Early compact fluoro failure - Philips

"Nobody is Stupider than Sylvia Else"

The pics show NOTHING that would cause early failure.

Just another boring, f****it troll from the maddest bitch in Sydney.

.... Phil

When lamps ' were blown ' in Newcastle Australia a few years ago, most brands originated from that factory. No doubt the same is happening in China these days. But at a standard far below those that came from Newcastle. For instance I have found a greater number of lamps where the glass bulb detaches from the base at a far greater frequency these days.

The ' poorly insulated wires ' have nothing to do with the failure. How would they be shorting? How would they short to the ' underside of the circuit board '? It would be physically impossible without tampering

Because of the position of the insulating sleeve on the uppermost wire, it can short to its adjacent wire which has no insulation. In the second picture, the two wires can be seen to be touching just to the right of the platic base fo which the tube is attached. As I've indicated, the wires themselves are either not insulated at all, or the insulation is poor, because I can make contact along their length using multimeter probes.

When the lamp is assembled the wires lie along the back of the circuit board. Where the wires have no insulating sleeve, they can make contact with the circuit tracks and component leads on the back of the board. The lower three wires can all make contact with something they should not on the back of the circuit board adjacent to the connecting pins.

Sylvia.

We can't move forward if you keep holding back Phil.

Phil Allis> "Nobody is Stupider than Sylvia Else"

I guess some of us are just more reserved.

Also top posting makes him a bit narky too.

Dennis wrote:

:-)

Unfortunately true. But I try not to reward bad companies with more of my money as the very least I can do.

MrT.

"mark krawczuk"

There was for a time a small pic of her on the net when she was the secretary of the NLP ( defunct nudist party in NSW ) - it showed a skinny and very plain gal of about 35 or 40.

.... Phil

bitch ? is she female then ? she can email me at : snipped-for-privacy@adam.com.au

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Are they enamelled copper wire ? That should be able to cope with any voltages present in that circuit ?

That spaghetti over the top would mostly be for protection from heat ?

If it is enameled it can not be any good as Sylvia made contact along wire with the meter probes

.com.au

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I wonder how good the enamelled wire is in the transformer then ? Might be worth looking at, but also might not be from the same supplier.

An earlier post indicated that the wire leading to the tube is a special alloy to handle the high temperatures associated with being inserted into the molten glass during the tube manufacture. I haven't checked, but it seems plausible. If that's the case, the the transformer won't use the same wire.

Sylvia.

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Unless there is obvious damage to the circuitry such as a violently blown fuse, or burnt, damaged components, you could try to wire a regular fluro tube to the PCB and see if it lights. This would indicate whether or not the circuitry is still operating, or was damaged. If there was a short from that wire to the board, there would be a good chance of damage to the circuitry.

I have since dismantled several failed CFL (various brands with date of purchase going back as far as 2002), All have that same type of woven (heat resistant) sleeving over the leads, In many cases the wires in those sleeves are bare In all cases they had an open circuit filament which was likely the reason for failure.

One Philips CFL had a different design to yours, an extremely compact plastic base, the PCB was mounted upside down (solder side of the PCB facing the tube) with 2 cutouts in the PCB's for where the tube ends come through the base. How they fit all the circuitry on the remaining board space was remarkable.

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probes.

I've determined that one of the heater elements is open circuit. This wouldn't happen as a result of the two wires shorting together, but it could happen as a result of the uninsulated wire touching something on the circuit board that it shouldn't.

Sounds like the more recent one I diassembled for comparison. The significant difference from the failed one, apart from all the wires being insulated, is that the insulation was about as long is it could be, rather than only 2/3 the length of the wire it was insulating.

The board had a rather strange shape - one which I suspect was designed to allow a denser use of the manufactred boards, albeit at the cost having curved cuts.

Sylvia.

nah, it's that alloy they use for wires that go through glass. no coating other than natural oxidisation.

it's heat proof spaghetti, but probably to avoid shorts between the wires.

shorts to the PCB should be impossible if the wires are pulled tight before wrapping.

They clearly weren't.

I'm far from sure it's a good idea any, since in would increse the thermal cycling stresses.

Sylvia.