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Old July 23rd, 2008, 03:56 PM
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Default re: Magnetic vs. Electronic Ballasts/power supplies

If the choice was which one would I want to power my heart/lung machine during an operation, I would chose magnetic hands down! Solid state ballasts, like switch-mode power supplies, live their lives 100 milliseconds away from death. Magnetic ballasts usually give you some fair warning they are getting cranky!

But, we are not talking heart/lung machines here, are we?


In a mover, I would chose electronic any day of the week. The voltage can be all over the place, and the little mos-fets just adjust their pulse width to compensate without blinking an eye (or bulb!) And then there is weight.... There is still a transformer core in an electronic ballast, however, it can be very small due to the frequency they run at. (Frequency and transformer core size are inverse proportional.) I'm just not a big fan of pumping iron being mixed with lighting!
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