Warner Power Inc. 24688 Variable Linear Reactor aka Variable Ballast

as most will likely know on here Kev held his yearly international gathering lighting enthusiasts, which I was finally able to attend for the first time, in which I had the opportunity to do some good trades, meet with many enthusiasts and in which I met with James and one of the items from him, is this Variable ballast, something I have known about for over a decade now and long coveted, so I am extremely thankful to James for saving me one when the opportunity presented itself

in general just the mythical "variable ballast" is something I have always wanted, sure these days with my large collection of regular chokes and a Variac, I can already run pretty much all the lamps this thing would allow me to run more or less, but when I first heard about these I of course did not have all the chokes and ballasts I have now and very much wanted one then to absolve myself of that problem and not have to worry about rounding up all the chokes i have now.

however not only is this a very useful item for running the more odd-ball lamps who's ballasts might not be readily available but its also very useful for setting up a reference ballast setup, to remove variables in an experiment or measurement of a lamp I might be doing, say I have a lamp that is behaving funny or who's electrical specifications I wish to measure as exactly possible, I can use this Linear Reactor to setup an ideal ballast and remove any question about the ballast being an issue or unwanted variable from my testing

so even though these days I have many chokes and ballasts with which I can run all sorts of tubes and lamps with, I am still very pleased to have it for being able to produce more proper setups in accordance with IEC/ANSI standards, so if I have a strange specification lamp I can reasonably be assured that by using this I can rule out my ballast being a factor in anything that might happen.

for example I am most looking forward to using this to run SLI/H lamps, we all know what a tricky lamp those can be to run!, and in turn hopefully the data I can gather from this, I can then translate back into a more obtainable ballast setup for everyone else :)

and finally of course being a variable ballast, means I can also change its impedance on the fly, say I wish to change the current/power a lamp is running at on the fly I can do that, if I want to see just how White I can make a SON lamp for example :)

there 3 main impedance ranges, which you set with the jumpers, and then within a range you adjust the impedance by turning a big threaded rod in and out

this particular unit is good for HID lamps up to 1000W, 60V arc voltage fluorescent tubes from about 20W as well as 120V arc voltage tubes from about 58W

(I would not mind finding one of a higher impedance range for the smaller/higher arc voltage FL tubes to augment this one as well :) )

for the quick-test and photograph I have set it up running an F20T12 according to IEC reference ballast standards for the 20W T12: 127V mains 270 ohm ballast impedance.


once again many thanks to James for this very cool bit of kit!