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Toasted 18 Month Old Helvar T5 HF Ballast The other side of the PCB from the Helvar ballast uploaded yesterday. Big sooty skid mark & looks like the transistors have been running incredibly hot! I fitted it only about 18 months ago, it's been on 24/7 but that's still a very poor life at about 13,000 hours. The GE Starcoat tubes fitted were still fine. It's been a pain since day one, it started life with (new) OSRAM tubes that it refused to drive properly, it kept shutting them down for no reason, and then it was allowing the tubes to rectify/light half wave & didn't shut them down! The Osrams were swapped for the GE Starcoat's that it still shut down a few times when they were new for no reason at all. Another one of these ballasts was replaced last week by someone else, that one had the same black marks and a similarity crap lifespan (about 2 years). Note: Used with 5ft HE 35w tubes in a cheepo Newlec fitting.

Toasted 18 Month Old Helvar T5 HF Ballast


The other side of the PCB from the Helvar ballast uploaded yesterday. Big sooty skid mark & looks like the transistors have been running incredibly hot!

I fitted it only about 18 months ago, it's been on 24/7 but that's still a very poor life at about 13,000 hours. The GE Starcoat tubes fitted were still fine.

It's been a pain since day one, it started life with (new) OSRAM tubes that it refused to drive properly, it kept shutting them down for no reason, and then it was allowing the tubes to rectify/light half wave & didn't shut them down! The Osrams were swapped for the GE Starcoat's that it still shut down a few times when they were new for no reason at all.

Another one of these ballasts was replaced last week by someone else, that one had the same black marks and a similarity crap lifespan (about 2 years).

Note: Used with 5ft HE 35w tubes in a cheepo Newlec fitting.

IMG_20230612_034744173.jpg Junk.jpg PHOTO_20171008_130224.jpg tmp_12114-IMG_20170815_232945-11250297769.jpg 20171120_142911.jpg
File information
Filename:PHOTO_20171008_130224.jpg
Album name:fluorescent / Fail
Manufacturer:Helvar
Filesize:4014 KiB
Date added:08 Oct, 2017
Dimensions:3640 x 2048 pixels
Displayed:40 times
URL:http://80.229.24.59:9232/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=6949
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BC5-80   [06 Nov, 2018 at 02:14 PM]
That's the boost PFC input stage. I wonder if that failed first or the main transistors shorted and blew it up?
Slyspark   [06 Nov, 2018 at 10:31 PM]
No surprise, it's HF! Helvar stuff seems to be especially bad!
fluorescent   [07 Nov, 2018 at 12:17 AM]
The (possibly older?) Helvar HF ballasts with white cases seem to last fairly well. It's these silver ones which are complete crap, about 2 years is the best I've seen them last for

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