Digital Ballasts + Quality Bulbs

[Moto-Man]

Hey gals 'n guys,

Some of you - OK, one or two of you - might remember this lil thread:

http://www.marijuanapassion.com/forum/showthread.php?t=63523

Here is what I have done/learned since then... I replaced the ballast and still had the same problem.More googling revealed that it was likely a bulb issue not an electrical or ballast issue.

So, I sprang for the pricier "Hortilux" bulb. No more issues with random, arbitrary shut-offs. Everything seems to be going fine now.

I should prolly write the ballast supplier that I was in error, that it was the crappy bulb they sent, which only lasted for five months.

I'm a bit surprised that more of you have not had similar experiences...?

Cheers,

 

[Hushpuppy]

Yeah bulbs are made by the millions and the laws of odds say that sooner or later some bad ones will slip through. Whats tough tho is when we get the electronic parts that don't fail outright.

I used to work on electric forklifts and had one that failed to travel without bucking like a wild horse. I narrowed the problem down to the main SCR and wanted to verify it before replacing an expensive component. So I swapped it with one from another lift that was working properly. The problem vanished from the first lift, and it didn't show up in the second lift. I scratched my head and switched the components back and the problem reappeared. The engineers told me that the component has a set of parameters under which it will operate properly. Once it gets outside those parameters, it will begin to fail but not completely. The other forklift's electronics apparently didn't have exactly the same parameters so I swapped them again and the component worked for about a year longer before failing completely.