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Philips 860W CDM Ceramic metal halide retrofit for 1Kw Quartz Metal halide lamps
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heres a lamp im pleased to finally have in the collection
the Big daddy of Ceramic metal halide lamps, when these lamps came out I of course wanted one for the interesting technology they incorporated
and of course I wanted to get the 860W specifically because here in the UK/Europe we sadly never got any 1Kw class Ceramic metal halide lamps and I do like my high wattage lamps :) and finally of course I had to seek out a full sized BT56 example :) (although I would not mind getting a BT37 example for completeness sake)
so I was quite pleased when I found this relatively cheap example being sold by a US ebay seller who kindly agreed to ship it to the UK for me, sadly it took quite a beating in shipping and the top end support is completely bent and dislocated hence why im burning it base up, to reduce the loading on the frame (theres also a lot of lose chippings from the Quartz shroud rattling around the lamp)
one thing I noticed between the BT37 and BT56 860W lamps, is that the BT56 lamp has a lot more messy wire wrapping around its shield and I was wondering why that was, what I noticed in my lamp, is there are actually 2 explosion shields one over each other, I feel like thats a bit over kill for a CMH lamp! It would be interesting to know why they went to such extents
I wonder if these AllStart lamps have a tendency to fail more violently then normal CMH lamps or was it a legislation thing that demanded such overkill protection for an open rated lamp when not really necessary (but for example see the US Philips Retro-White CMH retrofit lamps for HPS fixtures which only have a wire wrapping around their arc tube)
so I wonder if BT37 860W lamps also have this double shield arrangement or if they have just the 1 shield/sleeve and if thats why they have a much neater wire wrapping
one thing I noticed compared to a regular 1Kw QMH lamp is that this CDM lamp emits less infrared or certainly it feels that way, I wonder if thats because the explosion shields are reflecting it back into the arc tube/lamp like in a SOI/H lamp?
all in all I am still very pleased to get one of these even if it is a bit battered and bruised!
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