How many of you still use small incandescent lamps?

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
Lovely oscillators, but they only do one trick, sine waves.
A 1970 design gives me squares and triangles with swept frequency outputs.
Some have frequency markers, burst settings, and all manner of cool things.
 

ian field

Joined Oct 27, 2012
6,536
Lovely oscillators, but they only do one trick, sine waves.
A 1970 design gives me squares and triangles with swept frequency outputs.
Some have frequency markers, burst settings, and all manner of cool things.
Some of them do another neat trick - an early HP oscillator was reported to have turned up on an auction site with an impressive number of noughts on the price tag.
 

GopherT

Joined Nov 23, 2012
8,009
Some of them do another neat trick - an early HP oscillator was reported to have turned up on an auction site with an impressive number of noughts on the price tag.
A professor in grad school had one as a paperweight on his desk for years. I better check in to see if he still has it.
 

#12

Joined Nov 30, 2010
18,224
I had one of those paperweights, but I turned it into a boat anchor without any thought that I was going to last another 40 years and it would be worth something in the money department. :(
 

ian field

Joined Oct 27, 2012
6,536
I still have my 200 CD, just hope that the tubes hold out a little longer.
You can actually cheat - there is one manufacturer that makes high voltage depletion mode MOSFETs, as long as grids are just control, screen and suppressor, you can ignore the screen and suppressor and just feed the control grid signal to the gate.

You can also get away with a high power high voltage enhancement MOSFET, but you have to have a transistor to set the gate voltage by sensing the source current - if there isn't a well bypassed cathode resistor, you're out of luck.

Even simpler still; if the anode current isn't too high, you can use a JFET in casc_o_de with a high voltage power enhancement MOSFET.
 

bhvm

Joined Jul 16, 2009
53
I do not use nay, but I do have a box of over 3k little lamps leftover from my childhood. I used to collect various NICE shaped lamps as hobby. Some of these are exotic that look like diamond shape. Other looks like a planet with a ring (Saturn). I also have a railway 24v bulb that my grandpa gave me.

Most of the lamps though are-
Christmas lights (various colours)
6V torch (kisan torch)
6v halogens
6w Tiny fluoro tubes
6v auto bulbs
12v motorcycle bulbs
12v H4 Car bulbs
Tractor bulbs
24v Truck bulbs.
 

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,389
Hi,

I had to think about this for a minute. I dont use any incandescent bulbs anymore except in the car and at Christmas time.

I've always deeply hated the color of regular incandescent bulbs, especially in flashlights. Not only that, the flashlight bulbs always had a really really nasty light pattern with all kinds of junk in the pattern. It was better than a flame torch, that's the only reason i used one at all.

Then came the white LED. That changed everything. My first LED flashlight was a single Nichia 5mm that needed a lens on the front just to get a usable amount of brightness in one little spot out in front. I still liked it better than any flashlight i ever had.

Now we have Cree, and with that the world looks more lit up than ever before, and there's no strange artifacts in the pattern or anything like that.
And there's nothing else that can touch the brightness per package size. The LED light i have now lights up the whole back yard and still fits in the back pocket.

Oven lights and refrigerator lights...
They dont really need to be internal either if you dont mind opening the door first. The light can be mounted externally out in front a little so when the door is open the light shines in from the front. I did my refridge light like that as that has to be opened to see inside anyway.
For ovens there can probably be a little glass chamber with the LED inside, with a small fan to keep air circulating from outside the oven through the small chamber to keep the LED cool. Downside is it would have to run any time the oven is on, not just when the LED is on.
 

ian field

Joined Oct 27, 2012
6,536
Not had any filament house bulbs for a while, the last was for a remote controlled dimmer for the bedroom reading light, the light switch is at the wrong end of the room and can't use a CFL with the remote switch.

The landlord insisted on putting a splashproof fitting in the bog - the dumbass electrical contractor fitted the wrong ballast, so the 2D florescent tube took ages to start - and took a little longer every time! The tube died completely in a few months so I fitted an electronic ballast - that got me another year out of the old tube and its replacement is still going.

Since noticing that a local discount store has 4W LED GU10 bulbs, I've been collecting GU10 sockets - all I need now is someone else in the flats to damage their bog light fitting so the electrician throws the old one in the bin room where I can rescue it. All I need is the steel plate everythings mounted on to build the LED conversion on.
 

Metalmann

Joined Dec 8, 2012
703
Hi,

I had to think about this for a minute. I dont use any incandescent bulbs anymore except in the car and at Christmas time.

I've always deeply hated the color of regular incandescent bulbs, especially in flashlights. Not only that, the flashlight bulbs always had a really really nasty light pattern with all kinds of junk in the pattern. It was better than a flame torch, that's the only reason i used one at all.

Then came the white LED. That changed everything. My first LED flashlight was a single Nichia 5mm that needed a lens on the front just to get a usable amount of brightness in one little spot out in front. I still liked it better than any flashlight i ever had.

Now we have Cree, and with that the world looks more lit up than ever before, and there's no strange artifacts in the pattern or anything like that.
And there's nothing else that can touch the brightness per package size. The LED light i have now lights up the whole back yard and still fits in the back pocket.

Oven lights and refrigerator lights...
They dont really need to be internal either if you dont mind opening the door first. The light can be mounted externally out in front a little so when the door is open the light shines in from the front. I did my refridge light like that as that has to be opened to see inside anyway.
For ovens there can probably be a little glass chamber with the LED inside, with a small fan to keep air circulating from outside the oven through the small chamber to keep the LED cool. Downside is it would have to run any time the oven is on, not just when the LED is on.













"Then came the white LED. That changed everything."


I hear that.

Now I have a few 100, and 50 watts work lights, in smaller spaces.
So much brighter, and longer lasting than incandescent.
 

MrAl

Joined Jun 17, 2014
11,389
"Then came the white LED. That changed everything."


I hear that.

Now I have a few 100, and 50 watts work lights, in smaller spaces.
So much brighter, and longer lasting than incandescent.
Hi,

Yeah it is amazing how white LEDs have changed lighting and i expect it to continue as LEDs advance more and more (hopefully).

I now have a flashlight smaller than a 12 ounce can of Coke that lights up the whole back yard using only two 18650 Li-ion cells. It changes the way i think about night time outdoors now! It has seven Cree XML LEDs in it, so that says it all i guess :)
 
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lightingman

Joined Apr 19, 2007
374
For stage and theatre work, it is still the incandescent lamp that wins every time. I still use them from 6 volt LES to 240 volt @ 2Kw G38 TH lamps.

Daniel.
 

ian field

Joined Oct 27, 2012
6,536
For stage and theatre work, it is still the incandescent lamp that wins every time. I still use them from 6 volt LES to 240 volt @ 2Kw G38 TH lamps.

Daniel.
After the early blue-tinged LEDs, even halogen look a bit yellow.

I think they've moved on to UV LEDs with white phosphor to replace the old blue ones with yellow phosphor.
 

lightingman

Joined Apr 19, 2007
374
Having said that we still use incandescent lamps, we do have some DMX controlled RGB LED units that I built myself. I am also going to convert our 1Kw CSI followspots to use 300 watt LED's. The main reasons for this is that they will run much cooler, but mainly the cost of the CSI lamps @ £193.00 each, for a 500 hour life, compared to £32.00 each for the 300 watt LED.

Daniel.
 
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