"§ñühwö£f" wrote in message
...
Mark Zacharias wrote:
"§ñühwö£f" wrote in message
...
default wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 10:51:47 -0600, §ñühwö£f
wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:
[......]

Stew Leonard's Espresso Roast, roasted fresh daily in sunny Yonkers.
Best beans I've ever come across, and worth the trip. Always a crowd
pleaser.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Sorry to hijack this thread but I have an actual electronics repair
question: how do I go about getting my old AIWA CX-NA10 stereo system
to read CD's again? Is the lazer bad? It detects the cd and spins up
but wont play it.

Have you taken it apart yet? Try cleaning the lens. In a dirty,
smoky or wet environment the lenses can become coated with stuff.


I had it "working" a little after all that and an adjustment to the
potentiometer on the back of the lazer as instructed. However it would
only read one specific CD and scratched some CD's when it went thru its
ejection cycle (disks would not spin down before ejection!) so I removed
the tray and wont use it anymore. Further research indicated AIWA was
part of a class action lawsuit in the 90's due to their CD players being
crap. They're out of business now anyway. Good riddance.

--
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
www.snuhwolf.9f.com|www.savewolves.org
_____ ____ ____ __ /\_/\ __ _ ______ _____
/ __/ |/ / / / / // // . . \\ \ |\ | / __ \ \ \ __\
_\ \/ / /_/ / _ / \ / \ \| \| \ \_\ \ \__\ _\
/___/_/|_/\____/_//_/ \_@_/ \__|\__|\____/\____\_\


Aiwa is still around as I understand it. They're owned by Sony.

I haven't seen any new kit from them in any stores for years. Sony bought
them out and killed it off:

"Since 2004, however, Sony seemingly began rolling back its support for
the Aiwa brand, and by 2005 Aiwa products remained on sale in only
selected territories around the globe. In 2006, Aiwa products were
discontinued and no longer sold in the market.

As of September 2011, the Aiwa website still existed to provide
customer-support telephone numbers for some territories and regions, but
it also contained many broken links and blank pages. In other regions,
such as Europe, it redirected to a page on the Sony website stating that
the Aiwa website had closed. The last apparent update to the website was
in June 2008.[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwa


The biggest problem with their 3-cd models was that so much dust would
get into the lasers that even cleaning eventually would not be enough and
the laser would need to be replaced.
By the way, the lasers were made by Sony, the same pickups used by many
manufacturers at the time.

Wanna buy a used laser? Heh...its a 1997.

Worked on many of them, the customers were mostly satisfied.

Later models had sliding covers that covered up the laser lens when not
playing. This helped but of course was not a perfect solution.

Mark Z.

We have another one, made in 2001, the tape decks on that one dont work.
So, to recap: we have two units from failed electronics maker AIWA, and
both have non-working components. My conclusion: AIWA was rightly killed
off by Sony since its quality sucked balls.

Oh, but we also have a SHARP single CD unit from 1991, it works
*perfectly*.

--
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
www.snuhwolf.9f.com|www.savewolves.org
_____ ____ ____ __ /\_/\ __ _ ______ _____
/ __/ |/ / / / / // // . . \\ \ |\ | / __ \ \ \ __\
_\ \/ / /_/ / _ / \ / \ \| \| \ \_\ \ \__\ _\
/___/_/|_/\____/_//_/ \_@_/ \__|\__|\____/\____\_\


The tape decks have belt problems, like every other brand. The Aiwa's were a
very cost-effective item at their price point.
I have no desire to defend Aiwa - I find many of their products difficult to
service. But it sounds to me like perhaps the problem here may be as much
the technician as the product.

Mark Z.

On Thu, 11 Oct 2012 05:55:15 -0700 (PDT), George Herold
wrote:

On Oct 10, 11:50*pm, Jeff Liebermann wrote:
On Mon, 8 Oct 2012 06:27:05 -0700 (PDT), George Herold

wrote:
Hi SEB. *Well I sent an email to Don klipstein on this topic. *And
have permission to copy his reply.
from Don K. below
2: *In incandescent traffic signals, the bulbs for yellow last
longer than for red and green. *So even after being switched on
and off about a million times, on-time is still a significant
factor in life expectancy.

That means for my proposed test comparing a 50% duty cycle flashing
light bulb, with one that is on continuously, the continuous light
bulb will burn out first. *That's the opposite of what I saw with the
theater marquee bulbs. *Now, I'm really tempted to run the experiment.

Experiments can be very useful.

Yep. However, it's more fun to predict, speculate, guess, reverse
engineer, and maybe calculate.

I'd worry most about how you turn on the bulbs.
Maybe just some simple relays?

No. I didn't want to life test the relay contacts, just the light
bulbs. I have plenty of solid state switches that will suffice. The
reason I wanted two was to make sure the voltage drop across the
switch was the same for both the flashing and continuous bulbs.

1,000 hours isn't all that long. (or are you going to over-voltage
the bulbs?)
I guess I'd want at least 10 bulbs in each group. Say 60 watts.....
1200 kW-hrs.

Much as I would like to use a rack of bulbs,
http://pinterest.com/pin/172122016978363241/
http://pinterest.com/pin/172122016978761590/
I think two bulbs will suffice for a start. The plan of the moment is
to use a variac to boost the voltage from 120VAC to about 135VAC,
which should reduce the 1000 hr life to a more tolerable 112 hrs.
Cut-n-paste from a previous posting:

Instead, an accelerated life test can be done with higher than normal
voltages.
http://www.welchallyn.com/documents/Lighting/OEM_Halogen_Lighting/MC3544HPX_Catalog_2_11_09.pdf
For halogen bulbs, they use:
Life = (Vdesign / Vapplied)^12.0 * Life at design voltage
For a 1000 hr lamp running at 120% of the rated voltage, the life
might be:
life = (1/1.2)^12 * 1000 = 112 hrs
which is more reasonable.

That's looking like more money than I'd want to spend on the
electricity.

I'm trying to determine where to run the test. I don't want a
flashing bulb in my bedroom. I also don't want to run an unattended
rack of bulbs in the office which could become a fire hazard. Methinks
just 2 bulbs and a 3-4 day accelerated test will be sufficient.

George H.

--
Jeff Liebermann
150 Felker St #D http://www.LearnByDestroying.com
Santa Cruz CA 95060 http://802.11junk.com
Skype: JeffLiebermann AE6KS 831-336-2558

Mark Zacharias wrote:
"§ñühwö£f" wrote in message
...
Mark Zacharias wrote:
"§ñühwö£f" wrote in message
...
default wrote:
On Sat, 06 Oct 2012 10:51:47 -0600, §ñühwö£f
wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:
[......]

Stew Leonard's Espresso Roast, roasted fresh daily in sunny
Yonkers. Best beans I've ever come across, and worth the trip.
Always a crowd pleaser.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

Sorry to hijack this thread but I have an actual electronics
repair question: how do I go about getting my old AIWA CX-NA10
stereo system to read CD's again? Is the lazer bad? It detects the
cd and spins up but wont play it.

Have you taken it apart yet? Try cleaning the lens. In a dirty,
smoky or wet environment the lenses can become coated with stuff.


I had it "working" a little after all that and an adjustment to the
potentiometer on the back of the lazer as instructed. However it
would only read one specific CD and scratched some CD's when it went
thru its ejection cycle (disks would not spin down before ejection!)
so I removed the tray and wont use it anymore. Further research
indicated AIWA was part of a class action lawsuit in the 90's due to
their CD players being crap. They're out of business now anyway.
Good riddance.

--
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
www.snuhwolf.9f.com|www.savewolves.org
_____ ____ ____ __ /\_/\ __ _ ______ _____
/ __/ |/ / / / / // // . . \\ \ |\ | / __ \ \ \ __\
_\ \/ / /_/ / _ / \ / \ \| \| \ \_\ \ \__\ _\
/___/_/|_/\____/_//_/ \_@_/ \__|\__|\____/\____\_\


Aiwa is still around as I understand it. They're owned by Sony.

I haven't seen any new kit from them in any stores for years. Sony
bought them out and killed it off:

"Since 2004, however, Sony seemingly began rolling back its support
for the Aiwa brand, and by 2005 Aiwa products remained on sale in only
selected territories around the globe. In 2006, Aiwa products were
discontinued and no longer sold in the market.

As of September 2011, the Aiwa website still existed to provide
customer-support telephone numbers for some territories and regions,
but it also contained many broken links and blank pages. In other
regions, such as Europe, it redirected to a page on the Sony website
stating that the Aiwa website had closed. The last apparent update to
the website was in June 2008.[1]"
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aiwa


The biggest problem with their 3-cd models was that so much dust
would get into the lasers that even cleaning eventually would not be
enough and the laser would need to be replaced.
By the way, the lasers were made by Sony, the same pickups used by
many manufacturers at the time.

Wanna buy a used laser? Heh...its a 1997.

Worked on many of them, the customers were mostly satisfied.

Later models had sliding covers that covered up the laser lens when
not playing. This helped but of course was not a perfect solution.

Mark Z.

We have another one, made in 2001, the tape decks on that one dont
work. So, to recap: we have two units from failed electronics maker
AIWA, and both have non-working components. My conclusion: AIWA was
rightly killed off by Sony since its quality sucked balls.

Oh, but we also have a SHARP single CD unit from 1991, it works
*perfectly*.

--
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
www.snuhwolf.9f.com|www.savewolves.org
_____ ____ ____ __ /\_/\ __ _ ______ _____
/ __/ |/ / / / / // // . . \\ \ |\ | / __ \ \ \ __\
_\ \/ / /_/ / _ / \ / \ \| \| \ \_\ \ \__\ _\
/___/_/|_/\____/_//_/ \_@_/ \__|\__|\____/\____\_\


The tape decks have belt problems, like every other brand. The Aiwa's
were a very cost-effective item at their price point.

Translation: you get what you pay for.

I have no desire to defend Aiwa - I find many of their products
difficult to service. But it sounds to me like perhaps the problem here
may be as much the technician as the product.

Mark Z.

Oh snap! But I'm not a technician. No training whatsoever.


--
http://howlingforjustice.wordpress.com
www.snuhwolf.9f.com|www.savewolves.org
_____ ____ ____ __ /\_/\ __ _ ______ _____
/ __/ |/ / / / / // // . . \\ \ |\ | / __ \ \ \ __\
_\ \/ / /_/ / _ / \ / \ \| \| \ \_\ \ \__\ _\
/___/_/|_/\____/_//_/ \_@_/ \__|\__|\____/\____\_\

On 10/11/2012 07:18 PM, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Jeff wrote:
The lobby and foyer lights were mounted on the ceiling, pointing down.
One would think that there would be plenty of hot air accumulating
near the ceiling, but that wasn't the case. That's where the fan
ducts were located which helped to cool the lights. Few of those
lights ever burned out.

The marquee lamps were mounted on a vertical structure, with the lamps
pointed horizontally.

Vertical mounting for a GLS lamp seems to give a better life than other
orientations. A rough service type may have had a better life in this
application.


The filament temperature goes up more slowly than the ambient, since
it's radiatively cooled, but a rise of, say, 50 degrees would probably
have a significant effect on bulb life.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 10/11/2012 07:18 PM, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Jeff wrote:
The lobby and foyer lights were mounted on the ceiling, pointing down.
One would think that there would be plenty of hot air accumulating
near the ceiling, but that wasn't the case. That's where the fan
ducts were located which helped to cool the lights. Few of those
lights ever burned out.

The marquee lamps were mounted on a vertical structure, with the lamps
pointed horizontally.

Vertical mounting for a GLS lamp seems to give a better life than other
orientations. A rough service type may have had a better life in this
application.


The filament temperature goes up more slowly than the ambient, since
it's radiatively cooled, but a rise of, say, 50 degrees would probably
have a significant effect on bulb life.


The projector bulbs in the old RCA TP66 film chain were mounted in a
vertical line. If you used the bottom lamp, and let it switch the to
spare on top, they had a short life of a little over 20 hours. If you
ran the top lamp, with the spare at the bottom, the life was over five
times longer. The projector used a motorized track, with a relay in
series with the filament. When the filament opened, the relay dropped
out and turned on the motor. In either position, it would run to look
for the other bulb when the one in use failed. I would pull the bad
lamp and move the good lamp to the top at the next film change, then put
the new lamp in the bottom socket. I averaged over 130 hours per lamp,
that way.

On 10/12/2012 01:38 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 10/11/2012 07:18 PM, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Jeff wrote:
The lobby and foyer lights were mounted on the ceiling, pointing down.
One would think that there would be plenty of hot air accumulating
near the ceiling, but that wasn't the case. That's where the fan
ducts were located which helped to cool the lights. Few of those
lights ever burned out.

The marquee lamps were mounted on a vertical structure, with the lamps
pointed horizontally.

Vertical mounting for a GLS lamp seems to give a better life than other
orientations. A rough service type may have had a better life in this
application.


The filament temperature goes up more slowly than the ambient, since
it's radiatively cooled, but a rise of, say, 50 degrees would probably
have a significant effect on bulb life.


The projector bulbs in the old RCA TP66 film chain were mounted in a
vertical line. If you used the bottom lamp, and let it switch the to
spare on top, they had a short life of a little over 20 hours. If you
ran the top lamp, with the spare at the bottom, the life was over five
times longer. The projector used a motorized track, with a relay in
series with the filament. When the filament opened, the relay dropped
out and turned on the motor. In either position, it would run to look
for the other bulb when the one in use failed. I would pull the bad
lamp and move the good lamp to the top at the next film change, then put
the new lamp in the bottom socket. I averaged over 130 hours per lamp,
that way.

That's interesting--just storing the bulb at higher temperature reduced
its life that badly, even if it wasn't energized? The only mechanism I
can think of for that is that they leaked and let oxygen in. Otherwise
glass and metal should be unaffected by ~100 C temperatures. But then
they should leak even worse when energized. Another mystery, Scoob.

Hot tungsten doesn't have a very high emissivity in the IR, so
probably the filament temperature is more sensitive to ambient
temperature than one would expect from the T**4 dependence from Stefan's
law for black bodies. Raising the temperature by 1 degree at 3000 K
makes the radiation go up by 1000 times more than at 300 K, so the
filament regulates its own temperature quite closely if it's really a
black body.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics

160 North State Road #203
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

hobbs at electrooptical dot net
http://electrooptical.net

Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 10/12/2012 01:38 PM, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 10/11/2012 07:18 PM, Dave Plowman (News) wrote:
In ,
Jeff wrote:
The lobby and foyer lights were mounted on the ceiling, pointing down.
One would think that there would be plenty of hot air accumulating
near the ceiling, but that wasn't the case. That's where the fan
ducts were located which helped to cool the lights. Few of those
lights ever burned out.

The marquee lamps were mounted on a vertical structure, with the lamps
pointed horizontally.

Vertical mounting for a GLS lamp seems to give a better life than other
orientations. A rough service type may have had a better life in this
application.


The filament temperature goes up more slowly than the ambient, since
it's radiatively cooled, but a rise of, say, 50 degrees would probably
have a significant effect on bulb life.


The projector bulbs in the old RCA TP66 film chain were mounted in a
vertical line. If you used the bottom lamp, and let it switch the to
spare on top, they had a short life of a little over 20 hours. If you
ran the top lamp, with the spare at the bottom, the life was over five
times longer. The projector used a motorized track, with a relay in
series with the filament. When the filament opened, the relay dropped
out and turned on the motor. In either position, it would run to look
for the other bulb when the one in use failed. I would pull the bad
lamp and move the good lamp to the top at the next film change, then put
the new lamp in the bottom socket. I averaged over 130 hours per lamp,
that way.

That's interesting--just storing the bulb at higher temperature reduced
its life that badly, even if it wasn't energized? The only mechanism I
can think of for that is that they leaked and let oxygen in. Otherwise
glass and metal should be unaffected by ~100 C temperatures. But then
they should leak even worse when energized. Another mystery, Scoob.

Hot tungsten doesn't have a very high emissivity in the IR, so
probably the filament temperature is more sensitive to ambient
temperature than one would expect from the T**4 dependence from Stefan's
law for black bodies. Raising the temperature by 1 degree at 3000 K
makes the radiation go up by 1000 times more than at 300 K, so the
filament regulates its own temperature quite closely if it's really a
black body.


The glass on these projection lamps was usually distorted, by the
time they failed.

On 2012-10-12, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

The projector bulbs in the old RCA TP66 film chain were mounted in a
vertical line. If you used the bottom lamp, and let it switch the to
spare on top, they had a short life of a little over 20 hours. If you
ran the top lamp, with the spare at the bottom, the life was over five
times longer. The projector used a motorized track, with a relay in
series with the filament. When the filament opened, the relay dropped
out and turned on the motor. In either position, it would run to look
for the other bulb when the one in use failed. I would pull the bad
lamp and move the good lamp to the top at the next film change, then put
the new lamp in the bottom socket. I averaged over 130 hours per lamp,
that way.

Are you saying that 20 hours resting above the working lamp knocked 100
hours off the lifeime? in other words, I
f you did the opposite did that reduce the
life of every lamp to 20 hours.

Or was it 130 hours above the working lamp that reduced the life of
the spare by 100 hours?

It seems surprising that the lamps were so readily damaged by
environmental heat


--
š‚šƒ 100% natural

--- news://freenews.netfront.net/ - complaints: ---

Jasen Betts wrote:

On 2012-10-12, Michael A. Terrell wrote:

The projector bulbs in the old RCA TP66 film chain were mounted in a
vertical line. If you used the bottom lamp, and let it switch the to
spare on top, they had a short life of a little over 20 hours. If you
ran the top lamp, with the spare at the bottom, the life was over five
times longer. The projector used a motorized track, with a relay in
series with the filament. When the filament opened, the relay dropped
out and turned on the motor. In either position, it would run to look
for the other bulb when the one in use failed. I would pull the bad
lamp and move the good lamp to the top at the next film change, then put
the new lamp in the bottom socket. I averaged over 130 hours per lamp,
that way.

Are you saying that 20 hours resting above the working lamp knocked 100
hours off the lifeime? In other words, if you did the opposite did that
reduce the life of every lamp to 20 hours.


It did it to three in a row. We were on the air with film for about
75 hours a week, on a two projector film chain. We were issued six
lamps for three months, then had to find other sources.


Or was it 130 hours above the working lamp that reduced the life of
the spare by 100 hours?

It seems surprising that the lamps were so readily damaged by
environmental heat


They were in a steel & aluminum box with little ventilation, and in a
non air conditioned environment. the control room could reach 95
degrees on summer afternoons. The glass would distort & sag before the
filament opened. The projectors were run off a motorized Sola
Adjust-A-Volt to keep the line voltage at 120 V. It was used instead of
a CVT, because of the cap run motors in the projectors.


You couldn't leave the doors open, because wild animals would come
into the building. The only thing that couldn't were the huge buffalo
that wouldn't fit through the door.

"Rocky" wrote in message
...

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
Using anything shortens its working life.

I can vouch for the remark made but I can give you more details too:

I use smartphones, tablets and laptops to listen to internet radio all
the
time and I've only had one device that suffered because of that. What
happened to that particular device is the WiFi quit working and it
doesn't
even work after a factory reset.

Who knows why the WiFi quit? The radio could have failed simply because
the
chip went bad.

HP has had problems with the radios in some of its notebooks.

Yes, I've heard that and I've even seen one person that no longer has WiFi
on their HP notebook but they claimed it was the switch itself that quit
working so I try not to use the hardware WiFi switch on an HP notebook.

Me, I've had a power plug fail on an HP ZD7000 notebook and that was
common for that particular notebook.

I've also had a DVD fail on an HP DV8000 notebook but when the second DVD
failed too I went back to the first DVD and it has been working fine since
then. I doubt if I'll ever figure that one out unless if it was a problem
with the connector.

Other than that, I've seen a lot of videos on youtube with problematic HPs
where if it isn't the WiFi that goes out it is the video. Case in point:

HP 's Worst Laptop Ever - Pavilion ZD8000 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2stqQtQePcM&hd=1

Oddly enough I skipped getting the HP ZD8000 because I went from an HP
ZD7000 to the HP DV8000 where the ZD8000 looks more like the ZD7000 than
the DV8000.

FYI the only device I had that lost the WiFi was a Pharos Traveler 137
that I got real cheap when a place was getting rid of them so I wasn't too
upset when the WiFi quit on that.
http://www.pharosgps.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=001_PTL137_8.00

FYI I recently copied a bunch of songs up to a micro SDHC card and I can
still use bluetooth A2DP to play those songs through the speakers connected
to a laptop with bluetooth. So that means even though the WiFi quit working
on the device mentioned above the bluetooth still seems to work OK so they
must not be using the same transmitter or same receiver.

http://www.mobileburn.com/definition.jsp?term=A2DP

Rocky

On Sun, 21 Oct 2012 10:13:46 -0500, "Rocky" wrote:


"Rocky" wrote in message
m...

"William Sommerwerck" wrote in message
...
Using anything shortens its working life.

I can vouch for the remark made but I can give you more details too:

I use smartphones, tablets and laptops to listen to internet radio all
the
time and I've only had one device that suffered because of that. What
happened to that particular device is the WiFi quit working and it
doesn't
even work after a factory reset.

Who knows why the WiFi quit? The radio could have failed simply because
the
chip went bad.

HP has had problems with the radios in some of its notebooks.

Yes, I've heard that and I've even seen one person that no longer has WiFi
on their HP notebook but they claimed it was the switch itself that quit
working so I try not to use the hardware WiFi switch on an HP notebook.

Me, I've had a power plug fail on an HP ZD7000 notebook and that was
common for that particular notebook.

I've also had a DVD fail on an HP DV8000 notebook but when the second DVD
failed too I went back to the first DVD and it has been working fine since
then. I doubt if I'll ever figure that one out unless if it was a problem
with the connector.

Other than that, I've seen a lot of videos on youtube with problematic HPs
where if it isn't the WiFi that goes out it is the video. Case in point:

HP 's Worst Laptop Ever - Pavilion ZD8000 -
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2stqQtQePcM&hd=1

Oddly enough I skipped getting the HP ZD8000 because I went from an HP
ZD7000 to the HP DV8000 where the ZD8000 looks more like the ZD7000 than
the DV8000.

FYI the only device I had that lost the WiFi was a Pharos Traveler 137
that I got real cheap when a place was getting rid of them so I wasn't too
upset when the WiFi quit on that.
http://www.pharosgps.com/products/proddetail.asp?prod=001_PTL137_8.00

FYI I recently copied a bunch of songs up to a micro SDHC card and I can
still use bluetooth A2DP to play those songs through the speakers connected
to a laptop with bluetooth. So that means even though the WiFi quit working
on the device mentioned above the bluetooth still seems to work OK so they
must not be using the same transmitter or same receiver.

They don't. The antennas are separate, even.

http://www.mobileburn.com/definition.jsp?term=A2DP

George Herold formulerede spørgsmålet:
2: In incandescent traffic signals, the bulbs for yellow last longer
than
for red and green. So even after being switched on and off about a
million times, on-time is still a significant factor in life
expectancy.

However, traffic signal bulbs have a more vibration-resistant
filament
than standard incandescents.


I've been told traffic signals have resistors across the relays (or the
semiconductor equivalent), so the bulbs are never turned completely
off, eliminating the turn-on surge.

But it may be just rumours...

(Yes, I know its an old'ish message)


--
Husk kørelys bagpå, hvis din bilfabrikant har taget den idiotiske
beslutning at undlade det.

Leif Neland wrote:

George Herold formulerede spørgsmålet:
2: In incandescent traffic signals, the bulbs for yellow last longer
than
for red and green. So even after being switched on and off about a
million times, on-time is still a significant factor in life
expectancy.

However, traffic signal bulbs have a more vibration-resistant
filament
than standard incandescents.


I've been told traffic signals have resistors across the relays (or the
semiconductor equivalent), so the bulbs are never turned completely
off, eliminating the turn-on surge.

But it may be just rumours...


That technology was called 'Keep alive' which ran a low voltage to
lamps to extend their useful life. I saw it used on displays for
mission critical applications, but never on a traffic light.