Wonder if any study has been given to the life of these lamps when the turn on current is limited. In other words, would the "about ready to fail" time be increased by providing some turn on current
I'm sure I recall a piece by Bob Pease of NatSemi in his 'Pease Porridge' column in Electronic Design where he talked about adding surge limiter thermistors to lighting circuits and extending bulb li
I have dimmers on lots of lights in my house and it seems I replace a light bulb at least once a month on those circuits. They seem to go bad while they are on. I can hear them making a rather loud
Dimmers are great for romantic evenings when it's just plain out-of-the-question to get any DX'g going. However, they make all sorts of HF interference. I gotta go around the house and make sure all
What might be the burn out mechanism? The thermal time constant of the bulb filament is much longer than the 50/60 cycle applied voltage, so I can't see that it's thermal. Steve _____________________
Steve, The modified sawtooth waveform from a dimmer would seem to stress the metallic filament of a tungsten bulb more. Let's compare the waveform of pure D.C., versus a sine wave, versus a sawtooth
Me neither - given the coiled spring construction of many bulb filaments I can imagine mechanical resonances at line frequencies, but my experience is that bulbs on dimmers seem to last a long time.