I like these. Can't beat the price....

These lamps are top notch! I have a few somewhere in various sizes

Unfortunately, I've accidentally killed one of these lamps. I was experimenting with running three 8 watt lamps in series on my 30/40 preheat ballast. That in itself was fine, but at one point my hand slipped when I was preheating one of the lamps, and one cathode got the full current of the ballast, and blew open. The lamp itself was still fine, so I threw on the Fulham to see if running it would weld the cathode back together. I guess the cathode was rendered useless by the accident, as the Fulham fried the lamp in under a minute. Doh...

Trent, I think it's time to take lamp frying to the next level........lamp explosions. I want to use the HV DC power supply from a 12 KW RF generator, capable of producing over 6000V DC at several amps of current, continuous duty. I suspect that discharging the bank of DC filter capacitors followed by sustained current will cause rapid heating and pressure increase sufficient to make a lamp explode.

I also have huge plate transformers from other RF generators. The transformers alone without rectifiers and filter caps probably produce enough voltage and current to explode lamps, perhaps three at once. The lamps can be wired in a three phase delta configuration to the transformer secondary while switching power on to the primary via a contactor.

Next time you're in New York, we should try it........

A member here actually used a similar apparatus on a lamp which generated 12Kv at a few hundred milliamps. The lamp ended up losing vacuum as usual, but the 12Kv was able to sustain an arc across the tube, which melted it into a puddle of glass. You can see it here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=51brIRsJ3aU

I imagine it may be difficult to get an explosion out of one because the ends will heat up and the glass will crack before the pressure gets too high, but who knows.

Why not just connect the lamp straight to 120 volt power?

You'd have to preheat the lamp, and as soon as you try to do that the cathodes blow to smithereens, and the lamp won't ignite. Now, if you started the lamp on a ballast, and then shorted out the ballast, you might get some action, although I doubt you'd get much since you only have 120V, and the lamp would extinguish before anything exciting happened.

I suppose that wouldn't be as exciting as the video above.

MFD July 2011 (possibly July 2006 if the etch had changed by then). Hybec's five-year refresh dating system makes for difficult dating!

Hybec? Did Hitachi not make their own lamps?

I recently bought a F15T8 hitachi tube, I never seen this brand before.

My F15T8 have the same end cap color!