Cheapy CFL

This cheap Feit cfl stopped working. I opened it up and I found a burned resistor. I figured something else is broken on it's inverter board too. Well, in fact I replaced the resistor (with the correct value, 10ohms) and fired it up to see what would happen. One transistor exploded (it cracked in half and shot sparks out) and another resistor went up in flames.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• cheap
• compact
• florescent
• lightbulb
• pop
• spark
• zap
• explode
• transistor
• burn
• resistor
• deadly
• dangerous
• fire
• firehazard
• exploding
• explodingtransistor
• destruction
• eletric
• electronics
• electronic
• energy
• energysave
• saving
• energysaving
• florecsent
• lamp
• light
• bulb

[poiiihy]

the ballast has a toxic smell that made me feel funny when i opened it up.

[MrGerbilBrain]

@poiiihy hehe, yeah, I regularly take apart electronic things and they have funny smells even when not broken. I bet a transistor or resistor blew and stunk up quite alot.

[RODALCO2007]

Now finish it off with a MOT transformer.

those boards stink when burnt out.

[MrGerbilBrain]

@RODALCO2007 well see the thing is I dont have a MOT yet, and I took the inductor and capacitor and diodes and got rid of the other bad parts. but a mot would be fun :) I did almost get a mot but the damn guy didnt want me to take the microwave home cause he thought it was too big? grrr... oh well, maybe I will have one after 5 years or so :S or maybe I could go to the junkyard instead, I dunno, but that gives me a good idea for like finding old welders and stuff with big transformers! :D

[michadergrosse]

Be careful! The big Capacitor holds the voltage from the mains, that has been rectified. so if you have 120V (220V) Mains, there will be 170V (311V) DC on it.

[MrGerbilBrain]

@michadergrosse Yep, I charge up large caps with 200volts, and discharge them, making lots of sparks for fun.

[BenHutchinson321]

How did you know 10ohms was the correct value? Sounds like a problem with the power rating (not resistance rating) chosen by the original assembler. Maybe needed that (50ohm or whatever the original was) resistor to keep from blowing the transistor, but should have been a 2ohm power resistor instead of a cheapo half-watt resistor. Also are you in the UK or the US. If you use a US bulb in the UK it blows it because the voltage is too high over there.

[ledvolt44]

This happened to me but the ballast was fine. i experimented to see what would happen if you only connected one end of the tube but this specific ballast needs both filaments to be connected. the tube i had was dead so i shorted one end and connected the other to the tube. the filament lit for about 2 seconds then it shut off and a transistor blew on the ballast with sparks and it scared the s***out of me. no resistors went up in smoke.

[ignaheyns]

And that my friend, is why you never try to repair a CFL lamp

[poiiihy]

@MrGerbilBrain smell a base of a cfl to know what I mean.

[poiiihy]

@MrGerbilBrain they always have that smell. even working ones. i sniffed a base of a cfl with a hole in it and uh, u know, stinky plasticy toxicy smelly

[poiiihy]

@lightbulbcollector1 no, its a regular cfl