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Old 10-12-2017, 09:51 AM
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DavGoodlin DavGoodlin is offline
Motorola Minion
 
Join Date: Aug 2011
Location: near Strasburg PA
Posts: 3,400
I grew up around many different kinds of fluorescent lights in a machine shop built in several stages from 1946-1990. Knowing my grandfather, buying new lights was for the front of house areas, not the dark recesses of which there were many. I recall very few 4-foot fixtures that used trigger-start ballasts on 120 volts line. The ONE trigger start I do remember was in an obscure part of the basement above a 2-ton press, plugging in and using a pull-chain switch. Since the switch was simple and not the push to start type, it had the FS-30 or FS-40 glow-plug starters.

If you are going for flicker effect, find some 2-foot, 20 watt lamps and trigger-start ballasts and FS-20 starters.
These ballasts are simple coils (no capacitors, low power factor) pretty standard and look like a little transformer, potted with brown-gold varnish to eliminate mechanical buzz from the exposed, laminated core.

Most of the desk, bathroom vanity and under-cabinet 14 and 20 watt T12 lamps used a simple series inductor with momentary push-hold switch. This was cheaper than using a standard switch and starter.

Another thing to consider are T12 lamps, as many 4-foots are labeled "energy saving" and rated at 32 or 34 watts. these have a very narrow tolerance for cool temps and most rapid-start ballasts cannot light them in less-than-ideal conditions.

What I hoard if found are old 4-foot F40T12 lamps rated at 40 watts, usually "cool white" with the black end caps used by Sylvania and Westinghouse. These were phased out of production under EPACT of 1992. What I like is that these start under less than ideal temperatures. It is common to see watt-miser or similar regime-friendly "reduced wattage" lamps flickering as cold air is blown across from a ceiling AC diffuser.

Around my place, I have about half the fluorescents converted to T8 electronic instant-start ballasts. I found some early T8 ballasts for F32T8 made by Motorola that are actually rapid start, which blink a bit and make a urrnt-urnnt noise when they start.
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Last edited by DavGoodlin; 10-12-2017 at 10:03 AM.
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