Shedding rather little light

[unixronin]

Remember this failed CFL?

I got a reply back about it from Sylvania's failure analysis department yesterday.  It says, in part:

It appears an electronic component failed causing smoke to be released and charring to occur to the inside of the lamp enclosure.

Well, duh.  I told you that on the phone.  It didn't take rocket science to reach that conclusion.

The material used for the enclosure is chosen for its ability to sustain such heat and not allow a hazardous condition to occur.

Considering that the malfunction in the ballast circuitry melted a half-inch hole in the housing, I find it a little difficult to agree that the housing material succeeded in this stated mission.  Had there been plastic-insulated lamp wiring adjacent to that spot, this could easily have melted the insulation on the wires and caused a short, which in turn could have caused an electrical fire or caused the track-light housing to become live.

Comments

[rhionnach.livejournal.com]

I had recently replaced a bulb in an uplighter with the very same kind as your photo. It worked well at first, giving off a good light, so I tohught you might just have been unlucky. However, it gradually became duller and duller unitl the day I came in to discover a dull, pinky light which was no good whatsoever. At that point I replaced it, remembering the photo you had posted. Maybe there's been a bad batch or something.

[unixronin.livejournal.com]

That sounds like the ballast went south. I've had one lamp that developed a fault in the ballast which caused it to start flickering badly.

[metahacker.livejournal.com]

Wow. You know that old joke about "What if tech support existed for light bulbs?" Y'know, with lines like "We have the same light bulb in *our* office, and it's working fine here."

Didn't think it'd become reality.

[ithildae.livejournal.com]

We did a one act play about a group of mediocre super heroes. One of them was Master of the Obvious. He was always just a bit slow on the uptake, and restated what everyone had already figured out, and moved past. It sounds like he got a new job when their office closed.