Thanks all.

That's one of the best rules of thumb.
Another is you gotta believe your meter.
Actually no. It seems to point to a wiring problem - either votage or
ground. It is very consistent. Back to the recommendations that have
already been made to you. The hardest part in troubleshooting this kind of
thing is sometimes the ability to ignore what you think you know, and simply
go back to the basics as if you didn't know...

I have not yet tried wrapping some wire around the whole assembly,
but it seems reasonable, and might provide the inductance needed
similar to playing touchie-feelie with the bulbs.
"3. Grounding of a ballast and the luminaire [complete lighting unit] can
also aid in proper starting of the fuorescent lamp. This is especially
important when magnetic fluorescent ballasts are utilized. The metal
refector provides a capacitive path to ground through the wall of the
fuorescent tube. This helps to ionize the gases inside the tube and initiate
conduction in the tube. However, once current is fowing from end-to-end, the
impedance in the ballast circuit is much lower than this capacitive path.
Thus, the added capacitance is irrelevant once the tube has started."

Love it! If the voltage gets high enoough to where skin effect
comes into play, I won't need the bulbs - there should just be a pleasant
glow all around!
Well, if you do that, just make sure to wrap a #4 stranded copper around it
to ward off skin effect...

--J

First off Joe - watch your edits. You have mixed top posts with bottome
posts, you have eliminated attribrutes, thus it is impossible to decipher
what you are trying to reference and what you are trying to say.



Thanks all.

That's one of the best rules of thumb.
Another is you gotta believe your meter.
Actually no. It seems to point to a wiring problem - either votage
or
ground. It is very consistent. Back to the recommendations that have
already been made to you. The hardest part in troubleshooting this
kind of thing is sometimes the ability to ignore what you think you
know, and simply go back to the basics as if you didn't know...

I have not yet tried wrapping some wire around the whole assembly,
but it seems reasonable, and might provide the inductance needed
similar to playing touchie-feelie with the bulbs.

Around the whole assembly? That has never been recommeded. Don't have a
clue what you are trying to say here. Just from reading what you say
above - do you even understand inductance and capacatance?


"3. Grounding of a ballast and the luminaire [complete lighting
unit] can
also aid in proper starting of the fuorescent lamp. This is
especially important when magnetic fluorescent ballasts are utilized.
The metal refector provides a capacitive path to ground through the
wall of the fuorescent tube. This helps to ionize the gases inside
the tube and initiate conduction in the tube. However, once current
is fowing from end-to-end, the impedance in the ballast circuit is
much lower than this capacitive path. Thus, the added capacitance is
irrelevant once the tube has started."

Love it! If the voltage gets high enoough to where skin
effect comes into play, I won't need the bulbs - there should just be
a pleasant glow all around!

Skin effect is a frequency thing - not a voltage thing - especially at
household voltages.


Well, if you do that, just make sure to wrap a #4 stranded copper
around it to ward off skin effect...

--J

Now - that was the perfect quote.

Though - you really have to stop including multiple quotes with no
attributes to those quotes. Your post that I replied to made absolutely no
sense at all.

--

-Mike-

On 4/26/12 1:09 PM, Mike Marlow wrote:
First off Joe - watch your edits. You have mixed top posts with bottome
posts, you have eliminated attribrutes, thus it is impossible to decipher
what you are trying to reference and what you are trying to say.


and to top it off whatever he is using as a newsreader doesn't appear to
support the References: header, and thus breaks the threading.
--
Froz...


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