I guess in this case it takes two to tango. Better cooling and heat sinking is better, but I've seen pretty much all popular types of TP-22 sockets fail eventually. The worst were probably the ceramic models from the 90's to early 2000's (not sure of the exact time period). The OP does not appear to have one, but in these sockets, the entire base including screw holes were ceramic, with the lamp retainer being metal/tin. I found that the ceramic could eventually crack in half -- not sure if that led to failures directly, but I doubt it helped matters.Is this a problem with the socket design or with the lamp design?
Yes, thank you! I am new to the world of theater and new to this position and am in the process of trying to figure out why these lamp housings are sitting around on the floor. Is this something that can be prevented or just a matter of time before a socket needs to be replaced. Any and all help/advice is greatly appreciated.And a bit further, this is a critical maintenance piece. If you have "several" that look like that, you should examine your entire inventory. They can cause lamps to fail prematurely, and lamps swapped out of those sockets can spread the corrosion/damage to otherwise good sockets.
Replace all your bad sockets, don't reuse the lamps that came from those fixtures, and make sure you fully seat lamps when replacing them. With those three things, you should get a good 10-15 years minimum out of a socket.
Oh and I guess a fourth thing would be to make sure your stage lights aren't being used unnecessarily, such as during non-tech rehearsals and as worklights. That really puts a strain on things over time.
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