In article , David
Nebenzahl wrote:

On 4/21/2011 8:45 AM Frank spake thus:

On 4/20/2011 6:21 PM, David Nebenzahl wrote:

On 4/20/2011 10:04 AM Red Green spake thus:

Came across this. Just found it interesting. Had a spent CFL
flood around and opened it up (with my HF MF tool!). Just about
the same as the pic.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Elektronstarterp.jpg

Life is complete, Red...

Hey, if you want a schematic and complete app notes for what is
undoubtedly almost the same thing, check out
http://www.nxp.com/documents/applica...te/AN00048.pdf.

I'm amazed at the complexity of the electronics in these little
*******s. Recent cheaper CFL's all seem to hum. Wondering if they
are now chinching to make cheaper?

"Chinching"? That's a word I'm not familiar with.

All that electronics also makes CFLs all the harder to recycle. (Well,
not hard at all, if you believe all the greenwashing, and don't see the
hordes of kids "over there" smashing and grinding "recycled" CFLs to
extract useful stuff from them.) Wonder how much that would cut into
their net energy savings if proper recycling were factored into the
equation?

Osram did a study of energy consumption breakdown of incandescent, CFL
and LED lamps. (Actually, only 1 of each, roughly equal in light output.)
In all 3, near or over 98% of entire life cycle energy usage was from
electricity consumption during use. Manufacturing, transportation and
(for CFL) proper disposal, all combined, amounted to about or less than 2%
of total life cycle energy consumption of each lamp.

Osram makes and sells all 3 of these lamp types, BTW.
--
- Don Klipstein )