In , Art Todesco wrote:
Don Klipstein wrote:
In , 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 )

They really don't have filaments as regular fluorescent lamps. Because they
use an electronic ballast, the voltage can be high enough to not need the
traditional heated filament, starter, etc.

They actually have filament-style electrodes. They somewhat get away
with lack of preheating those filaments during starting, but the "hot
cathode" "filament style" electrodes are still what is there!

Availability to force starting without preheating the filament
electrodes is "Instant Start". This is opposed to "Rapid Start",
"Program Start", and a couple other schemes.

True instant start is something that I think goes at best at own risk
when dimming is used!

- Don Klipstein )