PAR36 housing

[Beans45601]

I am about to switch out the 50w VNSP PAR36 lamps in the gallers where I work for 35w VNSP PAR36 lamps. After the switch, I will have 350+ of these lamps that are now useless. Selling them will be a pain, but possible. Anyway, I am trying to figure out how I could go about using these in the theater. I would like to build a few banks of 10 to use as sunbeams. Electrically I already have it figured out, but I am wondering if anyone here had any ideas on building cheap housings for these lamps. Maybe one of you knows that one of these lamps fit perfectly in X brand coffee can, or something. Any ideas?


If no ideas there, any other thoughts on what I could do with some of these?

[gafftapegreenia]

What is the voltage on these lamps?

[ship]

What is the voltage on these lamps?

Indeed... I once while in college (about 1992) and not really knowing better had the briliant thought of given a bunch of pinspots we had - like 30 or more of them, we could just connect them in series and they should work in series. Blew up like 1/4 of our inventory of lamps in one shot. Granted #4515 pinspot lamps at this point seemed to range from 5.5v to 6v.


Works fine in concept and even is often done for 120v lamps in South America and Europe, and for four light lamp bars of 28v/250w ACL lamp bars, doesn't work as well in other lower voltage circumstances. Mini MR-16 strips have resistors as with other fixtures I believe in solving the In-rush current and series connection problems with a "used" and or even new lamp first and second one in the chain lamps not liking such a current in feeding thru.

Overall, can be done but at least a transformer or electronics are needed to do so. Not recommended as a reliable way to do in as with PAR 56 X-Lites, when you replace one, you replace all. That spike of current when one lamp becomes for an instant an arc lamp, destries all the filaments. This when there is not resistors or transformers that have that lag time in the in the circuit to prevent it.

Overall bypassing the transformer for a lamp is not recommended.

[Beans45601]

They are 12v lamps, so I'll be running 10 in series. Like I said, I am about to have so many that once one goes out, if they don't all go out instantly, I won't feel bad about tossing them and putting a new set in.

[ship]

Again, the problem is that with that low of a voltage when in series, when one blows, it often archs for just an instant in sending all the voltage thru all the rest of the lamps for a now over-voltaging. Not dependable and you burn thru a lot of lamps.

It can be done but with the electronic's department adding resistors or in general a 1:1 transformer to the loop. The former will still work, the latter will save at least the rest in the chain. After the switch, these lamps are available for another to switch back to perhaps Reversable.

Better idea might be to box up and clearly mark these now "useless" lamps that are not really sellable for a time that say your theater wants to go back to 50w over 35w for one or all lamps. Ready to go concept in your lamps will perhaps work with that concept again given individual ideas on why you are doing this.

Important question might come up in why you are doing the loss of wattage given the same voltage? Yes, certainly box up what you are doing at least seemingly.

[Beans45601]

I'm actually not too worried about the electrical part of this project.... For the sake of argument lets just say I have a beefy 12v power supply around that I will use to power them.

But, making a housing for these lamps is where my real question is.

Important question might come up in why you are doing the loss of wattage given the same voltage?

These lamps are from the art museum part of the building, the lower wattage is to get the light levels at a more approperate level for the art we display.

[jonliles]

I'm actually not too worried about the electrical part of this project.... For the sake of argument lets just say I have a beefy 12v power supply around that I will use to power them.

If you are using the same voltage power supply, wouldn't these be wired in parallel, similar to the track lights they are designed to run in?

[Beans45601]

Yes, they would. But... I'm not worried about getting power to them, I have that set up already. I am looking for ingenious ideas for making a housing to hold the actual lamps.

[JChenault]

Mini MR-16 strips have resistors as with other fixtures I believe in solving the In-rush current and series connection problems with a "used" and or even new lamp first and second one in the chain lamps not liking such a current in feeding thru.

Actually, I don't think this is true. I just replaced a socket on an Altman MiniZip ( 10 MR 12 lamps per fixture). There in no resistor, transformer etc. of any kind visible.

The 10 lamps are connected in series. Each pair of lamps have a neon indicator lamp connected in parallel with them.
My understanding is that the neon lamps are there to indicate which lamp pair has burned out. Can't see how they would affect any sort of inrush current.


To the OP - what kind of base is on these lamps? I think that may affect what makes sense for any kind of housing.

[ship]

Indicator light has no other purpose than, but for indicating a fault. Gee, once that filament blows out, how do the other lamps keep working or do you loose a bank of them?

Made many PAR 36 fixtures over the years. Mostly I buy parts to retain and spring clip knob the lamps onto a fixture that's CNC cut, bent and welded to match my design. Not cheap to do and your design than is not UL listed or overall covered by your insurance.

If of help, a big fan of Hubbell / Halo PAR 36 Gimbal ring Laser fixtures. Done quite a few special projects with them once the track lighting head is removed.

[JChenault]

Indicator light has no other purpose than, but for indicating a fault. Gee, once that filament blows out, how do the other lamps keep working or do you loose a bank of them?

When one lamp blow, they all go dark. That's just the way it is.

[ship]

My apologies than, I thought the indicator light indicated both what lamp was bad and at a higher resistance, was as a secondardy path for the rest to work at at least some return pathway and output. Re-checked the wiring diagram, how would the indicator light work without this return path in functioning in such a way? http://www.altmanstagelighting.com/a...ng-diagram.pdf Could be wrong but why not design a strip light with a resistor so other lamps work when one goes out, the rest still work if simple enough to do. This also a resistor and indicator light as an all in one thing to show what lamp went bad.

On the Gimbal Ring track light, wouldn't dis-mount anything, instead mount the track as per a lamp bar to something that can be mounted (but with short safety cables for each fixtures.) If powerful enough 12v power supply as said, feed the bar in all being as per factory design.