In article , Art Todesco wrote:
Blattus Slafaly ? (3) ¼ wrote:
Tony Hwang wrote:
Hi,
Came across a 23W dimmable CFL. Got one to try it out.
It worked ~2 hours and pop, it went to full brightness and
no more dimmable??!! Are they this unreliable? Or I got bad one.

You can't really expect a CFL to have the same range as an incandescent
bulb. If you are testing it to extremes you can expect it to pop.

I don't believe that it should be
expected to pop. I have 2 of them.
They don't dim very well. By that I
mean, when dimmed, they flicker
quite a bit. The range is good if you
can stand the blinkety blink. There
are spots where they seem to settle down
and be ok. BTW, I am
using this on an X10 lamp module, so
finding a "good" spot is quite
difficult. With a real dimmer, it might
be easier.

I have this sinking feeling that dimmable screw-base CFLs at least
sometimes lack provision to have their filaments maintained at a proper
temperature when they are dimmed. I would expect some compromise in life
expectancy with severe or moderately severe dimming.

One scheme mentioned a lot in some thread in sci.engr.lighting earlier
this year is to have two sets of lights in a room - one for bright
lighting and another for dim lighting.

- Don Klipstein )