Joule Thief

[xee2]

@ Pirate88179

I don't have a large tube, but it will light up pretty bright when doing the Tesla magic trick. I removed lead to the battery negative clip.

EDIT: frequency is about 10 KHz

[Pirate88179]

Last night, I took apart a CFL and unfortunately, one of the 4 wires broke off down inside the thermal cement at the base of the bulb.  The others I have taken apart had longer leads that you could cut.  This one when you pried the base off it was being held to the circuit board by these leads.

Anyway, I hooked up one wire from each side of the coiled glass tube to the Fuji board and it would not light.....unless I touched the glass tube somewhere.  No matter how I hooked up the wires (Minus the broken one) this was the case.  I didn't take any photos because 1.  I had to be touching the tube and did not want to damage my camera with any voltage passing through me, and 2. although it did light up it was not very bright and I was not impressed.  This may have been too large of a bulb as it was supposed to replace 100 watt incandescent ones.  Also, it was burned out which was why I took it apart in the first place.

Does any one else have this problem with cfl's?  I live in a very small place and all of my bulbs are cfl's. I use about 12 of them.  In the last 6 months, I have had to replace 7 of them that burned out, three of which burned up. (actually caught fire!!!)  Last year, I had to replace about 4 of them.  I have only been using these for about a year and a half.  In my experience, they don't last anywhere near as long as my old Edison bulbs.  And now, in the US we are being forced to buy these as regular light bulbs will soon be illegal.  I can buy GE cfl's (made in China) or some off brand (made in China) and it does not seem to make a difference on longevity.

I would be interested in knowing any of you guy's experience with these things.  Thanks.

Bill

[xee2]

@ Pirate88179

Wow - caught on fire, how scary. I have been using them for several years. My patio light is on all night, every night, and lasts for about two years. I think they are all made in China.

[MrMag]

A couple of things about the CFL's.

First, there have been many house fires in the last couple of years that were caused by CFL's. I'll have to try and dig up that article. Secondly, the CFL's purchased in North America do not have a power factor correcting capacitor in them. This means that we are actually paying for more hydro then we are actually using. These capacitors would probably cost an additional .02 cents to have them installed. As far as I am aware, the CFL's in Europe do have these capacitors. The problem here in Canada is that the European bulb are not CSA certified meaning we can't use them. If our house happens to burn down because of the CFL, and they can see that the bulb is not CSA approved, good luck in collecting insurance. I have that article too somewhere. If anyone would like to see it, let me know and I'll dig them up.

Tim

[Mk1]

xee2, tesla stick !nice! Have tried a earth ground instead of your body for negative pole ?

Also could we modify the remaining circuit in the the cfl blub to work from a AA cell, changing the transistor ?