ELTAM (Electronics LighT And Metal), formerly Electrical Works of Ein Hashofet, were the biggest manufacturer of lighting control gear in Israel, and were OEM company of VS, mainly in the Fluorescent ballasts (many of VS ballasts were made at ELTAM). They were making Magnetic ballasts, HF ballasts, ignitors, and various dimming/smart/... gear
At some point in late 2016 i contacted them, asking whether i could work at them (as work experience for my engineering degree). And i found out that they were planning to close the ballast manufacturing (completely, including the HF, and even the LED drivers), and turn into yet another "LED company" ...
I visited them several times, and probably was the last visitor to ever see any of the ballast production lines still in operation
Fast forward to present day. After very long time in which i was uncertain how to pay for what i wanted, and searching for where to put it, and at the same time them slowly stopping the production lines and trying to sell off parts of them, i found a way to take this project. Unfortunately, there was damage done during this time : Some equipment was sold to others, some was scrapped, and in the later months when the factory was standing derelict, there was a break in and some was stolen
In the meanwhile, in one small section of the building they are doing OEM streetlight assembly (both HID and LED) for other companies, and CNC milling (including what looks to me like non lighting related products), while the other parts of the building where the actual ballast production equipment is located, is derelict
ELTAM used to make few Magnetic ballast formats. The current ones (made up to the point of closing) were :
Eco - Fluorescent choke
B - Fluorescent choke as well as 2-coil devices, which means it can (and did) do SRS, isolation transformers etc
Q - Small HID choke (35W..250W)
J - Big HID choke (400W+)
A - Big CWA ballast
What i saved and in what condition :
Eco - Mostly complete. However, this line failed at some point in late 2016 (they say control failure, i guess a dead sensor somewhere) and they decided to not put effort into fixing it but end the Eco ballast manufacture at that point. The machine is in alarming condition anyway and really needs maintenance (old pneumatics lines are hard and brittle and need replacement, electrics are a mess, ...)
B - Mostly complete
Q - Mostly complete, in the best shape of all
J - Only coil winding tools. The actual ballast production line and all reltated components were scrapped
A - Only coil winding tools and assembly line. Too much other stuff have been sold away or scrapped to make it possible to recover. I want to try to convert the A line for making a new transformer and choke format, but this is a project for much later
For all lines, i will have to solve :
- How to make the bottom plate
- How to varnish
- Otain and program new PLCs to replace the stolen ones
So it will take a while before i am up and running..
Shorts deep in the coil look to me like mechanical damage (scratching, pinching) of the original enamel isolation of the wire. I can think of few production stages where such damage could happen, none of them is related to the varnishing...Ash I would be very interested in ordering from you. The varnishing needs to be right though as that's what seemed to let down the later tridonic ballasts tube would fail ballast would get slightly hotter then the ballast windings would start melting together and go up on smoke!
I don't see why you can't make the 70W T8 ballast if you can make the 58 as they are the same physical size! Have you got any pictures of the equipment as I have no idea what this looks like?
Options for making the 58W/70W choke :
As Eco
The same choke design can be made in few lengths such as "PL size", "36W size", "58W size" (34, 60, 103mm respectively for the original VS chokes, that is the length of just the actual core i.e. the stack of E/i laminations, each lamination being 1/2mm thick)
Around 2009 the EU requirements for lowloss ballasts arrived to here. Generally, to meet the higher efficiency requirements, each choke was made longer. Since the "standard loss" 58W 103mm was allready the biggest size the tooling could handle, there apparently was no way to make longer choke than that on the existing tooling (though i might take a second look into that !). In short, they could not make the 58W up to the new requirements on the existing tooling, so they dropped this wattage completely (and sold chokes imported from VS Germany instead). The next biggest ballast, made from 2009 onwards, is the 36W EEI=B1 with 90mm core. 8 years later in 2017, we could not find the old tool set for the 103mm size. Therefore, unless i make a new set (and this is very low on my priority list), 103mm is not available
As B
The biggest ballast that can be made in the B size is "standard loss" 58/65W Fluorescent and 80W Mercury (same size, i guess very hot running one...). This looks like a candidate to make the 70W ballast with
As Q
This would go well electrically, but the Q is not going to fit in a Fitzy light pack
Posting some pics right away !