Experiments of Running UHP shor arc lamp using HID Ballast

***Warning! Danger! Do not copy what I've done. UHP lamp is high pressure mercury. It may explode when using ballasts not designed for UHP lamps ***. UHP lamp has 700 PSI pressure when cold & up to 3000/4000 PSI when hot.

Previously, I've done some short arc mods on CPF, unfortunately posted after Nov.
The 1st post can be found by searching "Mega Blaster" & "Moon Blaster".

These lights are extremely bright, 6 million & 20 million beam cps respectively, blowing away HIDs & even Xenon short arc lights in throw, But the method of obtaining ballast from living DLP projectors is not very straight forward & often comes with high cost. and in some cases, didn't work at well.

In an attempt to explore an easier way to drive the UHP/P-VIP lamp, I decided to play with running the lamp out of HID ballast. There was one guy mentioning that he did this on U-tube which is a comment on another guy who posted a video on running UHP lamp out of HPS ballast. HID ballast clicked with me instantly, as 35W HID strike Voltage is 25KV, the UHP only need 20KV. The HID has a lamp voltage between 65V to 120V usually, the UHP lamp can be driven with voltage between 65V to 95V. The specs overlaps enough for it to work, especially for lower power, such as 35W, HID ballasts, I'd imagine the lamp voltage is closer to 65V rather than 120V.

The experiment starts with the Mozo Ultralight host, which I previously used to make this light:
Mini Barn Burner 75W HID.
http://webcache.googleusercontent.co...www.google.com
I like the host very much, especially for the 5.8 AH Li-ion set-up, so I got another one.

The 100/120W UHP/p23 lamp. P23 lamp comes with a parabolic reflector about 3 3/4 in diameter. This is the largest reflector size for UHP lamp.


UHP/P23 Side by Side with the Mozo 4" reflector.


UHP lamp fired up by the HID ballast in the Mozo Ultralight


UHP lamp is more efficient than Xenon short arc but not as efficient as HID. at 35W HID is 3000 lumens. UHP probably about 1500 lumens.
However, UHP has much smaller arc (1.3mm gap in this lamp) vs HID 5mm Arc.
Comparing lumens/mm Arc could roughly be used to judge relative surface brightness.
UHP 35W/1.3 lamp: 1154lumens/mm arc
HID 35W 5.0 lamp: 600 lumens /mm arc

By This measure, One would predict the UHP 35w will be about 2x the lux of HID if same
reflector is used.

I measured lux @ 10 meters. Converted to lux @ 1 meter.
Mozo 35W HID: 198,000 lux@ 1 meter
Mozo 35W UHP: 490,000 lux @ 1 meter.

Low exposure 1/500 of a sec. UHP/35W spot:


Low exposure 1/500 of a sec. HID/35W spot:



Summary:
Although the throw is evident in the UHP lamp, the spot is not as smooth as the HID.
The UHP built in reflector appears not perfectly focused, perhaps, a more pleasant beam & even higher lux can be achieved if the UHP lamp is peeled from the glass reflector (Like I did with the Moon blaster mod) & mounted into a High Quality short arc reflector....

For that reason, I just purchased a Xetronics Night hunter II short arc flashlight, that light has <500 lumens & has had no respect from CPF. But it has high quality short-arc reflector.
The idea is to harvest that high quality short arc reflector & continue to explore driving UHP short arc lamps with HID ballasts...

Some more experiments. I have 3 other HID ballasts, in terms using them for UHP lamps, they performed very differently.
in the photo from left to right:

35W round ballast, 35W Slim ballast G4(Gen. 4, what ever that means) and 35W ballast came out of my previous Mozo Ultralight HID. They are all hooked up to the UHP P23 lamp & lux were measured at 10 meters for conversion.

• The ebay round ballast performed poor, 200,000lux @ 1 meter
• The Slim ballast shown failed to power up the UHP lamp
• The Mozo ballast from older Mozo HID did 300,000 lux @ 1 meter,
• The Mozo ballast still inside my new Mozo HID: 490,000 lux @ 1 meter

The new mozo appears to have upgraded. The stock light does 180K lux vs. he older version 150K lux out of the box. The bezel is slightly different, no longer blocks the reflector & no need for boring & enlarging.

Note: The experiment does not indicate ranking of HID ballasts driving HID lamps, only at ranking for driving UHP lamps. They may perform much more similar when driving HID lamps.



The slim HID ballast isn't broken. Here you can see that it powered up 35W HID bulb just fine.

Interesting work gonna follow this thread a bit


Joe

Welcome, I am the lone short arc modder on CPF at the moment

So far I didn't like any of the 35W ballasts tested. I just got a new ballast 50W added to the testing.

This is much better, battery is at 13V, The start up current is about 6 Amp. Starts at 78W input power.



After the warm up, it stabilized at 4.3A, pulls 56W power from battery.
Assume 85% efficiency. The output power is about 45W.

It's still under driving the 120W bulb a lot, but the UHP lamp is much happier than when its 35W,
and it scored 750,000 lux@ 1 meter

Sweet glad you got a good Ballast looking forward to more on this

Joe

Thanks, the bulb came in smashed, but I didn't care for my application.

Others might not be so happy when seeing the bulb arrived smashed

yeah that wouldn't be good I ordered the 65W I sure hope the bulb is ok when I get it.

Joe