Having worked as SOX lamp engineer for several years, I can confirm that making this lamp is far from trivial.  What is written above might be true of many modern industrial processes- but certainly not for traditional lamps and least of all for SOX.  This is where so many modern managements go wrong : they look first at the product itself, then the location where it is made (ie labour cost), next the machinery and materials, and last of all the people.  However for SOX, the people are key.  There are so many manufacturing operations that are not mechanised or even fully documented and understood, and depend on decades of experience.  In several cases the staff should be considered more as artisans than operators.  They have to be able to react on-the-fly to the continual material and process variations - which might yield a product that looks 100% identical to the untrained eye and deliver uniform initial performance, but which the operators know would result in short lifetime.  It's hard to put into words the 'feel' that these people acquire in their fingertips after decades of doing the same job, to manipulate their tools to guarantee a top quality product.  Many processes in lampmaking still cannot be adequately measured and controlled by sensors despite decades of efforts.

Moreover the processes that are mechanised are often extremely delicately balanced.  Tiny and continual fluctuations in the environment can cause havoc and it takes years of experience to spot these immediately and keep the process stable, to avoid quality problems later in life.  I've seen countless cases before where such machines were picked up and moved a few tens of metres to a new area, and for it to then take months of fine-tuning to get the processes running stably again before production could resume.  If that was attempted in a completely different site with new and unskilled people, there would be almost no chance of ever making a good lamp again!  And these are not the kind of skills that can be transferred with a brief 1 or 2 year training process.

Finally the SOX lamp calls for some unique materials.  Just taking over the lamp assembly operation is not enough.  The factory has to be fed with glass tubing of a composition that is not only used nowhere else in the world, but also made according to a similarly unique process which also depends in great measure on the skills of the people who produce that.  So any such venture would also require taking over the raw glass manufacturing operations at the Winschoten Glass works, as well as several other raw materials.

Sadly there comes a critical sales level below which it is simply not commercially viable to maintain all these different operations.  In particular for glassmaking you need a certain minimum throughput per day, and the furnaces can't just be turned off and on when needed as volumes decline - they have to run 24/7 for years at a time.  If the required volume decreases, then you still have to keep the furnaces running, consuming vast amounts of energy, with no usable output.  Hence SOX prices have been rising for years as the production volumes decline, due to consumers choosing other light sources (or in the case of SOX which is mainly used in Belgium, choosing to turn off the streetlights outside the peak periods to save energy, thereby also reducing the annual demand for new lamps by a factor of 4).  So I do not believe any stories that Philips is actively trying to kill off this light source prematurely.  Sooner or later this kind of sad decision has to be taken as a natural consequence of choices being made by the end consumers which are leading to a slow decline in sales of the product.  When that drops below a certain level, the costs required to keep the production going would exceed the profits generated by the sales, and then there is no choice but to stop.  In some diverse industries it is possible to re-tool for lower volume production - however in the case of SOX this would require re-building complete new small-scale machines, which in themselves would then call for still higher prices due to the slower output, and take years as well as millions in investment to design and build.

By the way - the electrodeless SOX lamps were developed and extensively tested.  However they do not result in the great improvement in efficacy that has been mentioned - in a similar way that electrodeless fluorescent lamps are also less efficient than conventional fluorescent.  The lifetime is better - but that would mean still lower sales figures and an even less viable business model.  Plus a monstrously huge investment to make still another kind of new glass that is required.  Consequently these lamps were never commercialised.

Considering a visit to Hamilton, I do know some the engineers there who are quite friendly and have hosted many visits beforehand.  If there is a real interest, I am happy to ask the question!

Considering a visit to Hamilton, I do know some the engineers there who are quite friendly and have hosted many visits beforehand.  If there is a real interest, I am happy to ask the question!

Thanks James, that would be most welcome 

I'll try to address all questions and arguments asked...

I think that acquiring sox manufacturing tools is in reality, no matter how inviting the idea sounds, impossible for hobby groups. I would guess the sheer amount of equiptment in whole production line is lots of stuff. It would also be necessary to know if all the parts of sox lamp is manufactured in there or are some produced elsewhere. Theoretically, "missing" parts could be outsourced but buying that stuff and all the other more special materials on small quantities could become quite expensive.

Then there is running cost and maintenance cost. We dont know how good or bad contidion those equipments are, have they been keot up just to run few more years and thats it.

This is just a guess, but I would say, that the overal cost would be at least six digit sum easely. What is sure is that manufacturing lps lamp is not profitable anymore, if it was, there would be atleats chinese cheap-lamps available, but I seen none.

It's not about could we get it working, more could we afford it.

Very recently, i took on myself acquiring equipment from a closing medium scale factory (in the electrical industry). Mainly for the purpose of serving as an extensive engineering playground for me where i am lord, without a boss over my head. As a young engineer, this will give me invaluable engineering experience like nothing else ever could. Secondarily since i have interest in the stuff itself that was produced there, and not only that, i think i can do it better

Nearly entire factory. I broke all my savings and took a long term loan (which does not cost a lot per month). 5 digits (in $ or Pounds units), this includes some equipment that was sold for its full 2nd hand price (presses and other shop machinery), some that was sold at scrap value (various mechanics), and some i managed to push for free into the bundle. Mine.

I happened to find a place (and even good one) for low cost. I admit something like this for the cost i got is a one of a kind find, most places i asked were much more expensive. But fact remains, that this just happened. I believe it can happen everywhere if tried hard enough



If manufacturing SOX was profitable, there wouldn't be this post. It isn't. But (same as with my own project), it is not about profitability from selling the product. It is about wanting it as a personal (or a team) project and incredible engineering experience, and about interest in keeping the end product alive because we want it alive

What i say is basically : Join hands, find solutions (if anyone can provide something he allready have e.g. space, shop machinery like mills or presses), and split the costs. It will be possible if you want it to be

Is it..? Are you sure..?

True, but do you have the skill and years of experience necessary to operate the equipment..?

All production is done by a sequence of individual steps. This enables each step by itself to be trivial to understand

The absolute most of steps are also trivial to do, they aren't much more than a cylinder moving until a sensor is reached, or a sequence of a few such operations

Few of the steps may be tricky to do. However, the number of the parameters at play in the single step is limited. Even when making it borders with art, this is kept manageable exactly by the fact that it is a single step in a sequence - Mastering a step is not the same as mastering everything in one go

Do not underestimate. Many here have wonderful engineering minds and technical skills, and are capable

That's a spot on remark Ria. When it comes to traditional lighting, making lamps is much, much more than just pushing a button and let the machine run. It is just naive and plain ignorant of the art (to put it mildly) to believe that the hardest part is only to build the machines. There are fine adjustments that needs to be made (and kept in check) in order to maintain a high product quality, and that's not just about a few parameters only... there are several tens of degrees of liberty (often more) that are involved in the production process of electric lamps and this requires skilled and experienced operators to keep the scrap rate as small as possible.

The division of the process into steps means that each step alone is manageable. Yes, it is an art. But there are not tens of degrees of freedom in the single step, there are few in each step

If we are talking about this as a personal/team project, then the mastering of the art itself is part of the purpose. The scrap is no more than some expense on the way to reaching this purpose

Of course, raw materials (access to and quality grade) is also of very high importance. Like with many other processes, garbage in leads invariably to garbage out.

I agree. However, if the project succeeds to make a complete lamp even if it is made with the wrong materials, this is a terrific success over no lamp at all. The grade of the materials used can and should be good when it comes to an actual production run. It may be absolutely ok to use inferior cheaper materials for doing tests (as long as the material still can be processed by the same process, e.g. thermal profile)

I'm sorry, it seems to me you are totally failing to take into account the complexity of the SOX lamp construction and the sheer skill required to make it.

Many jobs look simple to the outsider, but you try doing them without the necessary skill, which sometimes takes years if not decades to acquire. My last job before I retired involved checking CCTV for my local bus company for incidents that occurred, such as road traffic collisions, crimes and accidents on board, etc. and dealing with local management, police and other interested parties. It sounds simple, but it is far from that.

I am certain that lamp production is an awful lot more complicated. You can throw six-figure sums at it, but unless you have the people with the necessary skills and experience, it's not going to happen.

Perhaps i am outsider to SOX lamp making, but not to manufacture processes in general

Everything complex that have been done have been done by humans. Same humans that work at Philips or that take interest in lamps on Lighting Gallery. I dont say that the lamps will come flawless on the first day. But please do not exaggerate. It absolutely does not take decades to master a single step which is already well defined and have been done before. If a certain step is a concern, let's go visit Philips and see how it is done, or discuss this step with James on a separate discussion

Lamp production and monitoring CCTV are 2 alien worlds, i am not trying to compare one to another. But lamp production vs. some other production or even other technical experience are not entirely alien to each other, are they ?

I agree, and there is a risk that running such process wrong can cause damage to the equiptment that are very expensive to repair.



Also, I wonder how well these machines even fit to small volume production without modification if they are ment for high volume production.

Does anyone know is there separate production lines for different wattage sox lamps or do they switch wattage on a single line from time to time?

Certain mistakes could cause such damage. But far from being all of them, and extra care and precaution are always a good measure. This is true to some steps in my project too

Some machines are fit as is, some need modification or replacement. For example, i imagine that it would make sense to make a smaller furnace, but the port from which a tube is drawn have to be kept and transplanted from the original to the new furnace. I do have one place with a similar issue in my own project as well

Having worked as SOX lamp engineer for several years, I can confirm that making this lamp is far from trivial.  What is written above might be true of many modern industrial processes- but certainly not for traditional lamps and least of all for SOX.  This is where so many modern managements go wrong : they look first at the product itself, then the location where it is made (ie labour cost), next the machinery and materials, and last of all the people.  However for SOX, the people are key.  There are so many manufacturing operations that are not mechanised or even fully documented and understood, and depend on decades of experience.  In several cases the staff should be considered more as artisans than operators.  They have to be able to react on-the-fly to the continual material and process variations - which might yield a product that looks 100% identical to the untrained eye and deliver uniform initial performance, but which the operators know would result in short lifetime.  It's hard to put into words the 'feel' that these people acquire in their fingertips after decades of doing the same job, to manipulate their tools to guarantee a top quality product.  Many processes in lampmaking still cannot be adequately measured and controlled by sensors despite decades of efforts.

Moreover the processes that are mechanised are often extremely delicately balanced.  Tiny and continual fluctuations in the environment can cause havoc and it takes years of experience to spot these immediately and keep the process stable, to avoid quality problems later in life.  I've seen countless cases before where such machines were picked up and moved a few tens of metres to a new area, and for it to then take months of fine-tuning to get the processes running stably again before production could resume.  If that was attempted in a completely different site with new and unskilled people, there would be almost no chance of ever making a good lamp again!  And these are not the kind of skills that can be transferred with a brief 1 or 2 year training process.

Finally the SOX lamp calls for some unique materials.  Just taking over the lamp assembly operation is not enough.  The factory has to be fed with glass tubing of a composition that is not only used nowhere else in the world, but also made according to a similarly unique process which also depends in great measure on the skills of the people who produce that.  So any such venture would also require taking over the raw glass manufacturing operations at the Winschoten Glass works, as well as several other raw materials.

Sadly there comes a critical sales level below which it is simply not commercially viable to maintain all these different operations.  In particular for glassmaking you need a certain minimum throughput per day, and the furnaces can't just be turned off and on when needed as volumes decline - they have to run 24/7 for years at a time.  If the required volume decreases, then you still have to keep the furnaces running, consuming vast amounts of energy, with no usable output.  Hence SOX prices have been rising for years as the production volumes decline, due to consumers choosing other light sources (or in the case of SOX which is mainly used in Belgium, choosing to turn off the streetlights outside the peak periods to save energy, thereby also reducing the annual demand for new lamps by a factor of 4).  So I do not believe any stories that Philips is actively trying to kill off this light source prematurely.  Sooner or later this kind of sad decision has to be taken as a natural consequence of choices being made by the end consumers which are leading to a slow decline in sales of the product.  When that drops below a certain level, the costs required to keep the production going would exceed the profits generated by the sales, and then there is no choice but to stop.  In some diverse industries it is possible to re-tool for lower volume production - however in the case of SOX this would require re-building complete new small-scale machines, which in themselves would then call for still higher prices due to the slower output, and take years as well as millions in investment to design and build.

By the way - the electrodeless SOX lamps were developed and extensively tested.  However they do not result in the great improvement in efficacy that has been mentioned - in a similar way that electrodeless fluorescent lamps are also less efficient than conventional fluorescent.  The lifetime is better - but that would mean still lower sales figures and an even less viable business model.  Plus a monstrously huge investment to make still another kind of new glass that is required.  Consequently these lamps were never commercialised.

Considering a visit to Hamilton, I do know some the engineers there who are quite friendly and have hosted many visits beforehand.  If there is a real interest, I am happy to ask the question!

- We have people with interest, and people with knowledge (that is you James). It may be possible to also ask retired Hamilton employees to help - In my project, i made contact with retired employees from the factory and every one of them offered generous help in getting things going (once i put everything together)

 - We are talking about getting the machinery

 - The place and product come after that

All exactly as you see correct..

Even if we dont get the greatest product, if we get a lamp that even strikes, this is success. If there is interest in this, the art will develop. And here is the thing, if somebody is interested in the art (and not only in working at Philips for a salary like normally production employees are), he is allready at a better position to feel and understand the material



If nothing else uses the same tubing, sure the parts for making the tube gotta be saved as well. Is there any unsolvable problem there ?



The way i see it, the furnace scale problem is solvable in 2 ways :

 - Make a stock of tubes to use and shut down the furnace till next time

 - Make a smaller furnace, keep only the port through which the tube is drawn, replace the rest



It may not be the ideal way to run the existing machines (after the tube drawing) at small volume, but there is no reason why it cant be done. It just won't be as efficient



If the "problem" is broken down to specific steps and their related problems, each of them can be solved

You just don't get it, do you, not even after all the detailed explanations from James, who has worked in the lamp-making industry for many years.

The machinery is only part of it - you need PEOPLE with DECADES of experience, able to solve problems on the fly. You need furnaces running 24/7 irrespective of production volume. Read James's post again, S-L-O-W-L-Y.

 - We have people with interest, and people with knowledge (that is you James). It may be possible to also ask retired Hamilton employees to help - In my project, i made contact with retired employees from the factory and every one of them offered generous help in getting things going (once i put everything together)

 - We are talking about getting the machinery

 - The place and product come after that

All exactly as you see correct..

Even if we dont get the greatest product, if we get a lamp that even strikes, this is success. If there is interest in this, the art will develop. And here is the thing, if somebody is interested in the art (and not only in working at Philips for a salary like normally production employees are), he is allready at a better position to feel and understand the material



If nothing else uses the same tubing, sure the parts for making the tube gotta be saved as well. Is there any unsolvable problem there ?



The way i see it, the furnace scale problem is solvable in 2 ways :

 - Make a stock of tubes to use and shut down the furnace till next time

 - Make a smaller furnace, keep only the port through which the tube is drawn, replace the rest



It may not be the ideal way to run the existing machines (after the tube drawing) at small volume, but there is no reason why it cant be done. It just won't be as efficient



If the "problem" is broken down to specific steps and their related problems, each of them can be solved

Everything is solvable if there is enought money. I just dont believe in idea of spending huge amount of money with the outcome of most likely not making anything of it back. In few years, there may be no demand for sox lamps at all. IMO this is one of those things that is theoretically possible but in reality no. If the equiptment could be obtained for free and someone haf free space where to relocate them then why not.

What google told me it appears that Philips had sold it glass factory in there and that would mean buying glass from same place (if they even have any interest to make special glass in small quantities). Other choice would be trying to master glass making and build own furnace, which sounds difficult and expensive option. Not impossible, ofcourse.


The biggest question what we dont know right now is how big the production line is in overal. How much floor space it's needs. If the building wad what I linked in earlier post it appeared to ve quite big even though there must be storage areas as well.

But I have to say I like your optimism.


James, do you know if there is any part of the sox manufacturing process that requires cleanroom environment?

Production volume, I read this a while ago and I think they output about 1.5 million tubes a year and that is all wattage's and I imagine that number is slightly lower right now so odds are good it's some where around the million mark, and looking at the pricing the wattage doesn't seem to make much difference I think the bulk of the cost is the production not the material used. quickly followed up by the transportation to there final destination and this is basied on the fact an 18 watt is almost the same cost as a 135 watt tube and the 55 and 90 are also pretty close in cost..

As for a clean room and I'm not the expert here, but I don't think that would be needed but there might be high temperature storage rooms because I understand the glass is very hygroscopic and it needs to be kept dry, but a full on clean room like they have in semiconductor / hard drive manufacture I don't see it, small impurities like a single spec of dust I don't will be enough to cause a catastrophic failure of a lamp. 

Maybe before people look at buying the factory, we should as a group, look at doing a group buy of lamps so at the very least we know we will have enough lamps to keep our own lights glowing all night for years to come... 

And we should all pester Philips into giving James the last production lamp for him to display on his website...

For the last time, this is about PEOPLE with EXPERIENCE - without them, it won't work, no matter how much money you have or how easy or complex the processes.

I agree, we should buy as many lamps as we can get our hands on. It's not as though as collectors we are going to run them for hundreds of thousands of hours, I don't think mine have done a hundred hours in all the years I've had them. I only run them up to demonstrate them now and again.

And we should all pester Philips into giving James the last production lamp for him to display on his website...

Absolutely 

For the last time, this is about PEOPLE with EXPERIENCE - without them, it won't work, no matter how much money you have or how easy or complex the processes.

I agree, we should buy as many lamps as we can get our hands on. It's not as though as collectors we are going to run them for hundreds of thousands of hours, I don't think mine have done a hundred hours in all the years I've had them. I only run them up to demonstrate them now and again.

I don't know there are a few of us that do use them in dusk to dawn service every night, I have two 18 watt Philips Goldeye II fixtures that are on every night, and I'm in the process of putting together a 55 watt dusk to dawn light which when it's complete will burn every night until I run out of tubes or I die which ever comes first...

I don't know there are a few of us that do use them in dusk to dawn service every night, I have two 18 watt Philips Goldeye II fixtures that are on every night, and I'm in the process of putting together a 55 watt dusk to dawn light which when it's complete will burn every night until I run out of tubes or I die which ever comes first...

Fairy nuff.. I must admit I'd love an outside fitting here, but we live in rented council (social) accommodation here, and we would need permission to install something like this, which I doubt would be forthcoming  

In my project i dont expect to cover its costs from the sales of a product. (similar to the SOX lamp, it is a declining product)

However, the engineering playground that this project is is the most invaluable thing i could possibly get out of it. It might reflect in money too, when i am going for a new job and telling in the interview what experience i do have (and it doesnt' matter at all what the product is). "I have rebuilt a complete factory that does X, fine tuned mechanics, wrote control code from scratch, programmed Omron and Moeller PLCs, designed a new QA bench" is totally changing the game

From my experience with my project, equipment falls in 3 categories :

 - Full 2nd hand value for general purpose equipment : Shop equipment like mills and presses, Hydraulic service stations, and similar stuff

 - "For parts" value for equipment from which components can be harvested (with the seller assuming by default that there is no interest to keep making the original product) : Motors and standard gearboxes, Controllers and I/O modules, ...

 - Scrap value for stuff that is individual for the specific product : Diesets, moulds, various metal mechanical parts

The most specialised parts often go in the 2nd and 3rd categories. In my case, getting the shop equipment from that same factory was cost effective vs. getting it from elsewhere, but if it wasn't, getting it from elsewhere could be a viable option (at the cost of extra challenge to integrate it). Also, i dont know how much "shop equipment" really is in a lamp production line. I wouldn't be surprised if there is even less of it than in my project, where i do have a couple mills and presses...



Stockpiling on lamps off Ebay isnt very profitable either (you won't save the cost on electricity using SOX lamps), and unlike the machinery project, does not give any comparable benefit. (having the lamp in collection is not the same than trying to make one). But i dont see much complaints about that being senseless...



When the first lamps on the equipment were made, there wasn't any former experience. People with idea what they are doing tried and succeeded making it new. This is not impossible, it just takes experimenting and failing for a while before succeeding

We arent' any less capable than them !

And we should all pester Philips into giving James the last production lamp for him to display on his website...

Absolutely. James has awesome website and his collection would really deserve such a piece of history. How should we push this forward?



Btw, since there was mentioning about group buy, I have been thinking how nice it would be if there was some sort of LG branded "membership lamp". I know the number would ve just few and thys for expensive but the idea itself would be nice.

Fairy nuff.. I must admit I'd love an outside fitting here, but we live in rented council (social) accommodation here, and we would need permission to install something like this, which I doubt would be forthcoming  

You need to be crafty, and play within the rules, if your allowed to put up Christmas lights there is not much stopping you from hanging a spanwire fixture from a hook and plugging it in with an extension cord, it's not a permanent install so they can't say much so long as every part meets the current electrical / building codes, and if they try just start asking what they are doing about the crime in the area ? And how lighting helps reduce the crime in the local area...  

I have been thinking how nice it would be if there was some sort of LG branded "membership lamp". I know the number would ve just few and thys for expensive but the idea itself would be nice.

Maybe that's something that James could ask if and when we can organise a visit to Hamilton