Anybody got any EOL stories they want to share? Whether it be Fluorescent, Incandescent, Mercury Vapor, Metal Halide, HPS, or LED... doesn't matter --
post them here. Lets have some fun.
I've got tons of EOL stories from when I was a kid, especially in school, but also at home. I'll share those stories another time.
Unfortunately I missed an EOL show just today, at Walmart, unexpectedly. One of the possible F25T8 3 footer lamps, (I think they may be 3 footers, but
I could be incorrect... they do look a tad bit shorter) in a small commercial refrigerator that holds salmon, crab meat and other seafoods, was finally
at it's EOL. Easily noticeable, since there was mercury migration. This lamp was normally much brighter... so I knew something was up.
The good end was brighter but dim, and the bad end was dimmer and definitely pink.
The end blackening was complete... and I caught it doing crazy hotspot movements, with incandescent-like filament glow, but it quickly stopped and did
nothing more. I sat there staring at it a bit to see if it would EOL, but unfortunately I didn't have much time since Walmart was set to close at 6pm
for Christmas Eve... sooo... yep. Missed EOL show. But this gave me the idea to make a thread about EOL shows on LG.

I saw an amazing EOL show. One of my neighbours had an old 1970s fluorescent fixture for 4ft tubes (36/40w). They gave it to me. It had become EOL long ago, around 2009. The lamp would turn on when the starter was removed, but the ballast had a loud hum. I replaced the T8 tube with a much more fitting T12 in the fixture, and decided to run the EOL T8 on an IS ballast. The T8 swirled for hours and the end became orange and burning hot. Then it suddenly lost vacuum, not silently, but with a loud pop!


Another time, I had an F40T12 daylight eol lamp that I wanted to see the burnout of more clearly. So with some heat I loosened the lamp cement and got the endcaps off. Then I ran it on an IS balast with the end of the tube being the perfect windows to see. I also hooked up a power supply to the end with a working filament, and got it to glow as bright as a 10w incandescent. So basically, this was a simultaneous burnout of the lamp and the filament.


I have some more EOL lamps, but they are very rare and I don't want to kill them.