flourescent lanterns

[bigthing]

hi all
i was wondering if anyone can tell me why my 18 watt flourescent lantern puts out only a fraction of light compared to my 15 watt compact flourescent bulb in my house. and why the lantern bulb is rated at 1000 hrs compared to 10,000 of my compact flourescent house light. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/confused.gif

thanks for your help mike

 

[snakebite]

the ballast in the portables often do not drive the tube to full output.the way they start the tube is rough on the cathodes.folks run them on nearly dead batterys and this wears the cathodes too.
this is why many portable flourescents get blackened ends on the tubes early in life.
not to mention if it is used as a flashlight it sees a lot of starts which also shorten the tubes life.
the manufacturer is most interested in cheap and cheap means short tube life in dc flourescents.

 

[Brock]

I am seriously considering starting a page on portable CF lighting. I have about 10 different units now and none, not one of them is even close to what they claim. I suppose this shouldn't surprise me after finding out the same thing in regular flashlights. I have found most CF's tend to be pulling about 1/2 what the rated lamp power is. For instance a 13w CF tube is pulling about 7 watts at the battery, so maybe 5w of that gets to the lamp after the ballast eats up 2 watts? That has to be really hard on the tubes, and then they are nowhere nears as bright as they should be. I have swapped out a 12w for a 7w in one of my lights, it is about the same brightness and same power consumption, but the tube itself is brighter, but then again it is physically smaller in size so it ends up with the same output, hopefully the tube will last longer this way.

 

[snakebite]

or just build one that works
i wound up with several hundred 24v dc ballasts so i took one and 2 17 ah ups batts and a white plastic tray with clear lid.
put 3 f15t8/c50 tubes in series in the tray.
drilled and popriveted it together to an ammo box for the batts ballast and charger.
has 6 white leds for low level use.
kinda heavy but works well.

 

[Bmccue1964]

Any pictures?

 

[snakebite]

next time i go to the mh i will take some pics.

 

[kq2h]

Hi, the reason why fluorescent tubes don't last long in lanterns is due to the waveform produced by the ballast. Lamps operate the best on square wave AC, where the ratio of peak to average power is 1. A typical lantern ballast produces a spiky pulsed waveform that is brutal on the cathodes. A good ballast would be expensive and draw more power from the batteries.

 

[Orion]

What about those relatively new CCFL's like what is in the Eveready Arc White? How does their brightness and length of service compare?

 

[Al]

For those familiar with the RS / OSRAM pocket fl light (2AA) ... http://thelightsite.cruxial.com/reviews/radioshack_osram.htm

Just picked up a Westinghouse branded light for $5 which by appearances is made by the same people (China) and uses the same lamp. One difference: about twice the size vertically, uses 4 AA's, and has twice the light output (visually).

Both these lights run just fine on nimh's.

 

[asdalton]

[ QUOTE ]
Orion said:
What about those relatively new CCFL's like what is in the Eveready Arc White? How does their brightness and length of service compare?

[/ QUOTE ]

I have both the Arc White and the Coleman CCFL lantern. The quality of the light from both is very good. I also noticed that Vector makes an incandescent/three-LED/CCFL flashlight, too. Supposedly the CCFL is better suited to battery power than are "hot cathode" lights.

I recommend against getting the Arc White, just because the body is so poorly designed. It looks neat at first, but there are real deficiencies in the body design and switch. The Coleman lantern is better designed for practical use. It's also brighter--if you feed it alkaline batteries in place of the cheapo "heavy duty" cells that come with it.

I may be posting a full review of these lights fairly soon.

 

[The_LED_Museum]

I got to play with an Eveready Arc White a year or two back, and I agree: it looks neat and works well, but if it falls in a toliet or stream or especially into salt water it will probably croak. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/icon15.gif
Not because the tube could become broken, but if water gets to the high voltage inverter while it's on, you can pretty much kiss the flashlight goodbye - at least the CCFT part.