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TelfordDorr

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Everything posted by TelfordDorr

  1. re:  bushiod br30 / br40 thread (yeah, I couldn't figure out how to reply either...)

    Led lamps have a different dimming characteristic than incandescent lamps and will not track each other when wired to the same dimmer. This is because incandescent lamps require considerable energy to just light up at all, while leds are pretty linear with pulse width / phase angle of the applied voltage. Just converted all of the dash lighting in my VW bus to led (which worked wonderfully, by the way), and had to retrofit the separate tachometer with led because of this problem.

     

    Also, led requires a different dimmer type which dims much lower than an incandescent type dimmer. [Incandescent will dim all the way on a led dimmer, but the reverse isn't true.

    Long time no hear, by the way.

    Telford Dorr

  2. Uh, the red-handles crimpers are for crimping TV coax connectors. What were you using them for? (Hopefully not for what the good interchangeable jaw Titan crimp terminal crimpers are used for...)
  3. As I've said for years, the expression "You get what you pay for" is wrong. The correct expression is: "You don't get what you don't pay for".
  4. One would think that "expired" LEDs (and their power supplies) would legally have to be treated the same as expired computers - as e-waste. Can't dump that in the trash (as it winds up in landfills) because the assemblies contain toxic metals, etc. Just a thought...
  5. Seems strange that your T5 ballasts are noisy, as everything sold these days is solid state, which don't make a peep. I have some 15" T5 under cabinet fixtures in the kitchen and they crank out the light. Trick seems to be the brand of lamp used. Have had excellent results with Sylvania. Philips is good also, but only start reliably on SS ballasts due to low mercury. Hate them when used with magnetic ballasts. Did the entire kitchen in Philips 3500K white CFLs in can fixtures with electronic ballasts. They've been up for what? 10 years, and no lamp failure yet (with heavy use). I personally like 3500K better in kitchens than either 2800K or 4100K. The off-brands and Chinese tubes are crap - awful color and lifespan. Avoid at all costs. Have had miserable luck with CFL floods in general - awful color and low light output. Have one PAR-38 flood in a ceiling can with dimmer which I would like to try LED on, but haven't because of the cost. I think LED could own the dimmable flood lamp market if the costs can be moderated somehow, as their natural directionality is an advantage in this application - puts the light where it is needed. Tried to buy a replacement ballast for a standard dual T12F96 fluorescent fixture at the in-laws last weekend. Nothing available but solid state ballasts. Bought a GE made in China ballast at the local hardware and installed. Dead out of the box - obviously never tested, just built and shipped. Hunted around and finally found an Advance (made in Mexico) ballast at a distant Home Depot. Came with full length leads. Worked perfectly. Starting to hate China.... TD
  6. Wow, I'm impressed! Businesses usually move out of California, not in. Must have a really good / well selling product to make such a move worthwhile.
  7. Same here. Last heard from him about a year and a half ago. He's retired, living in Black Mountain, NC (summer), and Celebration, FL (winter). VtSign email address should still be good.
  8. You guys are far to kind. Joe B. compares the Tea Party to terrorists. I compare Washington to a bunch of crack whores. Actually, that's a bit harsh: no self-respecting crack whore would want to be compared to a politician. I apologize to them. How about a new concept: eliminate one-man-one-vote. Replace it with $1 paid in taxes = 1 vote. Useless poor get no say; idle rich get no say. Let the people who pay the freight have the say as to where the money goes. Sorry for being radical...
  9. My 'bogus' alarm is ringing on this one. Can't get more energy out than you put in. While I could be wrong, I don't see any energy being contributed by the so-called 'fuel' (e.g. no chemical or other reaction), just the electrical input. Sorry.
  10. Well, basically, fear of bankruptcy, loss of everything you have, and starvation are pretty good motivators to log those long hours, because as owner/boss, it's your baby to lose. Sorta biases the priority viewpoint a bit...
  11. As long as you're at it, upgrade to dual monitors. Once you do, you'll wonder how you ever got along with just only one... Many Nvidia and ATI video boards support dual monitors.
  12. So, I walk in after a long day, and the mail pile is sitting there. Underneath the pile of postage-free junk, there's the November SB, which I thumb through quickly, looking for tidbits. Find another LED channel letter article, which I peruse. Figured it's another "LEDs are the only way" propaganda, but somethings different. This one's got numbers. This one's got references. Fascinating. I page on a bit. Wait a minute - CCFL's are mentioned - and they're not being ridiculed. To borrow a line, inconceivable! Who wrote this? Thumb to the first page and read: Erik G. Surprise! Gotta admit - caught me completely by surprise. So, good job Erik! Good article - to borrow a phrase again, fair and balanced. Only question is - how did you manage to get them to publish something intelligent?
  13. Would seem to me that a glass shop would take the old boarder tubes to the fires, heat them at the appropriate spots, pull the tube into points, separate them, round up the remaining points in the fires, cool, and file the resulting segments into barrels. Kind of like making single electrode tubes - shouldn't take more than a couple of minutes a tube, and the Hg remains safely sealed inside. Just a thought...
  14. Yes, that is true, but consider: - ultimately, utility customers pay for everything - including power losses due to lousy PF. - lousy PF consumes line capacity, resulting in less power being available, and higher fuel consumption for generating that power. - lousy PF requires compensation somewhere on the line. Guess who ultimately pays for this equipment? - etc. So yeah, you don't get billed for all those VARS (volt-amps, reactive) - at least directly. But you do pay for them. (And you pay for your neighbor's losses too, as he doesn't worry about them because he's not directly billed for them either.)
  15. Maybe. Point is, installs like the one shown should never be done - but they are. Then these are supposed to be caught by the AHJ and red-tagged - but he's not looking because he wasn't called. So you have two sequential layers of failure. Let's face it: if all installers were perfectly competent, then there would be no need for 2161 or inspectors, for that matter. And the code and UL specs would represent little more than an informal agreement between installers on how they agree to do things... But that's obviously not the case. Am open for suggestions on what else could be done to prevent this kind of thing, as otherwise the mindless government bureaucracy will eventually 'fix' it for us, their (lowest common denominator) way, by making neon completely safe by making it completely illegal... As for the transformers, manufacturers will sell what the public will buy. On the other hand, bad reputation can do wonders towards eliminating bogus products. Hence the tranny reliability poll... I haven't personally seen that much of a degradation of trannie quality, but maybe I'm just lucky. (Or maybe we just have milder weather out here...) Although I do miss the 12Kv / 120 ma cold cathode stuff...
  16. Absolutely correct. Want more of the same? That was supposed to be the inspector's job. Oh, I forgot - nobody pulled a permit for this job, as it was a 'repair'... Maybe time to start a 'transformer reliability' poll?
  17. I guess we can both disagree, Gary, but my experience is that the circuit will heat up, the contact detects such and trips off. I'm not justifying the cause by any means, but there are layers of safety built into the NEC long before UL's layer. Sorry - Gary's correct: a neon transformer (2161 or otherwise) arcing to ground won't cause a supply breaker to trip. The transformer won't pull enough current to do that. Remember: transformers are tested for 'short circuit' current (30 or 60 ma) by shorting the secondary windings with a milliamp meter. Now a 2161 trannie is supposed to internally trip anytime the current from one output hub doesn't return to the other by taking a shortcut to ground. That's your only protection against crap installs.
  18. Had to post this, as it illustrates what bad design does to what otherwise would be a good product. Being a neon person, I've always laughed at some of the exaggerated and misleading advertising which occurred when led sign lighting was first introduced, as it made what otherwise was a technically reasonable product look like crap. Now that the market is beginning to sort itself out into real products and wanna-be crap, and the wanna-be's are slowly fading away (no pun intended), I'm seeing less and less of the technically stupid sales methodology. Still, every once in a while, some product pops up that makes you wonder. In this case, someone gave me a "100 LED" flashlight. Nice idea; nice unit. I've grown to like it, as it's really bright, especially on NiMH batteries (uses 4 AA cells). However, being typical China made consumer cra stuff, after a while it fell apart internally, so I was forced to take it apart for a little rework and redesign. Seems the battery contact assembly was only held in place by a dollup of hot glue, which was easy to fix (a bigger dollup). The big surprise was how it was wired: the LED were neatly soldered onto a fairly nice circuit board - but all in parallel! Two 26 gauge wires left the board and went to the battery socket / switch assembly. Inspection showed that the unit essentially connected 100 paralleled LEDs directly across 6 volts worth of battery. No series resistor (other than the wires and the internal resistance of the battery). No current limiting circuitry of any kind. I mean, what the hell were these people thinking? Obviously, they don't have a clue how an LED works, or what it's requirements are. Or didn't care. They treat LEDs as if they were light bulbs! Amazing! This is the kind of crap which gives an otherwise viable technology like LED a bad rap. Sorry to see it happen.... Rework into a correct configuration would be way more work that it's worth, so I guess I just run it to the point of failure, then move on....
  19. While it is funny, it's a classic example of the Law Of Unintended Consequences. Applies to a lot of stuff these days. (Another classic example is low flow toilets. Now cities have to spend a lot of time and money sending water trucks ['Camels'] around to flush down the sewer lines. And no, they don't use 'recycled' water to do this - just fresh fire hydrant fill...) Of course, money will fix the problem. Add intelligent heaters to the traffic signals that warm them only in near or below freezing conditions. In general, a thermistor, a comparator, and a power transistor on a heat sink ought to do the trick. Now integrate that into a single chip, and add it to the LED lamp assemblies that go in the traffic signals.
  20. Whatever you do, DO NOT use those blue insulation-piercing wire couplers commonly seen in automotive add-on kits. They're complete crap, and make marginal to lousy connections. Sorry, gotta vent. Hate those things...
  21. If you have a setup like this: then it's no big deal. But it represents big bucks... As stated, temperature control is the big issue. And there's always the UL problem: you're modifying a listed product...
  22. Hey Clive, Wondered when you would discover this forum. Welcome!
  23. It's usually a symptom that they can't get anybody else to write anything (for free...)
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