bigclive

Yeah, broken clock etc.... (WTF?) The monument is in the middle of a tarmac public square and has a large flower bed that surrounds it on all sides. My cherry picker comfortably reaches across the deep, squishy and heavily planted flower bed from the nice robust tarmac and gives me solid access to the wide ledge on the base of the monument with the safety harness anchor points all round it. By the way, I see your name is Paul and you named your company Paul Signs...... You named it after yourself. Isn't that just adorable.

There's a job I do where there's little choice but to gain access to a ledge by the use of a cherry picker. It's seasonal lighting on a monument which is surrounded by deep muddy earth making the use of a ladder or scaffold dangerous. Up to now I've been under the impression that there was a blanket rule that said cherry pickers were just not to be used for access like this at all. However, while renewing my IPAF licence (an expensive British training scam!) I took the opportunity to discuss this with the trainer. It appears that here in the UK the Health and Safety executive have backed off this rule, and allow the use of a bucket truck or cherry picker to gain access to areas that would be hard to reach by ladder or scaffold. They do emphasise that it must be covered in the jobs risk assessment though. (More red tape twaddle.) As long as common sense precautions are taken like use of a two lanyard harness to allow attachment at all times during the transfer from cage to surface, and as long as the cage is put into a suitably safe transfer position it seems OK. This forum came to mind because of a previous thread where an American contractor had been fined significantly when one of their operatives used a bucket truck to gain access to a sign platform.

Ebay is full of generic colour changing lamps that are available in a form that synchronise to the mains frequency, so change colour in sync. For bulk purchases Xmas lighting suppliers might have them. Two things to be aware of. Some of the packages may not seal onto traditional rubber tube type lamp holder seals (if they're waterproof in the first place). Some of the lamps are fairly well sealed against water. A type with a dimpled lens comes to mind. The intensity isn't great on most of these, and will diminish over time. Particularly the green and blue LEDs. They're typically rated at just one watt per lamp. The dimpled type are much brighter when viewed from the front than the diffused globe style. Like all Chinese LED products, you just don't know what you're getting, so tread carefully.

If it's anything like the UK then the amount of ongoing red tape and officious "training" racketeering is driving skilled tradesmen away from their trade. I have to have so many bogus qualifications with short expiry dates that I've personally just stopped doing all site work.

Here in the UK they are trying to ban incandescents and there is a government sponsored scam going on that "subsidises" compact fluorescent lamps. Someone somewhere is raking it in as the shops put out CFLs at just 10 pence (15 cents) each. Now seriously. Is it even possible to make one for anywhere near that? just like everywhere else in Europe, 100W incandescent lamps have become a hot seller with people stocking up on them for the future. CFLs are not the wondrous energy savers they claim to be. Just a few of the disadvantages are:- Ghastly colour rendering. Rapid fall off in efficiency as the phosphors degrade. Early failures due to overheating electronics or dried capacitors. Unsuitability for use in enclosed fixtures. Dimmable versions are expensive. Appalling power factor and spiky current waveform. Contain more toxic elements. Often specified for base-down applications only (in the small print).

And I pop in from time to time from Scotland.

Neither. The efficiency rating of fluorescents is "A".

I have to admit to being rueful about building a little PIC microcontroller based RGB colour changing circuit that used PWM to create a random cycle of colours back in October of 1996. (The PCB file is dated Oct 10th 1996) That was when companies like Color Kinetics didn't even exist and was before the availability of bright Gallium Nitride based blue and greens. Instead my own design used gallium arsenide reds and greens and silicon carbide blues which resulted in a very low light output. The output was so low that I discontinued the project after showing it to some of my friends. I certainly didn't think at the time that there was anything patentable about mixing the output of red, green and blue LEDs with Pulse Width Modulation to control their intensities. It just struck me as common technology. So seeing companies like CK patent such an obvious concept and then use the litigation to destroy the market for their personal profit was just repulsive. As for the use of LEDs in tubular diffusers... Of course it's been done before well into the days before blue or white LEDs were readily available. Think ropelights and tivoli or even the plethora of kiddies toys with LEDs inside.

Sounds like a rather wide-angle patent anyway. But then, the USA seems to have a rather gung-ho attitude to patenting everything for profit. All this achieves is domination of the market by countries with contempt for USA patents like China.

With a traditional choke based two tube fluorescent fitting with a choke per lamp, removing one lamp will effectively half the power drawn, but if there is a power factor correction capacitor designed to compensate for the full two lamp load then you may end up with a leading power factor. That would only be an issue if there were a very large number of fittings with one tube removed, and the overall power factor of other loads in the premises was near unity. With an electronic two tube ballast I would expect the power drawn to roughly halve and if anything the ballast would run cooler. A situation that will cause issues is when a lamp fails in a traditional choke and starter fitting, and the starter welds shut leaving the ends of the tube glowing. In that instance the dead tube may be drawing more power than if it was lit, the ballast will be hotter than normal and the lamp-holder may suffer thermal damage too.

There is a very specific colour of LED that is just pushing the border between blue and ultra violet and shows as a very strong and psychedelic purple colour, but I've not seen signage products that use it, perhaps because it would only have limited applications. To achieve a purple with readily available products you may need to get an RGB system and just lock it at a specific mix of red and blue.

Although the newer components can run hotter, it's not necessarily a good idea to assume it's OK to run them hot continuously. As with all electronic components the higher temperature WILL shorten their useful lifespan.

How about an electric truck that you just back the bucket into a power line (the low voltage secondary side!) and it recharges it's batteries for free. (That's just a joke by the way... There are enough powerline fatalities involving bucket trucks as it is!)

Perhaps you could play this "wicked" tune at work. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8_c-4_Wk2ME

Thanks. I'm guessing this form will have a less violent response to the mere mention of LEDs on neon-l.

Is he using the low voltage DC from the solar arrays battery bank or an invertor that steps it up to a standard AC supply? I'm afraid the LED blurb is still not terribly accurate about efficiency, and he'll be getting a lot more light from a compact fluorescent lamp than he can get from an equivalent power LED array. Where the LEDs score is in use on low voltage DC supplies, at low illumination requirements and in robustness. If he's using straight 12V DC then small MR16 style LED arrays would be useful for localised lighting. As this is my first post on this forum I'll refrain from spamming the forum with the MR16 PCBs I sell for making custom LED lights.