HMI problems, please look at video

[Ben Traylor]

BTW, is this the correct forum to post this in?

Thanks,

http://www.bentraylor.com

[John Sharaf]

Ben,

You’re at the right place, but you have a real mystery on your hands.

The symptom is that of a bad bulb, but as you know, there really is no definitive way of knowing if an HMI globe is bad, other than observing a visible crack or severe burn marks inside the globe.

For both to die on you at the same time is unusual, but not unheard of. If there was some rough treatment in transit (airplane travel?) it’s possible they both developed hairline cracks.

I’d try yet another (new) globe in each and see what happens.

JS

[Ben Traylor]

thanks john,

i put a new bulb in it and it worked. i then put the old bulb back in and it worked too. i had already taken the old bulb out and put it back in earlier and that’s when i shot the video. so long story short, operator error.

as for the kobold. it’s still not working. i guess i’m going to have to ship it to them. i replaced the bulb and it still didn’t work.

thanks again

http://www.bentraylor.com

[Mark Suszko]

Are those bulbs dead after they cut out, or can you turn them on again and repeat what the video shows?

Trying to apply Occam’s Razor to this.

Both fixtures were fine the day before, so you say.

The malfunction happens the same both at the office and at home, ruling out the AC source as bad, or at least making it very unlikely.

That means an electical problem would be inside the lights, in their driver/ballast circuitry, or in the bulbs (globes). Were these lights ever used together on the same circuit for a job? If that was true, and something happened to damage the units, it might have damaged them equally. Do the ballasts have some kind of switch for different voltages, that may have been bumped or altered?

Were they shipped in the same box together, that may have been dropped pretty hard?

Where did the bulbs come from, same source as usual? Do they have any kind of polarity? Can you compare them to old used bulbs in terms of their dimensions?

My guesses:
A: Bad batch of globes.
B: Something is shorting as it heats up, probably right in the bulb socket area. Maybe you’re pressing these things in too hard, or not hard enough?

[Ben Traylor]

thanks mark,

i talked to bron kobold earlier. they told me to get a new bulb first before i send it in. hopefully that’s it. it’s cheaper to get another bulb instead of shipping it to them and paying for labor.

http://www.bentraylor.com