Bending a light bulb

Greetings! As a few of you might know, in addition to using modern stage and moving lights I also collect vintage effects. Among them are several Chauvet Oceana lights from the early 2000s. They use a custom(ish) S-shaped 800w halogen lamp. Given that they're long discontinued and that their lamp life is notoriously poor to begin with, I've decided that now is as best a time as ever to try to figure out a replacement option for lamps in these lights. Has anyone ever tried to heat and bend a normal linear halogen lamp? Would sooting be a concern here? Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,
-Jeff

Don’t!!! it’s not the sort of thing to play around with.

How interesting, I wonder if @DELO72 could shed any light on this very special lamp? Perhaps one of the Chauvet boffins like @Ford .

Well... that light predates me, so I can’t speak to that particular fixture... but I can’t see how that would work.
I cannot imagine that you’d be able to bend a lightbulb, and controlling the bend of the filament inside would be even more precarious.

If you have some success in your experiments, I’d love to see a few videos!

Okay, I'll admit you had me intrigued by this one. I've never heard of this so I did some digging.

https://www.parts-express.com/Data/Default/Images/Catalog/Original/243-7342_HR_0.jpg
Apparently it's a custom T3 double-ended lamp. I've never seen one before. It's kinda awesome. *laugh*

Now I had to look it up. Link to save googling:

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"Projects a wave like pattern of blue multi-rays due to an exclusive "S" shaped linear lamp rotating on a horizontal axis"
It rotates the lamp to create motion patterns. Ingenious.

That said, I see how those lamps would be, um, interesting to make.

Jeff Lelko said:

Greetings! As a few of you might know, in addition to using modern stage and moving lights I also collect vintage effects. Among them are several Chauvet Oceana lights from the early 2000s. They use a custom(ish) S-shaped 800w halogen lamp. Given that they're long discontinued and that their lamp life is notoriously poor to begin with, I've decided that now is as best a time as ever to try to figure out a replacement option for lamps in these lights. Has anyone ever tried to heat and bend a normal linear halogen lamp? Would sooting be a concern here? Any advice would be appreciated!

Thanks,
-Jeff

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@Jeff Lelko Any good neon sign shop could bend you a length of tube and fill it with the gas of your choice, it wouldn't be the same color or intensity as an incandescent but they'll be able to offer interesting options. They have tubes of different diameters, different colors of glass with different internal coatings and a range of different gasses, from these combinations they have a wide range of colors and intensities. In general, the older the shop, the better the talent and experience.
Toodleoo!
Ron Hebbard

Bending a Halogen lamp is a really bad Idea. Most halogens like that have 7-8 Atmospheres of pressure that's 7*15 psi or 105 PSI. Now that doesn't seem like a lot since it's such a small volume but if you get it hot enough to bend chances are it will deform and bubble where you don't want it to. If it doesn't deform and blow-out it may crack from the uneven heating then you have a small explosion with glass shrapnel flying about.

Thanks for all the input so far! Yes, it wouldn't have hurt to include a link to the original fixture. As far as I know these are one-of-a-kind effects, with the only similar unit ever produced called The Wave by ADJ. I've attached a picture of the unit's internals - basically just the lamp and the rotation mechanism - much like all the classic halogen effect lights. I actually bought them when they were first released and used them back in my DJing days, though now they're mostly a collection item - mainly due to the lamp.

Yes, I definitely know that lamps need to be handled/treated with care. I'm not an expert on lamp production, though I'd imagine that the tube is bent before the filament goes in. Unfortunately I don't have the means to produce lamps from scratch, hence the idea of trying to gracefully massage an existing lamp into shape came to mind. The trickiest part isn't making the "S" - it's getting the final length perfect so that it fits properly between the two sockets. I like the idea of visiting a neon sign maker. If nothing else they might know of someone who can make this, and would have the necessary equipment to do so safely. Thanks again!

The envelope is a really high temperature glass with a coating and the pinch seals are a problem for a major manufacturer. I think trying to craft your own is a hopeless endeavour. A neon replacement probably won't be 1/10th the brightness.

Van said:

Most halogens like that have 7-8 Atmospheres of pressure that's 7*15 psi or 105 PSI

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Sorry- I need to correct this. Most halogen lamps contain an absolute MAXIMUM of around 4 atmospheres. Many are far less. Some are 2-2.5 atmospheres. That's why when you break them they go "pop" and don't go BOOM. Xenon lamps (XBO) are the ones with much higher pressure.

Sorry, never seen this fixture before, but does the effect not work if the lamp is straight?
If it is indeed the lamp shape that makes the effect, is it possible to use a straight halogen lamp and some sort of prismatic cover over it? That might be something a neon bender could create, a tube to go over a straight lamp with the S shape as an extra blob on the exterior of the tube.

DELO72 said:

Okay, I'll admit you had me intrigued by this one. I've never heard of this so I did some digging.

https://www.parts-express.com/Data/Default/Images/Catalog/Original/243-7342_HR_0.jpg
Apparently it's a custom T3 double-ended lamp. I've never seen one before. It's kinda awesome. *laugh*

Click to expand...

Looks like someone left it in a hot car in Vegas in August. I bet even @ship has never seen one of these.

macsound said:

Sorry, never seen this fixture before, but does the effect not work if the lamp is straight?
If it is indeed the lamp shape that makes the effect, is it possible to use a straight halogen lamp and some sort of prismatic cover over it? That might be something a neon bender could create, a tube to go over a straight lamp with the S shape as an extra blob on the exterior of the tube.

Click to expand...

You may be missing the lamp is rotated on its ais for the motion effect, something a straight lamp won't do.

macsound said:

Sorry, never seen this fixture before, but does the effect not work if the lamp is straight?

Click to expand...

Nope, it's the shape of the lamp (and more correctly, the shape of the filament) that gives the "wave" effect as it's rotated about its axis. A straight lamp would just produce a straight line with no noticeable movement. For grins and giggles it sounds like I need to share pictures of some of my other unique effects! They come from a simpler time...before the LED revolution! The fact that this unit even has DMX was rather rare at the time for generic DJ/club effects.

Calc said:

It rotates the lamp to create motion patterns. Ingenious.

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It was actually really common to have rotating lamps in halogen DJ fixtures. I remember the ADJ Avenger, Vertigo, and other "derby" types of effects all using some variation of this technique.

I really miss the "personalities" of the old DJ lights. Each one was like owning a different pet. However, I do not miss trying to power multiple 600w fixtures in a school cafeteria.

I had some cyc light lamps that developed a sort of a wave pattern. The tubes themselves didn't bend, but the filaments sagged between the supports, so the envelopes had multiple "blisters" down their length.

The lamp this reminded me of was the RLUX "horseshoe" lamp, used in fixtures like the ADJ Lotus.


Then, the ADJ Mystic, which projected the image from dual revolving ellipsoidal reflectors. It didn't use a wavy lamp, but it made good use of what we in theatre would consider an undesirable artifact:


And kids these days think they're being unique by taking the lens tubes out of their S4 LEDs.

Les said:

I really miss the "personalities" of the old DJ lights. Each one was like owning a different pet. However, I do not miss trying to power multiple 600w fixtures in a school cafeteria.

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Same here, which is why I've gone from a user to now more of collector. It was always interesting to see the creativity in each of the different effects. Moving heads and LED Pars have their place, but at least to me there's still something special about a unique effect light. And yes, I have both Lotuses and Mystics in my collection too, along with the 2 VEI Rainbows you sold me last year Bill

Les said:

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Get off my damn lawn!!!!

nope never seen an S' curve. Anyone interested in bad lamps "interesting", for their wall of shame let me know. I have a lot but might have downsized more. Not my collection or purpose thus will toss the rest i think at some point. Granted "Killroy was here" is perminant collection. Photos on-line with the website.

I bet you could make this with some LED kit.

@ship might have a suggestion or two.