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Varieties of lighting lamps

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Varieties of lighting lamps

Hello dear readers! We are glad to welcome you again in the section "Electrics for Beginners". Today's publication will be devoted to lighting equipment. You will receive general information about the lamps that are used in everyday life. In this situation, you may have a completely adequate question: why, in fact, only general information? The answer to this question is the following.

Some types of lamps: incandescent, halogen, fluorescent, LED.

If you talk about each lamp separately, it would be too long and you would get bored. In addition, the site in the "Lighting" section has already been told about the most common lamps in everyday life. Here you can advise those readers who have not yet read these articles to take advantage of this opportunity. Believe me, you won't regret it.

In these publications you will find answers to many of your questions. The third reason why only general information will be provided is that this section is kept in the form of an encyclopedia, in which all the material is given in brief form, but at the same time, the most important points are highlighted that a novice electrician or just a home master may use in the future.

Among all electrical installation products, lighting equipment has the richest choice. This is because lighting is one of the most important elements of any room from an aesthetic and decorative point of view. The possibilities of modern lamps and fixtures are quite large. And there is no need to talk about diversity at all. It is so large that in some cases even a professional electrician can get confused.

Numerous types of lamps have a different nature of light, as well as the conditions in which they are operated. At the same time, all lamps have one common part - this is the base. There is a fairly wide selection of both lamps and socles.

As you understand, these images show only a small part of the plinths that you can meet in life.
The main characteristic of all lamps is power. On the bulb or base, all manufacturers indicate the power on which the luminosity of the lamp depends. In lamps of different nature of light, power has completely different meanings. The luminosity of lamps is measured in lumens. Usually such data is not indicated on the lamp.

Light output means that for 1 watt of power, the lamp gives a certain number of lumens of light. At this point, we should leave the general concepts of lamps and go directly to the story of the various types of lamps.

incandescent lamp

Any incandescent lamp consists of a vacuum glass cylinder (or flask), a base on which contacts and a fuse are located, and incandescent filaments that emit light.

The incandescent spiral is made of tungsten alloys, which can easily withstand a working combustion temperature of +3200°C. So that the lamp filament does not instantly burn out, in modern incandescent lamps, some inert gas, such as argon, is pumped into the flask.
The principle of operation of such a lamp is quite simple. When a current is passed through a conductor of small cross section and low conductivity, part of the energy is spent on heating the conductor spiral, from which it begins to glow.

Despite the fact that in our time, modern lamp production has stepped far forward, incandescent lamps still remain in the forefront of light sources, despite some of their shortcomings:

Low efficiency, no more than 2-3% of the energy consumed. Everything else goes to heat.
Unsafe from a fire point of view.
This type of lamp is short lived. The service life is 500-1500 hours.

The advantages include: low cost, ease of installation (screwed and forgotten) and instantaneous obtaining of a given light output.

LED bulbs

This high-tech product was first created in 1962. Since then, LED lamps have gradually entered the market.

The LED, according to its principle of operation, is the most common semiconductor, in which part of the energy in the transition p -nis emitted in the form of photons, in other words, in the form of visible light.

These lamps have excellent characteristics: they are ten times superior to incandescent lamps in all respects. But still they have one rather serious drawback - this is a high cost.

Halogen lamps

These lamps are not much different from incandescent lamps (except in some cases in terms of design features), but the principle of operation is the same. There is another difference from incandescent lamps - this is the gas composition in the cylinder.

In these lamps, bromine or iodine is mixed with an inert gas. As a result, it becomes possible to increase the temperature of the filament and reduce the evaporation of tungsten. At the same time, the glass heating temperature rises significantly, and therefore halogen lamps are made of quartz material. Lamps do not tolerate contamination on the flask. It is impossible to touch the cylinder with an unprotected hand, a lamp with such pollution will burn out very quickly.

Halogen lamps may have a different design.

As you can see, in these images, halogen lamps can differ from each other not only in bulbs, but also in caps (the image of the types of caps for halogen lamps that you can find is given above). It should also be noted that this type of lamp is quite sensitive to voltage drops.

CFLs (or compact fluorescent lamps)

Currently, the appearance on the market of CFLs has made a real revolution in lighting technology. Here, the most important drawbacks of fluorescent lamps were eliminated - their large size and the inability to use conventional rifled cartridges and plinths. Ballasts were mounted in a lamp base, and a long tube was coiled into a compact spiral. To date, the variety of types of CFL is very large. They differ not only in their power, but also in the shape of the discharge tubes.

The image clearly shows how the control gear fits into the lamp base and how it might look.

The advantages of such a lamp are obvious:

there is no need to install electronic ballast in your lamp;
CFL has come to replace the conventional incandescent lamp and to replace the sometimes inconvenient fluorescent lamps.

But for all its beauty and convenience, this type of lamp, like all fluorescent lamps, has its drawbacks:

If you use the backlight indicators in the switch, the lamp starts to flicker.
The lamp contains mercury compounds.
Requires special disposal.
These lamps do not like frequent switching on and off.
Relatively expensive.
Do not work with dimmer.
Long startup time - from a few seconds to several minutes.
Sometimes a low-frequency hum is heard from the electronic ballast.
Lamps of this type do not work well at low temperatures, at -10 ° C and below they begin to shine dimly, and in some cases they may not light up at all.
The light of this lamp is not very similar to natural yet and hurts the eyes.

Despite all their shortcomings, CFLs still help us save electricity (but when they burn long enough) and, accordingly, money.

In addition to CFLs, there are many varieties of energy-saving lamps without built-in electronic ballast. All of them have other types of socles.

Fluorescent lamps

Seriously different from incandescent lamps. Instead of a tungsten filament in a glass bulb of such a lamp, mercury vapor burns under the influence of an electric current.

The light of a gas discharge is practically invisible, since it is emitted in the ultraviolet. The latter makes the luminoform, which covers the walls of the tube, glow. This is visible light.

Fluorescent lamps have a low operating temperature. The large surface of the glow of this type of lamp always creates an even diffused light. That is why they are sometimes called fluorescent lamps. In terms of their service life, these lamps exceed incandescent lamps by about 10 times.

The disadvantage of this type of lamp is the impossibility of direct connection to your mains. Ballasts are inevitably used to turn it on. Along with electronic ballasts, starters are used, which, as it were, set fire to the lamp at the moment of switching on.

The labeling of fluorescent lamps is not like the simple designations of the same incandescent lamps, which have only a power rating. Below is an image of the decoding of domestic lamps.

Lamps with improved color rendering quality have the letter C after the letters denoting the color, and with the color rendering of especially high quality, the letters CZ appear. The marking of glow discharge lamps begins with the letters TL.

According to the spectrum of emitted light, lamps are divided into: