Fluorescent Lighting Effect, Help Please!

[sem6727]

I’m working with a lighting designer who wants to use fluorescent lighting practically and impractically in a show. Supposedly when older fluorescents were put on dimmers they would “wig out” creating a flickering effect where the viewer could see the lit gases bouncing back and forth inside the tube. Due to advancements in technology these fixtures/bulbs are no longer available. We’re planning on experimenting with electronic ballast fixtures and 4ft t8 bulbs to try to achieve this effect. However, I don't know what these lights will do when starved of voltage on a dimmer if it'll "wig out" or just go out. Has anyone experimented with fluorescent lighting tubes/ fixtures?

This is over my head as I’m a student and not used to working with architectural lighting fixtures. I'd appreciate helpful feedback and suggestions. Thanks.

 

[ship]

I’m working with a lighting designer who wants to use fluorescent lighting practically and impractically in a show. Supposedly when older fluorescents were put on dimmers they would “wig out” creating a flickering effect where the viewer could see the lit gases bouncing back and forth inside the tube. Due to advancements in technology these fixtures/bulbs are no longer available. We’re planning on experimenting with electronic ballast fixtures and 4ft t8 bulbs to try to achieve this effect. However, I don't know what these lights will do when starved of voltage on a dimmer if it'll "wig out" or just go out. Has anyone experimented with fluorescent lighting tubes/ fixtures?

This is over my head as I’m a student and not used to working with architectural lighting fixtures. I'd appreciate helpful feedback and suggestions. Thanks.

Hmm, good challenge. Really good challenge and one I don't think even I could do with real lamps these days or by accident these days even with R&D in a dependable or cost effective way.

Think instead renting LED bars of strip lights. Believe it's the VersaTube (changed since last night) which is like a 1.1/2" x 48" tube of LED light that could simulate such a thing if you have enough control channels to program such a thing. This much less it would be much safer and reliable to do. Larger in dia. but in a larger than life and safety thing, this much less in being able to reproduce it night after night, I would think it the best solution. Lots of round tubes of LED lamp fixtures out there I think at tis point in even at this point I even have a few in with my fluorescent fixtures which are no longer in the inventory but are LED bar lights of some early type. They like the Neon strips currently hanging in my department from like 20 years ago are probalbly left where they are in being obsolete. New/old technology lots of bar lights on the market at this point I think.

Otherwise if less budget but stil expensive to do, been experimenting lately with some LED belt lights. Included with them was a 15' RGB LED belt light that I was attempting to simulate fluorescent like light about a white acrylic plastic 2.1/2" tube. Specifics of the project at this point don't matter in us going fluorescent but details of the prototype have promiss jermain to this topic.

In the case of the RGB belt light, given a 6' tube I was limited to only two wraps and cutting off the extra. To accomplish that, as opposed to two sets of lights on opposing sides of a 1/8"x3/4" aluminum stock, that left a shadow, I instead twisted the stock for about one twist per foot and got a fairly good distribution even if still sort of barber pole shadows with it.

For a different 6' belt light in white for LED I was able to twist it about a 3/4" conduit with three sections which was much more even in distibution but still not as bright as a flourescent.

None the less, intensity on stage isn't as important and I believe the LED's in RGB are somewhat programmable though not for a paticular section. Thinking that if you went to four foot, you could go to three sections of say Elation RGB belt light in being a little more flexible, wrapped about even a 1/2" conduit that could be cut to length.

Some white acrylic tubing of an approiate OD. In your case say if 1/2" conduit say 1.1/4" OD x 1/8" wall acrylic tubing at least so as to make it seem as if fluorescent and with ability to program a strobe and color change you now reproduce such a thing. This granted you will have to invent the lighting fixture such a thing is housed in but should work given lots of production time = believe me in hours most of this week and today in production time in creating such types of in my case stick light fixtures. Lots of time and fabrication but can be done.

For me, I have 18x 72" fluorescent fixtures to fabricate with the possbility of 100x more for another client. Them also interested in the not as well working barber pole look within the tubing for other things. Overall, that simulation of fluorescent or going big for its size seems to be a concept this year I'm thinking.

 

[NevilleLighting]

Can you fill us in with more detail? Are these fluorescents used as a visual element or is the designer trying to actually light the stage with them?

 

[sem6727]

^ More of a visual element to suggest architectural lighting in the apartment setting. They will be functional, but are not primarily used for lighting the stage. Any light from the fluorescents will be aided by theatrical, conventional fixtures.

The idea behind the "wigging out" lighting effect is that captures the feel that the electricity is being sucked out of the environment. I don't know if i can replicate that with LEDs, but I think it is certainly worth looking into. ^^

 

[Footer]

I am sure that older tubes did do that... the question is for how long. As Neville said, if you are looking for the visual element, I would go something from Element Labs (now barco...) Versa-Tubes. It would give you flicker effect you are looking for. If you/they are dead set on the florescent tube thing, go talk to the electrical dept of your university. If it was anything like the school I went to there is a warehouse somewhere full of all kinds of crap from renovations.

 

[sem6727]

I am sure that older tubes did do that... the question is for how long. As Neville said, if you are looking for the visual element, I would go something from Element Labs (now barco...) Versa-Tubes. It would give you flicker effect you are looking for. If you/they are dead set on the florescent tube thing, go talk to the electrical dept of your university. If it was anything like the school I went to there is a warehouse somewhere full of all kinds of crap from renovations.

The VersaTUBE gives a venetian blinds look, which is actually really really close to what we want. However, I think that is WAY out of my price range.

 

[Les]

I'm liking Ship's belt light + acrylic tube idea. Similarly, you could probably even use clear rope light and string it through some type of translucent (frosted) tube. <Maybe even a clear tube wrapped in diffusion. One could even place a gel under the diffusion to color correct the light to the tint of your choice. Experiment with chases, speeds and intensities and you just might get the effect you're looking for. To simplify your life, use 120v incandescent rope light or rewired Christmas lights (rewired, so you can separate channels and customize your chases [gaseous bounce effect] without being tied to an internal preprogrammed chase in the rope lights).

There's a thread on rewiring Christmas lights floating around here somewhere.

Good luck!!!

 

[JD]

Last I checked, you can still buy the "transformer" ballasts at home depot as replacements. None of the new fixtures are sold with them (all electronic) but you could "downgrade" a fixture or two! Make sure you work with someone who is qualified to work on such equipment as there are high voltages involved and the new e-ballast fixtures are wired differently.

 

[Les]

Could a ballast on a dimmer possibly overheat and start a fire (especially when dimmed)? Could it damage the dimmer? Sounds like the same precautions should be taken as re: motors on dimmers, as motors and transformers are both inductive loads, which contain windings.

 

[sk8rsdad]

Try a google image search for "crackle tube". It's not a fluorescent light effect but it might give you the visual effect your director is after.

 

[sem6727]

I looked into Ship's idea a little more and found this: LED Replacement Fluorescent Tube

Looks promising and semi-affordable

 

[ship]

Had a thought over the night or two. First on VersaTubes (what I was thinking of though there is and has been other similar products), I recommended renting them. But only this if they can be controlled so as to do a sort of flickering out linear control such as in further description, it would be a kind of energy loss effect.

I was thinking the fluorescent lights in the original “SAW” movie in sustaining them or using them for a short amount of time that way per show but them needing to last the run. Bit more problematic now if they should operate normally for much of the time than have to flicker out due to power loss.

Kind of puts my next fluorescent starter idea off of functioning correctly unless you had a switchable power supply to the fluorescents - one to operate as normal, the other to operate off fluorescent starters. Assuming fixtures that used such things which are fairly rare now. Switchable power supplies to the same ballast wouldn’t be a good idea but as a concept, there is many ratings of fluorescent starter on the market. Put the wrong one into the fixture with some play testing, it should have that effect.

Still though, simple and easier to do. As described, operate normally than as if power sucked out start flickering and going out. Sounds to me like it’s a fairly easy challenge, just dim them. I noted in searching for dimmers for a project this past week that some newer types have a switch mode to them so as to run fluorescent lighting fixtures. In dimming now just a question of the minimum threshold for dimming them to the point they start to go out and lingering it there or perhaps bumping up and down from that level to sustain the lamp.

Above points noted about heating the ballast and perhaps a dimmable ballast might be better, but on the other hand Encapsulite has been using standard ballasts for many years now and their fixtures have been dimmed without problems with Sensor racks on many productions over the years. Can be done, though you might need to introduce a few hundred watts of filament based dummy loading off stage for doing this. Also, dimming a fluorescent lamp does have adverse effects on it’s lamp life especially if held in the flicker out mode long enough.

 

[ship]

I'm liking Ship's belt light + acrylic tube idea. Similarly, you could probably even use clear rope light and string it through some type of translucent (frosted) tube. <Maybe even a clear tube wrapped in diffusion. One could even place a gel under the diffusion to color correct the light to the tint of your choice. Experiment with chases, speeds and intensities and you just might get the effect you're looking for. To simplify your life, use 120v incandescent rope light or rewired Christmas lights (rewired, so you can separate channels and customize your chases [gaseous bounce effect] without being tied to an internal preprogrammed chase in the rope lights).

There's a thread on rewiring Christmas lights floating around here somewhere.

Good luck!!!

Primary challenges on inserting anything from LED undercounter lighting to rope lighting to Chrismas lights into a tube is in control of individual circuits of them. Unless by wiring or circuiting you can control each individual section, you won’t be able to sort of strobe say an end while the center dims or goes out. You kind of really loose out on the effect if you can’t control individually the sections. Could be possible by re-wiring X-Mass Light sections or the little series wired sections of light found in belt light or under counter lighting little lamp strips but this would be difficult especially now to isolate between circuits. You would need to mix circuits in close proximity to get a good effect.

Next is proximity of individual lamps to the outer globe for an even wash of light without shadows. Plus acrylic tubing isn’t cheap even for 1/8" wall in white. Gelling of clear tubing probably wouldn’t be sufficient in thickness to prevent still seeing individual sources of light behind the gel. In my case I had 2.1/2" tubing to work with so I had a little bit of room as long as my support was on center so as to keep an even wash. Were I to go down to say 1.1/2" I would think at least 3/16" wall white tubing would be needed, and at that point you really don’t have a lot of room for proximity of lamp to wall, sag of the strip in being properly supported or powerful enough lamps to punch thru the plexiglass.

Beyond this, takes hours to fabricate lighting fixtures in this way. Like three hours alone this past weekend just to fabricate a jig to make tapered endcaps to the tubing. Hours upon hours to fabricate any of these white acrylic lighting fixtures. Learned a lot so far in the fab of the 18x, still a long way to go in making them and I do hope I don't get the order for 100x more beyond that.

While I believe there might be some LED belt lights on the market that are fairly programmable, I don’t think any are able to be assigned channels to individual sections of them. Recently finished a huge monkey bars project that was made up of like 24" sections of C-Channel and like 8' cubic in size. Each bar had at least one if not two LED belt lights on it dependant on which direction it faced and each had to have its own home run to a power supply. This much less while there is a few brands of belt light out there, if splicable often it’s a question of soldering your connection to some little flexible circuit board plates which easily rip off if you flex during the install the wire too much. Really hard to deal with in one bend too hard and those contacts are now trash, and the belt light overall isn’t as flexible as might be wished for.

I don’t think LED’s are the option yet.

 

[NevilleLighting]

I have to agree with Ship. While LED's hold a lot of promise for the intended effect, the cost of achieving this would be quite a lot. Do you think that you could talk your LD into a flickering effect instead of the "wigging out" look?

Footer's suggestion of looking up what your university has in their surplus is a good one too.

I would also suggest wrapping the tubes in neutral density gel or getting the tubes that GAM makes. Fluorescent lights put out much more light to look at than light that lands on the stage. What I mean by that is that they will by far be the brightest thing in your visual field, all the time. I think that you will want to knock down the brightness.

 

[LeadHead]

Old worn out florescent tubes on older ballasts will sometimes do that effect as well. The problem is though that you can't make a worn out fluorescent tube behave normally. Like if you wanted it to start out normal and bright and then start flickering.