Ballast wiring

[Dave2010]

can anybody explain why the wiring drawings for the 2 ballasts are slightly different however, i wired the white tridonic by just changing the wires from the luxline over (like a 1 to 1 method) and everything still worked fine. Its an EM light also but that works fine anyways.

cheers

tridonic


luxline

 

[thomsonayy]

yea looks good

 

[ColJack]

shouldn't work..
the first shows the 2 lamps in series, the second shown them in parallel..

shouldn't work really, or if it does you might be shortening the lamps life by putting more through it than it should take..

 

[Dave2010]

hmm anything i can do to check this is the case?

dont really fancy re-wiring the fitting as its not worth it. I took the original ballast into CEF and was given the tridonic as replacement?

does anybody ever bother replacing ballast or do people just replace full fitting

cheers

 

[333rocky333]

For a standard twin fitting
Luxline use two wires to one lampholder then parrelel over to the second lampholder,
with the 8 terminal tridonic you remove them links and bring two new wires back to the ballast.

With an emergency fitting its more involved

Edit
For a standard fitting
You seem to have a 6 terminal tridonic so you alter the links at one end and use 1 existing wire to each holder.
link between the other two only

 

[Dave2010]

ok cheers

so where could i go from here? Is it a major problem with what i have done or would it be OK to leave as is?

Anybody know if you can get a direct replacement ballast?

 

[pheonix]

I'm a lighting maintenace engineer and replace lighting control gear all the time.

How you've wired up the replacement Tridonic ballast, wire for wire, should pose no problems whatsoever as rocky has said

 

[Dave2010]

so do i need to alter the fixed wiring in the fitting then? and with it been an EM light does it make it more complicated?

just seems strange that if it is wired incorrectly it is working??

 

[333rocky333]

You still have two filaments in parralel whereas the tridonic should have the two filaments in series, as coljack said it could affect the lamp life.

Really you need to go with the emergency unit drawing rather than the ballast one.
As that will be wired to operate just one lamp.

Luxline are used in a lot of foreign fittings and not always easy to get.
Not sure but philips ballasts may be similar using Two wire, parelel filaments.

 

[ColJack]

if the writing on them is to believed...

the tridonic shows 250V through 2 fillaments in series meaning 125V across each one.. ( if wired as shown )

the luxline shows 300V through 2 fillaments in parallel meaning 300V across each one..

since you haven't altered the wiring from parallel to series then the tridonic is putting 250V across each fillament so not much difference as far as the lamps are concerned, but you might shorten the ballast life by making it work harder.

 

[ericmark]

Although one in series and other in parallel there may not be any heater voltage anyway. With some inverters the voltage produced between the two electrodes is enough to fire without using heaters in fact some EX ratted fittings have single pin for each side with no heaters fitted.

Since you have wired series instead of parallel even if heaters are used you will have reduced the voltage so unlikely to burn out heaters but may not start as quick if heaters are used.

As to the voltages quoted by "ColJack" I don't think any where near. Heaters will normally have less than 10 volt across them the volts will vary according to ease of striking. Looking at 12vdc versions the secondary is wound to two trappings either end and pre-strike you can get 300+ volts across the lamp so around 6v across heaters on strike the total voltage drops according to tube used to more like 60 volts across tube and 1.2v across heaters.

Of course it should be wired as per diagram but as long as they fire not likely to do too much harm the direction you have gone but likely if heaters are used that the tube will fail earlier than if wired correct. Not through burnt out heaters but due to not firing.

This in turn can mean inverter will also fail as when tube fails the inverter produces very high voltages which tend to shorten their life. Hence why it is important to change tubes as soon as they fail and not wait until a number have failed then renew a group together.

 

[ColJack]

why put my name in quotes?

as to the voltages I quoted, I was only going by what is written on the ballasts..
one says Uout = 250V, the other says Uout = 300V..

 

[slup]

why put my name in quotes?

Presumably, you are not actually called ColJack?