Archive for April 12th, 2018

Fluorescent Shop Light Ballasts, Redux

Posted by Ed in Electronics Workbench, Home Ec, Machine Shop on 2018-04-12

As usual, several shoplights didn’t survive the winter, so I gutted and rebuilt them with LED tubes. Even the fancy shoplights with genuine electronic ballasts survive less than nine years, as two of those eight “new” lamps have failed so far.

The dead ballast looks the same as it did before:

Electronic ballast - label

Electronic ballast – label

Some deft work with a cold chisel and my Designated Prydriver popped the top to reveal a plastic-wrapped circuit board:

Electronic ballast - interior wrapped

Electronic ballast – interior wrapped

Perhaps the flexy gunk reduces the sound level:

Electronic ballast - interior A

Electronic ballast – interior A

While also preventing casual failure analysis and organ harvesting:

Electronic ballast - interior B

Electronic ballast – interior B

The black gunk smells more like plastic and less like old-school tar. It’s definitely not a peel-able conformal coating.

One the other paw, the two magnetic ballasts in another lamp sported actual metal-film capacitors, which I harvested and tossed into the Big Box o’ Film Caps:

Shoplight choke ballast - film cap

Shoplight choke ballast – film cap

If a dying ballast didn’t also kill its fluorescent tube(s), I’d be less annoyed. I’m running the remaining tubes through the surviving fixtures, but the end is nigh for both.

The new LED tubes produce more light than the old fluorescents, although I still don’t like their 6500 K “daylight glow” color.

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