Xenon short arc lamp - DIY searchlight

Same setup as my last video, a 1.6kW xenon short arc lamp, being run at about 1kW. A Fresnel lens and mirror directs the light up into the sky.

Category:

Science & Technology

Tags:

• xenon
• short
• arc
• lamp
• HID
• search
• light
• searchlight
• fresnel
• lens
• osram
• film
• projector
• projectionist
• red
• hot

[etiennedauphin]

Cool, looks like fun. As long as it's safe for everyone.

Speaking of which, I don't know if anyone mentioned it, but I hope you had a thought for air traffic. At CYUL (Montreal), there recently have been numerous cases of pilots being blinded on final approach (ie low altitude) by bright lights being pointed at them -- mostly lasers. One British Airways pilot had permanent damage to one eye, and had to give up piloting.

I respecfully hope you had a thought for the safety of aircraft.

[tesla500]

@etiennedauphin We did think of that, and came to the conclusion that with the beam going straight up, an aircraft would have to be performing a rather extreme maneuver for the pilots to be able to look into the beam directly. If it was aiming more parallel to the ground it would be a much greater hazard.

[Jetrider91]

what type of circuit did you use in order to run it, what type of "pre-amplifier" did you use?

[tesla500]

The circuit is basically a power supply (the battery chargers) connected in series with a ignition transformer. That setup is connected directly to the lamp. The ignition transformer generates a short pulse to ignite the arc in the lamp, and the chargers supply power to keep the arc running.

I'm not sure what a pre-amplifier is with respect to this circuit.

[Jetrider91]

with the pre-amplifier i meant the ignition cuircit... sorry my technical english is not 100% the best! while running the lamp, do you keep the ignitors connected or do you bridge them?

[tesla500]

The igniter stays connected in series with the lamp while running, the secondary coil is heavy wire so the losses are minimal.

[gavincurtis]

Gonna scare all the UFOs away.

[douro20]

I understand that mercury short-arc (HBO) type lamps which are common in commodity projection systems can be just as dangerous if the unit uses a bare lamp.

[douro20]

NOS Xenon short-arc lamps can be purchased on Ebay quite cheaply; I've seen them ranging from 75 watts all the way to 2kW.

[lexichronicle2]

tesla500 calling batmonster, come in batmonster

[normellow]

I would put a few blocking diodes in their chief !!

[kijifled2]

I thought it had to be a daylight temp like 6000k or so to do this. it looks a lot brighter in the video a regular incandescent lamp is around 3000k right? 6000 is more of a blue white look and 3000 is a yellow look.

[SilverlinerOV50]

Kevlin is about 3000K Lumens are about 100,000

[kijifled2]

Do you know how many Kelvin and lumens this bulb is?

[codemsan]

Yes officer, it is a death ray of doom... Why do u ask : ) awsome video always did love and still do,arc lamps!