Preheat ballast firing up a U bent lamp

This is a preheat F40 fluorescent ballast firing up a U-bent lamp. Was cool enough that I had to do it twice. BTW, the ballast is a Magnetek (technology of magnets) and the lamp is a vintage Westinghouse with black endcaps, one of the first Ubents ever

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• preheat
• fluorescent
• ubent
• starter
• cool
• blink

[bamaslamma1003]

Try an F32T8 lamp on preheat start.

[DavidFromAE]

I will have to try that one. Do you know what amperage F32T8 tubes use?

[bamaslamma1003]

I have a two bulb F40T12 rapid start fixture at home with Sylvania Octron F32's. They work just fine on a magnetic rapid start ballast (GOOD ballast, Advance Mark III). I don't see a problem running them on a preheat ballast. I also have two F20T12 preheat fixtures with Sylvania Octron F17T8's in them.

[DavidFromAE]

Cool. Advance Mark 3's are pretty decent ballasts BTW. I will have to try this as soon as I get my hands on some octrons. I also made the discovery that a rapid start 2 lamp F30T12 ballast will fire up 2 F34T12 lamps no problem.

[CricketboyStudios]

My basement is lit with 10 of these!

[d00deth]

I .. think it's time you .. go outside to play for a while. :)

[yuandrew]

I've ran some Octrons on a Mark-3 as well and it worked but the ends of the tube got blackened pretty quickly.

I have a Robertson preheat ballast for a single F40T12 tube I've also tried but it just kept flashing for a while. I could manually start it though by shorting out the starter and holding it for a few seconds in the same manner you would operate a "switch start" desk lamp but it still took many tries before I successfully got it to stay lit.

[theprincess3000]

lol random much?