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Hello friends and fellow thinkers in the realm,
Have you changed out all your old style light bulbs for the new energy saver compact fluorescents yet?
Indoors and outdoor floods also?
Do you have a place where a bulb is hard to get to and its a problem to change it out?
Does it bother you like it has me for years that they can build a light bulb and predict with a high rate of accuracy how many hours that bulb will last. Some from 800 hours to over 2400 hour rating.
If they can build em to last between that window and predict their lifespan then its only common sense that it was designed that way for a purpose, that purpose being more future sales. And if they could build one to 2400 hours could it be they could have designed one to also last a liftime but never released that model? I think you get the picture here.
What if I were to tell you that I designed a very simple circuit to make the cheapest of these bulbs last forever? Well at least to the best of knowledge that is the case.
And what if I told you that when I built this circuit it had only two
components that cost 2 bucks at the shack (Radio Shack) would that interest you? Today those same components will cost you a little over 3 bucks retail for you wanting to get your feet wet and who may like to try your hand here at a simple electronics build. A build even a young child could do.
Let me first tell you the story of how it was that I came up with this being a newbie to electronics myself, well that is not exactly true as I fixed my first electric appliance at age 4 which was a toaster for bread slices. I was one of these problem children that was facinated with how stuff worked, and my first experiment at around age 2 was to stick a
screwdriver into a wall socket to see what would happen. I was unharmed but the wall instantly cracked floor to ceiling when the wires inside the wall got real hot real fast and shot sparks out some of the crack. So needless to say I figured at that point that was no longer a good idea. Anyway years later (now in adulthood) I decided I craved a deeper understanding of electricity and in electronic in particular. So I went down to the shack and purchased every book and mini engineers books they had, and began to attempt to teach myself about this subject. I am a little slow sometimes of catching the concepts of different components and how they worked and interacted together but was getting the basic parts like resistors and capacitors and a few others down with a good basic understanding of what I was dealing with. I already had a soldering Iron and some solder I used in my auto shop, so had the basic tools needed to do a few things. Then one day my grandfather stopped by for a visit and we got on the topic of light bulbs burning out, as the lamp next to the couch burned out when i went to turn it on for us. My grandfather then related his childhood years and how the light bulbs seemed to last for many many years as he was growing up. I then was curious why things were that way. I was then possessed to ask him some questions as to see if he could recall what system of power they were using then and asked if it was the Edison system as I also bought some Tesla books from another source and knew that for a time Edison's system predated Tesla's AC system. You see my grandfather was about 80 years old at that time and just recently died at the age of 96. He replied he believed it was Edison's electric system which to me ment DC power. So I pondered this for a week or so and started to think about automotive lamps and how long they lasted with a DC system, in spite of all the shocks to the filament as the vehicle went down even the roughest of roads.
That is when the light came on in my head that a DC bulb could outlast an AC bulb both having similar type filaments. Then I came up with one of my theories to why AC bulbs could be designed to last a predicted amount of time based upon how heavy the filament was and the stresses upon it by a fluctuating AC current of 60 Hz, or in laymans terms 60 cycles of the electricity going from negative to positive in one second at an elevated voltage of 120 instead of 12 volt common to most vehicles. So to test my theory I first needed to find out if i could convert an AC bulb to run off DC electricity using an electronic circuit. Since I
was by no means an electronics engineer nor electrical either and having limited knowledge I decided to throw together a simple two component circuit, no PC board nothing but the two components. One was a full wave bride rectifier I chose to be rated at 4 times the input
amperage of a 100 watt bulb which was about 1 amp of power that would surge through it....so It was rated at up to 400 volts AC and 4 amps of current. I figured that would be plenty safe enough for my experiment. Then I picked a 1 MFD capacitor to solder across the plus and minus legs of the full wave bridge rectifier leaving 2 more legs for the AC cord to the wall. I then thought I should dip the 2 component package into dipping rubberized plastic few times one uses on
common household pliers to insulate the handles and make em more comfortable to grip. I then placed it inline on the power cord of a cheap clamp light ficture with the bell shaped hood, you know the ones, then proceeded to plug it in which was a little un-nerving being it was AC I was playing with right off the wall socket. To my surprise it WORKED!!!!....but the 100 watt bulb was now dimmer like it was about 60 watts of light. I then tested everything with my trusty Digital
multimeter with frequency meter also and determined it wasn't using but about 60 watts now at 0 hz. After that I made up another one and placed it in the base of the lamp next to the couch that set on an end table, the same one I mentioned above and then decided to never turn it off to see if eliminating the stress on the filament of 60 Hz would cause it to last longer, and well the rest is history as I gave you that part of the story already.
So you may think this really does not save energy, but would that be true? I calculated that 800 hour bulb should have lasted 33 days running 24/7 and it lasted for about ten years before I lost tract of the lamp stand it was in. So doing the math that bulb lasted as long as 110 bulbs just like it and it was still working when the lamp went away. So how much energy does it take to melt glass into a form of a light and make 110 bulbs including all the other automated equipment to do so. What about all the landfill space no longer taken up by 110 broken light bulb bases? In fact that bulb outlasted even the best new bulbs that make today and I spent 25 cents on that bulb on sale. And saved countless minutes changing the bulbs out. Wasted time I could have used more productively....like reading posts here in this forum.....
Good Day!1!!....24
PS...on a side note I also noticed my eyes were far less fatigued when reading by the unmodified type or even the new style CFL. I could read for hours by that light...no 60 Hz flicker.
Have you changed out all your old style light bulbs for the new energy saver compact fluorescents yet?
Indoors and outdoor floods also?
Do you have a place where a bulb is hard to get to and its a problem to change it out?
Does it bother you like it has me for years that they can build a light bulb and predict with a high rate of accuracy how many hours that bulb will last. Some from 800 hours to over 2400 hour rating.
If they can build em to last between that window and predict their lifespan then its only common sense that it was designed that way for a purpose, that purpose being more future sales. And if they could build one to 2400 hours could it be they could have designed one to also last a liftime but never released that model? I think you get the picture here.
What if I were to tell you that I designed a very simple circuit to make the cheapest of these bulbs last forever? Well at least to the best of knowledge that is the case.
And what if I told you that when I built this circuit it had only two
components that cost 2 bucks at the shack (Radio Shack) would that interest you? Today those same components will cost you a little over 3 bucks retail for you wanting to get your feet wet and who may like to try your hand here at a simple electronics build. A build even a young child could do.
Let me first tell you the story of how it was that I came up with this being a newbie to electronics myself, well that is not exactly true as I fixed my first electric appliance at age 4 which was a toaster for bread slices. I was one of these problem children that was facinated with how stuff worked, and my first experiment at around age 2 was to stick a
screwdriver into a wall socket to see what would happen. I was unharmed but the wall instantly cracked floor to ceiling when the wires inside the wall got real hot real fast and shot sparks out some of the crack. So needless to say I figured at that point that was no longer a good idea. Anyway years later (now in adulthood) I decided I craved a deeper understanding of electricity and in electronic in particular. So I went down to the shack and purchased every book and mini engineers books they had, and began to attempt to teach myself about this subject. I am a little slow sometimes of catching the concepts of different components and how they worked and interacted together but was getting the basic parts like resistors and capacitors and a few others down with a good basic understanding of what I was dealing with. I already had a soldering Iron and some solder I used in my auto shop, so had the basic tools needed to do a few things. Then one day my grandfather stopped by for a visit and we got on the topic of light bulbs burning out, as the lamp next to the couch burned out when i went to turn it on for us. My grandfather then related his childhood years and how the light bulbs seemed to last for many many years as he was growing up. I then was curious why things were that way. I was then possessed to ask him some questions as to see if he could recall what system of power they were using then and asked if it was the Edison system as I also bought some Tesla books from another source and knew that for a time Edison's system predated Tesla's AC system. You see my grandfather was about 80 years old at that time and just recently died at the age of 96. He replied he believed it was Edison's electric system which to me ment DC power. So I pondered this for a week or so and started to think about automotive lamps and how long they lasted with a DC system, in spite of all the shocks to the filament as the vehicle went down even the roughest of roads.
That is when the light came on in my head that a DC bulb could outlast an AC bulb both having similar type filaments. Then I came up with one of my theories to why AC bulbs could be designed to last a predicted amount of time based upon how heavy the filament was and the stresses upon it by a fluctuating AC current of 60 Hz, or in laymans terms 60 cycles of the electricity going from negative to positive in one second at an elevated voltage of 120 instead of 12 volt common to most vehicles. So to test my theory I first needed to find out if i could convert an AC bulb to run off DC electricity using an electronic circuit. Since I
was by no means an electronics engineer nor electrical either and having limited knowledge I decided to throw together a simple two component circuit, no PC board nothing but the two components. One was a full wave bride rectifier I chose to be rated at 4 times the input
amperage of a 100 watt bulb which was about 1 amp of power that would surge through it....so It was rated at up to 400 volts AC and 4 amps of current. I figured that would be plenty safe enough for my experiment. Then I picked a 1 MFD capacitor to solder across the plus and minus legs of the full wave bridge rectifier leaving 2 more legs for the AC cord to the wall. I then thought I should dip the 2 component package into dipping rubberized plastic few times one uses on
common household pliers to insulate the handles and make em more comfortable to grip. I then placed it inline on the power cord of a cheap clamp light ficture with the bell shaped hood, you know the ones, then proceeded to plug it in which was a little un-nerving being it was AC I was playing with right off the wall socket. To my surprise it WORKED!!!!....but the 100 watt bulb was now dimmer like it was about 60 watts of light. I then tested everything with my trusty Digital
multimeter with frequency meter also and determined it wasn't using but about 60 watts now at 0 hz. After that I made up another one and placed it in the base of the lamp next to the couch that set on an end table, the same one I mentioned above and then decided to never turn it off to see if eliminating the stress on the filament of 60 Hz would cause it to last longer, and well the rest is history as I gave you that part of the story already.
So you may think this really does not save energy, but would that be true? I calculated that 800 hour bulb should have lasted 33 days running 24/7 and it lasted for about ten years before I lost tract of the lamp stand it was in. So doing the math that bulb lasted as long as 110 bulbs just like it and it was still working when the lamp went away. So how much energy does it take to melt glass into a form of a light and make 110 bulbs including all the other automated equipment to do so. What about all the landfill space no longer taken up by 110 broken light bulb bases? In fact that bulb outlasted even the best new bulbs that make today and I spent 25 cents on that bulb on sale. And saved countless minutes changing the bulbs out. Wasted time I could have used more productively....like reading posts here in this forum.....
Good Day!1!!....24
PS...on a side note I also noticed my eyes were far less fatigued when reading by the unmodified type or even the new style CFL. I could read for hours by that light...no 60 Hz flicker.
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