The Lamp Room

Similar to the thread a while ago about NOS control gear, has anyone had any issues with NOS electronic CFL's?
Now some of the older 1990's ones are getting on a bit, it is a worry the electrolytic capacitors inside may begin to dry out and cause issues.

I'm not sure what actually happens when the EL cap in a CFL is dying, though if it doesn't cause a destructive failure of the ballast then in theory it should be possible to carefully pop open the lamps and re-cap them?

I’ve got several CFLs from the late ‘80s and the 90s but they all seem to work just fine.
They have worried myself about the caps drying out but so far I’ve seen no evidence of this happening.
Fingers crossed they will still be good a few decades from now!

This is what I've found so far too, they seem to work ok when tested, even those that haven't been stored in favourable conditions, so yes, fingers crossed it stays that way!

Some sources online state that the caps have a shelf life of as little as 2 or 3 years before they should be put into use, these CFL's (and of course the HF ballasts of the same era) are at least ten times that age. Perhaps the caps being 100% on spec is less critical in CFL's than it is in other electronic devices

I guess the ultimate test would be putting a 30 year old CFL into regular service and letting it run to EOL!

I've had a few pop over the years mainly GE and Philips ones. Sometimes due to poor storage normally

Did they just blow the fuse as soon as switched on or did it happen after being lit a while? I wonder if they'd still be repairable after that happening.

Yes I had. I mainly have issues with early chinese CFLs from the mid to late 90s, were some did not seem to work properly. However tgese are lamps from off brands not Osram or Philips.

I also had a near 100% failure rated within an hour of cold cathlde cfl lamps. I think there, the insulation of the high voltage transformer is breaking down to gast when they are not run and therefore dried regularly.

This is a likely theory. Do you have lamps which were not powered yet with which you can compare the transformer inductance ?

yes I do, i just need to find the time…

I've had a few Philips Genie lamps suffer from capacitor failure, usually causing the lamp to flicker on start-up or just remain with the cathodes preheated.

Had a NOS "Lighthouse" branded CFL suffer from capacitor failure too. All of a sudden it just went *tssss* and started smoking! Somehow it still works

Dry solder joints may also become a problem with older CFLs too. One of my Panasonic ones ended up with cracked solder joints so bad that the large capacitor just fell out!

The old Panasonic CFLs were really really good!