Extending the Life of Neon

I'm a little confused here. I always thought that Neon lights used neon transformers with an output of 5000 to 26,000 Volts AC. I have never seen or heard of a neon light using a ballast. Flourescent lights do require ballasts in order to prevent damage from excessive current (similar to thermal runaway). I thought that newer neons use switched mode power supplies but still supply High Voltage AC at very low current. If I'm wrong as a result of my advanced age memory screw-ups - I hope one of you wiser minds will set me straight and help hairlesssimian to understand what is going on.

Years ago I lived in a house with a long neon tube surrounding the porch, running on an old 9000 Volt Transformer. It ran day and night for about 6 years without being reset, turned off, or having a dead ballast. In fact there was no ballast. In deed if the ballast people would have told me to turn it off once a day, I probably would have fired them since they weren't too neccesary anyway.

Neon lights use a high voltage transformer that is self ballasting because they need a high voltage to start the arc in the gas, but a much lower voltage to surtain it. The AC voltage declines and resurges every cycle and arc latency prevents the arc from being extinguished so as the volts rise it lights again. A high speed shot of a neon reveals this. the high voltage switchers are much the same, but the arc frequency is far higher, 25,000 to 100,000 HZ, so they dim very little between spikes.

Neons gradually fail due to metal deposition on the inside, much like fluorescents darken on the end.

The transformers will not fail if properly varnished and rated. Loose or embrittled varnish allows fatigue caused by vibration to break the wire. Failure under load causes an en situ arc that burns longer and longer until it fails by length or causes a fire.

It is the transformer (known as lead peak transformer) which is at fault, and specifically the quality of insulating material , may it be varnish or inter-coil insulation.

The Life of electrical equipement is based on contineous running condition. So if somebody ask you to give rest to ballast/transformer then he is not right.

I said inter-coil isulation because I looked after manufacturing of these transformers for GEC (1980s). I invstigated and corrected the cause of failure. There after we had no complain what so ever. That was the time when I introduced accelerated life test facility for ballast and small transformers in GEC subsidary factory (Hindco Lighting Industry Mumbai).

there is a lot of it on Ebay from US suppliers with Chinese connections.

http://shop.ebay.com/?_from=R40&_trksid=p3907.m38.l1313&_nkw=el+wire&_sacat=See-All-Categories

When your company get tired of those enormous power bills with Neon, contact me about LED Border Lighting..

donald

And/or try this: http://www.thatscoolwire.com/

If I had the budget, believe me, we would be converting more than the neon to LED... Maybe when the economy picks up again I'll have a chance of selling the long term savings, but until then I'm stuck with neon tubes, incandescents and fluorescents....

You don't identify the type of ballast - core & coil (magnetic) or electronic. The older style magnetic ones are typically heavy, black metal boxes with a transformer covered in tar. The electronics tend to be aluminum extrusions and much lighter in weight. The magnetics tend to run hotter, so if they're on 24/7, they may simply be over-heating and burning out. If the lighting ficture is an Approved device and it's installed properly, it should not be overheating. Other things that could cause failures is poor quality source voltage - either voltage or frequency. Both of these could cause excessive heating in a ballast and shorten life.

I would do 3 things:

1 - make sure the fixtures have an Approval mark from a recognized Cerification/Approval body,

2 - look up the information from the light fixture manufacturer and make sure they're installed as intended, and

3 - have the supply voltage and frequency monitored for several days to make sure it's within spec

Good luck and let us know what you discover so that we can all learn.

Grae

OK, I've learned a lot already, I'm still a little in the dark but I may have to solve some of that on my own...

I will try to verify this, but since the fixture in question is less then 5 years old I'm going to guess that it is an electronic ballast/transformer.

I have not personally metered all the power in the building but I have spoken with the lead electrician who installed all the power in the building and he swears it's good everywhere. My experience has been that our voltage is within a 5% tolerance, I have not personally checked the frequency but I would be very surprised if there was anything unusual there

This is a new city owned facility so the likelihood of any electrical components not being at least UL Listed is pretty slim (unless we got hit with counterfeits), however that also means we probably didn't get anything 'top shelf' unless it was specifically specified by the architect or consultant and then made it passed 'the committee'