On 10/03/2017 09:11, Scott wrote:


For anyone following this thread, my electrical engineer friend could
not follow the instructions provided by Philips. He points out that
the HF ballast has to be cut out but the instructions are silent on
whether an EM ballast can be removed.

You don't need instructions once you know what's in the tube.

My own interpretation is that if the lamp can work without the HF
ballast it follows that no ballast is needed so the user if free to
remove the ballast. I appreciate this will be very exciting news to
one of the contributors to the earlier thread, who seemed to obsess
about this particular detail.

They work by just connecting 240V to the terminals, BUT...

All the ones I have seen have the 240V inputs on one end of the tube and
a SHORT between the pins on the other end.

So if you connect the mains directly to one end then putting the tube in
the other way around will trip/blow fuses.


This is fine if you use the shorting starter supplied and one the mains
inputs then goes through the choke, through the two shorted pins at one
end, through the starter and then connect to one of the pins opposite
the shorted end. The other mains goes to the other pin. The tuve will
work either way around then. You can just short the choke out if you want.

If you want to rip out all the electrics then connect one pin at each
end together and the mains to the other pin at each end. The tube will
work either way around then.

Make sure nobody fits a plain tube if you short the choke.