Step into the Light.....

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The LOA (Lights Of America) Fluorex (Fluorescent) Lights are available at most Home stores and even WalMart.
They are sold as outdoor flood lights and are usually located by the Sodium or Mercury Vapor flood lights. The kind used to light up commercial wharehouses.

The ones commonly used and discussed here are 65 watts but they put out 4,400+ lumens.
The main difference is it is a very diffuse light which is difficult to harness and redirect through our LCD panels.
Therein lies the barrier to it's ultimate effectiveness.

They are Cheap! - About $30.00 USD

They are Bright! - over 8,000 lumens

They are Cool! - The casing they are used in is plastic, you would not need any cooling fans. However venting is recommended.

They do not require a separate transformer!

They have an almost Ideal Color Temperature! - 6,500K Color temperature, too hot gives everything a very bluish tint and too cool gives everything a redish tint.

They are small! - compared to the other types of lights (MH lights) which would allow for a smaller overall package.

They Last a long time! - They are rated to 10,000 hours. About $15.00 USD bulb replacement cost

Go to this website and under Security Lights look at model 9027
http://www.lightsofamerica.com

It meets all of the DIY VIDEO qualifications except. . . If only we could gather and redirect this diffuse light we would have a hands down winner.

We need reflector refinement and light wave directionality to increase the amount of usable available light.

Come on guys we can do this! We have a very large brain trust working here!!!!
 
The LOA (Lights Of America) Fluorex (Fluorescent) Lights are available at most Home stores and even WalMart.
They are sold as outdoor flood lights and are usually located by the Sodium or Mercury Vapor flood lights. The kind used to light up commercial wharehouses.

The ones commonly used and discussed here are 65 watts but they put out 4,400+ lumens.
The main difference is it is a very diffuse light which is difficult to harness and redirect through our LCD panels.
Therein lies the barrier to it's ultimate effectiveness.

They are Cheap! - About $30.00 USD

They are Bright! - over 8,000 lumens

They are Cool! - The casing they are used in is plastic, you would not need any cooling fans. However venting is recommended.

They do not require a separate transformer!

They have an almost Ideal Color Temperature! - 6,500K Color temperature, too hot gives everything a very bluish tint and too cool gives everything a redish tint.

They are small! - compared to the other types of lights (MH lights) which would allow for a smaller overall package.

They Last a long time! - They are rated to 10,000 hours. About $15.00 USD bulb replacement cost

Go to this website and under Security Lights look at model 9027
http://www.lightsofamerica.com

It meets all of the DIY VIDEO qualifications except. . . If only we could gather and redirect this diffuse light we would have a hands down winner.

We need reflector refinement and light wave directionality to increase the amount of usable available light.

Come on guys we can do this! We have a very large brain trust working here!!!!
 
Does anyone know the operating temperature of these lights?

If it would be possible to put such a light in your OHP it might even be possible to disconnect the fans in the panel without overheating it. 🙂

In that case you have a light which will last for 10.000+ hours and you don 't have this anoying sound of al these fans blowing.

Please let someone come up with an idea cause this is great!
 
Amnesia,
Although they are very warm to touch they would not require a fan if you have venting above and below them. Remember, the old heat rises law of thermo dynamics.

65 Watts Fluorescent
500 Watts Metal Halide
Power = Heat

We only need to get over the light transmission hurdle.

Why did my previous post show up twice? I don't stutter, usually.
 
Well all the optics freakks out there lets get over this hurdle, if we can somehow harness this LOA light and channel it into the flux capacitor it just might work 😀

Rekr

"1.21 gigawatts, Tom, how could I be so careless"
 
The problem as far as we are concerned is diffuse light is hard to collect and make it go in the right direction. A flourescent tube is a hollow class cylinder filled with a gas to conduct an arc and that arc emits large amounts of Ultra Violet light. The ultra villet light cannot get out of the glass cylinder because glass stops UV light.

The inside of the glass is coated with phospher which when hit by the UV light then emits white visible light that can exit the glass cylinder and lights up your workspace.

A two step process but still very efficient, long lasting bulb, quick start, cool operation cheap and uses a simple ballast.

The only drawback for DIY is they emit light in all directions. This is the nature of energising phosphers to create light. You have the same process inside your TV. Electron beams energise phosphers inside the screen faceplate and emit light. The light is cool to the touch and you can see a modern TV in daytime without drawing the curtains. And the important thing with respect to diffused light, is you can see the picture on your TV set from in front and from the side. This is the nature of energising phosphers. They produce light in all directions.

This feature is used to advantage in flourescent lights to reduce shadows. Regular house bulbs tend to emit rays in straight lines so produce shadows. Flourescents emit diffuse light so produce less shadow.

However many manufacturers have found that with smoother phospher applications the light becomes less diffuse. This means more light can be sent in a particular direction than in the past.

We can use high output Flourescents.

I have at home a very useful fibre optic assembly. It consists of 100 individual fibres which are laid out flat at one end and gathered into a bundle at the other end. If I inject a laser beam at the bundle end I get 100 individual laser beams at the flat end. I wanted this to experiment with using multiple light sources to be combined into one large beam. It works very well. I placed the flat end next to a flourescent tube and it did gather a strip of light and turn that into a modest beam of light.

Thats a possibility. Surround a flourescent tube with fibre optics and gather all the light into a beam. Very costly.

Place the flourescent tube inside a light pipe. Light pipes are used to take a jumbled up bunch of light rays and turn them into an output beam with the same light intensity from the center to the outside edge. Commonly used in commercial 3 panel projectors. Usually a short glass rod with polished ends. But also available as hollow tubes with very highly reflective internal surface. Probably very expensive in the size for a flourescent tube but possible for DIY.

The best possibility is a spherical reflector (half a cylinder) with the bulb at 1/2 radius.

This is not all that hard to make but it has to have a very high reflective coating. Silver would be best but if aluminium, can be polished to 80 - 85 percent reflectivity.

Since it is not yet economical to capture all the light from a diffuse lighting source, the next best thing is to use a very highly reflective reflector to get best use of what can be gathered.

Modern high output flourescents are starting to approach point source characteristics which enables use in reflectors.

Search for LOA for further information.
 

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I may be Ssyko, but Remp you are a Wizard at distilling the info.

I like your reflector thoughts.

Your diagrams are referring to a single straight tube.

How do we deal with the LOA bulbs which are nothing more than the usual fluorescent tubes manufactured into smaller diameter tubes that have been folded multiple times?

It creates a smaller package for a given surface area, but makes the reflector design more complex. The multiple tubes next to each other inhibit light transmission as well as cause even more "stray light" to try to capture and use.

Wait let me put my ears to the tracks. . .
I can hear a solution getting closer!!!
 
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