Meat Plow wrote:

"ian field" wrote:

"Meat Plow" wrote:

Back in 2003 I saw a 13 watt Osram CFL end its life in bursts of
sparks and smoke through a hole melted in the side of the ballast
container. I called Sylvania/Osram and they offered a replacement free
of charge. I told them no thanks I prefer to not have my home burn
down if another one of these failed while I wasn't present to
disconnect its power source. That scared me away from CFLs for a long
time.

The only one I ever saw do that was one I'd fitted bigger transistors in an
attempt to use it as an electronic ballast in a 6' strip light - it even
worked for a few days before blowing up.

I used to love to experiment like that.

I converted an inspection lamp that uses an 8 watt 11" T5 tube with a
resistive ballast in the cord to electronic ballast using a new 9 watt
'off brand' CFL board. Works a treat and has seen a lot of use over the
last three years. Fitting it in required some very creative board
trimming and taking the resevoir cap and series cap between the
filaments off board.

The left over brand new CFL tube went into a good brand CFL that had
become seriously blackened at the ends and gave me a couple of years
more life from that.