I knew it was up to 80w!! But how bright is it? and finally after a long time new video 😃
@@johnjunior-70 This was just another way of running the fluorescent tube. I just tried this experiment and it seems to be doing okay so far. Additionally, the tube was running close to its rated current, but only at a minor overdrive. These fluorescent tubes tend to have a lumen of about 9,000 lumens, which is roughly the same as a 500W incandescent lamp.
165w• 54.55 lumens/watt=9000lumens! definitely much better than a 500 watt incandescent but not very efficient, better with two 58w fluorescent bulbs giving up to 5200 lumens each but slightly more efficient than a 175w mercury bulb giving around 7800-8000 lumens a halogen bulb consuming approx 380-400w have the same brightness as this 165w fluorescent lamp, but a HPS 100W lamp, Philips SON 100w •85 lumens/watt=8500 lumens or about the same brightness as philips master son-t apia plus xtra 70w • 96 lumens/watt=7200lumens
Pretty crude way of running a F72T12 VHO. I wonder if this same mercury vapor / metal haide ballast set up could also be used to run a F96T12/VHO or F96PG17 in a pinch since they are both 1500mA and VHO fluorescent ballasts are very hard to come by these days. ?
@@rarelampcollector I am also thinking about possibly trying to get that 6 foot VHO fluorescent tube to run on a 150W M102 pulse start metal halide HX autotransformer ballast sometime using preheat circuitry. I think these CWA mercury vapor ballasts may have a good advantage for possibly running 215W 8 foot VHO and powergroove tubes using preheat circuitry because I think the series capacitor from the CWA ballasts might provide the extra voltage to help keep the 215W tubes running while HX autotransformer 175W H39 mercury vapor ballasts would have a harder time running the 215W tubes due to the relatively high arc voltage drop.
@@kenytha5 As far as I know, I believe a 3 foot F36T12 HO fluorescent tube or a 30 inch F30T12 HO fluorescent tube is good enough for a 35W S76 high pressure sodium ballast and it would be wired up as a preheat fluorescent ballast for those tubes. You could use a FS2 or FS25 starter for these tubes when using these high pressure sodium ballasts along with these small HO T12 tubes.
