Whenever I have seen collectors talk about how autotransformer ballasts work, I frequently see them saying that the primary and secondary windings are TWO SEPARATE coils when in principle, I have understood that autotransformers in general tend to integrate the primary and secondary windings on just ONE coil instead.

Plus, I have also seen that this appears to have led to some people thinking that autotransformer ballasts have NO choke. This does not make sense to me because if only a step up transformer or step down transformer by itself is used to power a discharge lamp, only the VOLTAGE is changed. From my understanding, I have seen that autotransformer ballasts typically consist of an autotransformer coil and a choke coil that is responsible for limiting the current.

Here is an article that explains how an autotransformer works:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Autotransformer


https://www.ato.com/autotransformer-working-principle-and-advantages?srsltid=AfmBOoq6mF2MwMUcXV39dpj1Vnb7rgGR-4-Penwyrg_dht98Q7utnvbc

I do recommend documenting each fixture on the gallery so that we can learn more about what you have.

Wow!!!! That’s a HUGE collection! You have so many ACEC lanterns They’re so cool!! Pab was correct! I feel a bit faint 

Yes, if i run it for a while, then rapidly take it out of the fixture and pop the cover off, my highly calibrated finger thermometer says the temperature remains at or below 60 degrees C. If there wouldn't be mains voltage in there, i could just about continuously hold my finger onto the components. It runs cooler than the LED lamp did before the conversion.
Just out of an abundance of caution i also drilled some small holes right on top and around the lamps themselves.

The resistors dissipate considerably less power than normal because i run 2 lamps in series. I have a whole bunch of them including the resistors from the store, but a single lamp with resistor at 1mA gets considerably hotter, to the degree that i have to redesign a tube shaped lamp i made with 20 of them in there.


I do think re-making this with 20 lamps (or tripling the current and accepting faster wear of the neons) will make me run into thermal issues. I'm gonna dig through the recycle bins and see if i can find a large globe shaped one for a bigger version, where only the resistors are on the board itself and the indicator lights on their own (shrink tube isolated) legs. Just ordered 200 of them before the tariffs kick in, might as well...

Sure your ballast resistors (crammed to the inside of the board) get enough cooling? You are designing a compact lamp after all, and are responsible for thermal mode

The mountains in NC don't usually have many interesting things, but you are close (in relative terms) to GE's Hendersonville plant!

Very very cool! I did a similar thing with 7 of them and I used a sheet of plastic rather than a PCB but it did work! Like you say there isn't much light emitted by these but it is cool to see. It's long since been disassembled so I can't take a picture of it but maybe that's for the better since mine was made very very cruddily.

Thank you!

Philips Piła plant which producing bulbs and fluorescents is slowly shutting down, at least fluorescent production, im not sure they want still produce something there.
But Philips Kętrzyn plant which producing lighting fixtures still prosper good, there is only problem with Piła factory

I'm not...
It is true many rectifier designs and I would also guess CH lamps used electromechanical starting probe - probe with its tip immersed into the mercury pool, then lifted by electromagnet to draw local arc (and then held lifted by either the main or "keep alive" auxiliary discharge current). Something equivalent to tilting without actually tilting the whole thing...