My kitchen fluorescent lamp which is 6 foot 100 watt unit wouldn't light tonite the starter flickered but no sign of any tube activity. It was very cold in the kitchen so I put the boiler on which warmed things up nicely I tried the tube again and although a bit sluggish it lit ( maybe my swearing at it helped) my question is do you think it's just because the tubes old and doesn't like the cold or is there something else going on?
Or to be less terse... On 230V mains to drive a tube that needs 200v to strike and runs at 90, a simple series dropper will do , usually a choke and hopefully a PFC capacitor.
On 110V or so you will not get the striking voltage, so a step up in voltage or a resonant start is needed - in effect the leakage inductance of the transformer and the C conspire, when not loaded by the tube, i.e. before it is struck, to form an LC resonator of modest Q factor, so the voltage magnification is perhaps 4 or 5.
Once the tube is struck, it is such a significant damper on things that the voltages end up about 1:0.9 or so.
It would be perfectly possible to have a step up transformer and then the UK style series choke and starter, but is largely pointless - why have 2 coils when one would do - but realise they need a significant step up to start and a nearly level voltage step when running.
The 277 US volt fittings look more like ours, though they do still like to transformer couple the heaters, in situations where we would use the starter to flash the heaters in series across the choke limited mains to warm them up, and then leave them to be heated by the emission current once there is some flowing.
Or to be less terse... On 230V mains to drive a tube that needs 200v to strike and runs at 90, a simple series dropper will do , usually a choke and hopefully a PFC capacitor.
On 110V or so you will not get the striking voltage, so a step up in voltage or a resonant start is needed - in effect the leakage inductance of the transformer and the C conspire, when not loaded by the tube, i.e. before it is struck, to form an LC resonator of modest Q factor, so the voltage magnification is perhaps 4 or 5.
Once the tube is struck, it is such a significant damper on things that the voltages end up about 1:0.9 or so.
It would be perfectly possible to have a step up transformer and then the UK style series choke and starter, but is largely pointless - why have 2 coils when one would do - but realise they need a significant step up to start and a nearly level voltage step when running.
The 277 US volt fittings look more like ours, though they do still like to transformer couple the heaters, in situations where we would use the starter to flash the heaters in series across the choke limited mains to warm them up, and then leave them to be heated by the emission current once there is some flowing.
