Fluorescent Flickering?

shwae

Member
Hello,

I am doing a show where I am using some fluorescent fixtures that I have gelled. As part of the show we are trying to have some "technical issues" happen at the beginning of the show and one we would like to do is flickering of the fluorescents. I have seen it done before where not full power was given to the fluorescents and they had flickered on and off, but was not sure if there was a best way to do this.

I know that dimming fluorescents is not the best of ideas, but I have inexpensive fixtures that are not super important.

Any thoughts/insights would be awesome.

Thank You
 
Just maybe this work, but I am in no way certain that you could underpower a lamp by either having a smaller ballast that what the lamp requires or put a larger lamp on a ballast already in a fixture.
 
That's a little iffy as well because then you're overdriving the ballast. Why not some scoops/strips/fresnels loaded with CTB?
 
The problem with supplying a fluorescent light with dimmed or otherwise less than perfect power is that the ballast could fail spectacularly (overheat and catch fire). Chasing (rapid power cycling) of a ballast can overheat components as well.

Any new developments with this project?

Really? The lights in our schools news studio has fluorescent lights, and the guy from ETC that taught us how to use it said it was perfectly fine for fluorescent lights to be even at 10%. I guess it really depends on the ballast, though.
But either way, You're still going to have a power problem. The only way to get the lights to flicker is to get power away somehow. In my opinion, it would be better to supply it some power, than to do a random strobe. Power on, power off, power on, power off. Constant full and out of excitement of the molecules. At least by dimming, you have some excitement constantly cycling through the ballast. Of course, I do not understand fluorescent as much as I probably could.
 
Some fluorescent ballasts are designed to be dimmed, just as some dimmers are designed to dim fluorescent loads. However, both sides of the equation need to be compatible to one another. The cheap fluorescent shop lights won't like being dimmed, just as most CFL's don't like being dimmed. It causes them to burn out prematurely, and there have been some fires linked to non-dimmable fluorescent lighting on a dimmer switch. Ballasts are finicky things, and they overheat when they encounter something they don't like.

It's not really a black and white "one size fits all" situation, as you can see. Both the dimmer and fixture need to be designed for this for it to work safely and predictably.

For the OP's effect (which may or may not be a moot point since the thread is getting kind of old and we haven't heard back), I would actually rent some LED strips and write a flickering effect. You would get a much more controllable effect that way, which could be duplicated every night. With fluorescent lights, it may work fine one night, but the next night, it might just start strobing.
 

Users who are viewing this thread

Back