Gas discharge bulb

I don't know anything about your particular bulb, but as far as I do know, most gas-discharge bulbs require an initial high voltage strike to ionize t he gas, which can be followed by a lower maintaining voltage. Neon bulbs an d nixie tubes work this way -- they become essentially constant voltage zen ers once ionized. A series resistor typically provides the current limiting and drops the excess voltage.

I think other forms of discharge lamps work in a similar fashion. However, some sort of electronic ballast is used and is more efficient than using a resistor.

Thank you.

The best I could do with the unit was to get the bulb to light dimly...maybe equal to a 50 watt incandescent at best.

I had no schematic and the wires were a rat's nest.

Difficult things to test other than by substituting , both ways. Be very aware, the strike voltage is of the order 5,000 volts, repeated until something like full current passage.

Forgot to say, because of the 5KV initially, for lash-up testing with known good supply / known good lamp, you need extra sleeving around the hookup wires.

Are you sure about all these details?

From your description, I'm thinking this could be a Mercury short-arc lamp. Check eBay item 201564167114 and see if your bulb looks something like that.

If so, it takes a high voltage to strike the arc, and then runs something like 4 A at 60 V or so, for a 200 W lamp.

Mercury short-arc lamps (as opposed to Xenon lamps) have a couple of really STRONG UV lines that are good for exposing photosensitive materials used in the screen printing industry. And, WATCH out for your eyes, the UV out of these things can be BRUTAL! ONE minute exposure will give you a blistering sunburn.

There are other exposing lights I've seen that had a zig-zag tube like a tiny neon sign lamp. I've never seen the power supply for those.

Jon

The high voltage was not working...I was getting 600 volts max

It is not one of those, thank you, I will post a photo later. There is nothing inside that I can see.

At any rate, if this halogen lamp works, it will probably be safer

yeah, we need to know what type of lamp really. Telling us the light colour would be a start, and over how long the brightness increases.

NT

Found a part number , it's this

It seems to be a 5000 watt lamp

HID lamps aren't my thing, but I believe they take a huge voltage spike to start. Halogen will give a small fraction of the output at that wavelength, increasing process times hugely.

NT

He said that it could do a burn in a minute or two but he does not need to go that fast. He is hoping to do it in less than 15 minutes...so I will have to wait for him to test it to see if it works at all.

Thank you

Be very careful with that lamp. They are under very high pressure and can explode if dropped or scratched.

If it doesn't work, I'd check all those alternate part numbers in your link and see if any of those lamps could be matched to a ballast. You might be able to source a stand alone board. Or email companies like Ushio and see if they can help.

Thanks for the warning, I'm going to wrap it carefully and put it in a safe place.

OK but I hope the halogen lamp I have in there does the job.

Note also numerous warnings about "DO NOT TOUCH" Finger oils on the bulb can cause catastrophic failures.

--
"I am a river to my people." 
Jeff-1.0 
WA6FWi 
http:foxsmercantile.com

Thanks

That much I knew, I wore clean cotton gloves.

5000 W?? YIKES! OK, there should be standard ballasts for this type of lamp. Possibly bulbworks can point you to a source for the ballast. Unless you area REAL electronics guru, a failed ballast would be tricky (and dangerous) to repair.

And, be insanely cautious with this thing, a 5 KW UV light source will take your skin off with just a few seconds exposure. I got a severe sunburn trying to set up the optics with a 200 W short arc lamp, and I was barely exposed for a minute before deciding I needed to pop in a grain of wheat bulb for initial setup.

Jon

At this point it would be impossible for me to put the thing back together again in it's original configuration.