How spiral compact fluorescent bulbs are formed - GIF

**Jon** · Nov 26, 2018, 07:01 PM

How spiral compact fluorescent bulbs are formed.

Previously:

Drone changing a lightbulb - GIF

**marksbug** · Nov 27, 2018, 06:05 PM

thats neet!!!!

**PJs** · Nov 28, 2018, 03:18 PM

Very Cool machine. Would love to see more of it...coating, gas injection, termination and sockets. Now we know why they are still relatively expensive. Thanks Jon, always a good mind spark!

**wizard69** · Dec 3, 2018, 08:43 AM

Pretty neat. What is surprising is the technology is already out of date. The factories likely barely paid for themselves before LED took over.

**Jon** · Dec 3, 2018, 09:05 AM

Originally Posted by wizard69

Pretty neat. What is surprising is the technology is already out of date. The factories likely barely paid for themselves before LED took over.

Yup, AFAIK, CFL is/was essentially a transitional technology (are there still remaining niche uses for it?). The light quality is too jarring for residential use, and its popularity was at least in part attributed to questionable enviro-friendly promotional tactics known as Greenwashing.

**PJs** · Dec 3, 2018, 01:01 PM

Originally Posted by Jon

Yup, AFAIK, CFL is/was essentially a transitional technology (are there still remaining niche uses for it?). The light quality is too jarring for residential use, and its popularity was at least in part attributed to questionable enviro-friendly promotional tactics known as Greenwashing.

Interestingly Jon, CFL's are still used in photo/video lighting because of the ability to dial in the color temperature with gas and coatings. My big umbrella and small spot lights are CFL and they are almost perfect on in color temperature and last quite a while if you take care of letting them warm up and cool down before handling. My one pair of LED's I never use with out a screen or a decent filter. LED's are getting better and by now days, using filters for photo/video, but the affordable filters have some issues, imho. High end glass filters are good and will last a good while but not price friendly at all because of all the various colors & sizes needed for that kind of work. High end stuff is still using Gel's I believe.

Home LED's are being color/temp referenced (marketed) now and got some for the bathroom fixture a while back but again they are a bit jaring, off temp a fair amount and done with filter materials in the globe.

A little reference for color temp.

The three primary types of color temperature for light bulbs are: Soft White (2700K – 3000K), Bright White/Cool White (3500K – 4100K), and Daylight (5000K – 6500K). The higher the Degrees Kelvin, the whiter the color temperature.

Here is a Planckian Locus chart from wiki on color temps.

The CIE 1931 x,y chromaticity space, also showing the chromaticities of black-body light sources of various temperatures (Planckian locus), and lines of constant correlated color temperature.

How spiral compact fluorescent bulbs are formed - GIF-300px-planckianlocus.png

**Jon** · Dec 23, 2018, 10:33 AM

I'm not exactly certain that this is the single most useful tool in all of human technology. However, still interesting. I will say that LEDs have improved with "warmer" light spectrums, and are certainly cost-effective, but, all other things being equal (they're not), I still prefer the light quality of incandescents. I wonder if this is objective or just a relic of my past lighting experience. For example, when light bulbs first came into prominence, did people denounce their light quality as inferior to candles?

**marksbug** · Dec 23, 2018, 02:49 PM

but why? I just use the right bulb....not a gozillion of them insureing I wack at least half of them with the bike or whatever else....

**PJs** · Dec 26, 2018, 12:25 PM

Originally Posted by Jon

I'm not exactly certain that this is the single most useful tool in all of human technology. However, still interesting. I will say that LEDs have improved with "warmer" light spectrums, and are certainly cost-effective, but, all other things being equal (they're not), I still prefer the light quality of incandescents. I wonder if this is objective or just a relic of my past lighting experience. For example, when light bulbs first came into prominence, did people denounce their light quality as inferior to candles?

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I agree Jon...not overly useful imho either...it speaks to the Mo is Better crowd though. The thing is with incandescence is we had a 100 years of developing the coatings and technologies to get the lighting qualities to roughly 4 shades (temps) which lasted for maybe 40 years...4 generations gets "used" to that and set perhaps in DNA or at least lizard brain¿ Because we brought the tech to a manufacturing bonanza because of quantity and life = cheap it was easy to be/get comfortable especially with all the other tech going on. It's interesting to me the kerfuffle we had with florescent's and 60hz buzz, tired eye and other effects we've "named" since there arrival in mainstream, when Tesla's original likely had none of those effects because of the frequencies and surface effects and yet never took off until 30-40's after GE and Westinghouse finalized the R&D and ran with the production.

I would bet the candle people would have complained for a while, but being able to light a larger space probably changed their minds quickly...yet we still use candles as mood lighting and ambiance.