Dimmable CFLs?

[Razorice]

After looking around for a bit, I've unfortunately been unable to find anything about my particular problem. Forgive me if I just didn't look deep enough.
Anywho, the show I'm working on is using a lamp with Dimmable CFLs... but the CFLs aren't dimming in the cues. We can make them dim if we manually capture them, but that's about it. We tried creating a cue profile for the lamp that set the curve to output 0% until you set it at 25, and to go up linearly to 100% at 40, and that worked for a night... but now it doesn't. We're using a Strand Palette VL, if that helps at all.
Any tips?

Thanks,
--Razor

 

[David Ashton]

No CFL is truly dimmable in that it will not dim evenly from 0 - full, it will cut in at some point. The simple solution is to replace with incandescent lamps, but ballasting the dimmer with some resistive load will help.

 

[tjrobb]

Second the resistive load. We had an issue with CFL's flickering. After we un-replaced one of the back to incandescent the flicker went away. Some dimmers just need a little help...

 

[Grog12]

Or go the easy route...I second replacing it with a halogen or an incandecent bulb.

 

[JD]

Because of the type of power supply the CFL ballast uses, there are portions of the AC waveform where the draw current drops below the minimum recommended loading for solid state dimmers. (Usually 50 watts.) In fact, at the areas near the all important "zero voltage switch point", the loading may drop to zero, presenting an "open circuit" to the dimmer. The errors cause by this can be resolved with a small amount of ghost loading via an incandescent lamp.

I am also in the camp of those who say "Dimmable" and "CFL" are two words that should not be used together.