@tigerelectronics
I have done that with North American semiparallel ignitors on rapid start ballasts. Connecting the lamp and X2 leads to the two filament leads on one tube end and the common wire to one of the other filament leads on the other end works beautifully. I doubt it is good for the ballast insulation, but I was able to strike tubes that had broken cathodes.

Today I bought some rare colored fluorescents: 2x 36w blue, 2x 36w gold, 2x 28w red, 14w green, 14w pink


I also found some circlines, 22w and 10w

@Multisubject Thats awesome!! I’d love to see yours. And I’ll try to get some good photos of my contraption too! And yeah haha I think it must be quite bad for the insulation. But so far my ground fault circuit interrupter hasn’t tripped or anything, so I’m calling this a 101% success lol!

I’m not the best at igniter terminology, but I’m using the kind of igniter that you connect in series with the output from the ballast. So in my case, the circuit is the same as what would be used to power a HPS lamp, but with a fluorescent tube instead. I’m only using one wire per tube socket, one pin per end of the tubes. and the reflector of the fixture acts as a ground plane for easier striking. Without it mounted the tubes will not ignite at all!

Being able to get some extra useful life out of these severely damaged tubes is the only reason I did this, at first it was only an experiment to see if it would even be possible and yes it is! So the plan now is to tidy up the wiring a little, and then I’ll just put a power cord on the fixture and hang it up temporarily so I can run it some. I’m extremely curious to see how long these severely damaged tubes will work! Once these damaged tubes finally die completely one day from the emissive material completely dissapearing, I will return the fixture to its original wiring layout, lead lag. So no permanent changes have been done, I’ve just added some wires, cut some wires, and rewired. It can all be re-done to the original state one day

 My ballasts are cheap and readily available ones so if they get damaged from this I won’t become too upset, but their insulation is probably pretty good!

I’m also going to mark the fixture very clearly with labels all over saying that it is modified and to NOT put fresh tubes into it, I imagine that this is not at all good for actually healthy tubes! Just in case someone else ends up with this fixture for whatever reason, hehe.

 Today I took a roadtrip to inspect and possibly buy what I THOUGHT was 4- 400w MV floodlights.  WELL ,  when I got there I was surprised to discover that they were 5-1000w MV floodlights !! I got all 5 for $100 and even managed to stuff all of them in my car .

 PHOTOS SOON ! 

Awesome!

Today, I have finally found a perfect transformer that I can use as a step up transformer for stepping up 120V 60Hz mains to 208V 60Hz mains for running Japanese 200V 60Hz ballasts and North American 208V 60Hz only ballasts. This means that if anyone encounters any 208V 60Hz only ballasts, I would be happy to take those ballasts into my collection to run them off of my step up transformer.

October is the time of year I begin ordering Christmas lights. Tru-Tone hasn’t fully restocked their inventory yet so I’ll have to wait on those, so I’ve been ordering other components for the displays I put together at my house and at a relatives. Expect some minor content.

I ordered 1000Bulbs.com’s “VividCore” Premium smooth C9s last year, and was so impressed I ordered some faceted C7s this year. Their customer service was excellent. Both are the standard warm white. I have some extra Tru-Tones laying around so I ordered a couple stringers for those to create a classic and a Mod Mix set.

Lastly, I ordered a couple C9 stringers for an expansion of my front yard display. I decided I wanted to try something besides Tru-Tone and VividCore, so I ordered the famous OptiCores from Christmas Lights Etc in faceted red C9.

I feel trying OptiCores is a step backwards, as they use SMD chips instead of filament LEDs like the industry is going, but everyone raves about them so I’ll have to see for myself. I need 50 bulbs but ordered 25 to error on the side of caution and give the flexibility of using another brand to test. We’ll see.

I think I got some Vividcore lamps from them to use in a Japanese circline pendant fixture I have.

Replaced an old, worn-out Universal Watt-Reducer 446 ballast that I had inside one of my garage lights, which was becoming hard to start. I replaced it with the Advance REL-2S40-SC electronic ballast because I was able to get one cheaply on eBay, and I have had good luck with that model so far in one of my other fixtures. It actually has a true rapid-start startup, which is uncommon for electronic ballasts.

I uploaded some new photos!

Today I cleaned my shed a little bit, which means carrying fixtures and lamps I currently do not feel like playing with back up into my storage unit while doing so, I looked through my many different boxes of fluorescent tubes, discharge lamps, etc. I decided to grab some of my more unusual tubes from storage and brought them to my shed, I decided to grab some of my 70W T8 linear tubes which are insanely long, almost too long to safely handle!, aswell as some very special and unusual 970mm T12 40W tubes, I may finally get around to testing some of them. I really should build some sort of fixture for those 970mm tubes,  I also freshened up my memory a lot about how many U-shape tubes I have, and I have so many more than I remember. Both in T12 and T8 form. I definetely need to play with some of those one day. I also brought some newer Osram L36/965 Deluxe Daylight tubes with me to my shed, I also have those in Biolux versions. I also placed some of my TLX-tubes neatly into my shelves in my shed, so now I can play with those too!

I am feeling slightly tempted to build some sort of display-wall for my many different fluorescent tubes, like one of each type would be fun! I almost had a display wall like that about a year ago, but I made it out of crappy particle board so it fell apart under moisture. This time, I will build one using plywood.

I also have begun making some new custom angle wall-mount brackets for some new shoplights I got, I want to mount them along the wall in my shed to provide overkill workbench lighting! They are lovely oldies, made by Taiba here in sweden. 2x40W T12 fixtures, they are in lovely shape for their age! the reflectors are actually pristine, not a single scratch in any of them!

Hehe, I am also thinking about maybe upgrading my lighting oriented hobby's space, maybe build a new shed, or maybe move into one of our outhouses and do some improvements inside there so I can mount and enjoy lamps there. My little shed is starting to become rather small now, I have... at least 300 fluorescent tubes. And many fixtures of different kinds, most of which are big industrial light fixtures which is my main interest, so they naturally take up a lot of space....

Hmm, I definetely need to think about that option, because one of our outhouses is fairly big, and if I Clean it up a bit, I can have 10x10 metres of space with a very tall roof to play with lights in!

I modded a couple LED flashlights to have 2700K and 1800K emitters instead of cold 6500K emitters. I also swapped their batteries from 1800mAh 18650 to 3600mAh. I used Nichia 519A emitters to replace the stock Cree LEDs.

I overclocked an incandescent flashlight by upgrading it from 2d configuration to single 18650. it gets fed PR-2 lamps and 3 cell lamps. the PR-2s burn BRIGHT for about 4 hours before failing. the 3 cell lamps are bright and last a lot longer. the battery life is LEAPS AND BOUNDS superior to the D cells. the flashlight has comparable or better life than many of my LED units. I intend on steadily phasing out all D cells within the next year or two. they are too expensive to be replacing constantly. I wish there was a lithium cell of the same footprint. I don't mind modding things to accept double the voltage. I would also like to replace all AAA and AA but these are commercially available already.

unfortunately most NIMH D cells I have come across are PITIFUL JUNK. I suspect most of them are just AA NIMH in a D cell case.

  I intend on steadily phasing out all D cells within the next year or two. they are too expensive to be replacing constantly. I wish there was a lithium cell of the same footprint

No idea about anything lithium, but they make a 'D' size plastic adapter that you can put a 'AA' in. Been a good number of years ago, but I got some of those & used AA NIMH's in them to run a crappy old boombox when camping since D's were too costly... For a rigged up setup it actually did ok.

Don't use that anymore(mighta even gotten rid of it) since I put together a better & smaller amplifier..
Still have the adapter thingies though since they could be used in a flashlight or lantern..

Stumbled upon a house clearing and grabbed a box of random lamps, there's some halogens and incandescents mixed with CFLs and the usual crap LED I'll just resell, if they even work, same with the CFLs, pretty sure they're all 6500K so I won't keep any. It's pretty dusty so I didn't really see what exactly the lamps are yet.

Also grabbed a box fan, 2 floor lamps and an alarm clock, $5 for the bunch, guy wanted $10 but the lamps have broken holders and are overall super loose, and the fan is missing the timer knob. Not sure if the alarm clock even works but there's tape on the cord, so that has to be fixed as well.

Finished reassembling a vintage fluorescent desk lamp I started restoring last week.