Oops..

So this is the ignitor itself catching fire ? I could expect a bad ignitor to short out the ballast and set that one on fire....

Thats right, these don't stop the lamp cycling so get hotter and hotter until it goes up! I gather some blow the fuse before it fully ignites, while others just go up in flames taking the whole lantern with it!

How did they repair the holes in the canopy's?

They just left them like this! The Aramis happily kept going even with rain. I remember the conversation i had with the guy who repaired them years ago saying they have no spare lids just swap the igintors and leave them

Its not about stopping the lamp cycling but about making a proper component choice - Including the potting material. An ES50 would be still clicking away after 10+ years in a fitting which never had a lamp installed (as i seen happen). An SM6 would melt a hole through its side around the charging resistors but thats about it. For an ignitor to do this sort of damage to the luminaire it's gotta be potted in a flammable compound in addition to the bad electronics. That, or the damage is caused by the ballast after the ignitor shorts it out

That's bad! They could have least covered the hole with aluminium duct tape

Who actually made these Urbis ignitors? Parmar gear was often seen branded for Urbis, maybe them? Seems odd to leave the lantern with a gaping hole in the lid! must have got pretty wet and rusty in there!

I just wonder how many lanterns were destroyed over the years with these parmar igintors! I know MK lost a good few ZX3s over the years due to this design fault. As for not covering the hole, it is a strange one. At the time these Aramis the council ones never came down, so it was not possible to swap the lid even from a scrap example. Week after the others were changed, these are still up so likely not going anywhere for the time being

I've seen Parmar and Philips gear with Urbis branding. The Parmar ignitors are decent when they're operating normally. But when they melt down they leave a lot of mess t clean up, and that smell never leaves a lantern. I replaced a Parmar ignitor that had spewed its guts out in an Industria 2600 lantern (one of the few that can take it and still be serviceable) when I first started work 3.5 years ago. I just went back there last week on routine maintenance and the smell is STILL in that lantern!

Any clue what is actually going on ? The worst i have seen is Univers SM6 which melts a hole through the side of its plastic case, but other than some soot deposited in the lantern there was no collateral damage

It is the Urbis 150w to 250w iginitors that do this. In theory a test could be carried out with a heavy cycling lamp and just see how it starts to react