What best replaces old incandescent bulbs?

[GaryBo]

With the regular incandescent light bulbs soon to be no longer being made, and the industry standard will be either LED or the curly Q florescent bulbs, does anyone have any ideas as to, what type of bulbs can be used in some displays (such as blow molds), which prior, had utilized regular incandescent bulbs? I know I can use the curly Q florescent bulbs for static lights, but when I use them with LOR and the sequences, they burn out quickly. I had tried the curly Q type florescent in some of my blow molds, but I can not “flash” them as they burn out quickly from being turned “off and on”.

[Surfing4Dough]

GaryBo wrote:

With the regular incandescent light bulbs no longer being made,...

Did I miss the memo regarding this?

[GaryBo]

I believe the Federal regulation, stops manufacture of the bulbs January 2012.
Several companies have already ceased manufacture, GE being one of them.

Just run a google search, and you will find several articles.

I saw the info on National News a couple of weeks back. I still have a small stock of old incandescent bulbs, thankfully.

[Surfing4Dough]

I thought you were saying that their production had already been stopped, but I now see your correction. I think some of the bulbs are phasing out in 2012 and the rest in 2014. However, 2 weeks ago there was a bill proposed to repeal this law, since it is costing us a lot of jobs, and all the CFLs are made in China. I would stock up if needed before then. Dimmable CFLs will be more common probably by then too.

[Max-Paul]

Two questions about CFL. First one is about the use of these bulbs in cooler climates. I notice that any kind of fluorescent blubs are dimmer when my garage is cooler. If not to cool then they will warm up and get brighter. But if the garage is cool enough they never do brighten up. And the cooler it is, the dimmer the bulb gets.

Second question is that in the past several people have had problems with the noise that CFL produce to the point that they get uncontrolled activity and the display goes wild.

[scubado]

I say good ridence to the incandescent. I've been using CFL's for years. I get the ones at Sam's Club, best price, quick on time and short warm up to full brightness. Yes, the colder it is the longer the warm up. Even in the dead of winter I still have CFL's in the garage. If I'm going to be in and out, I'll leave them on so they remain at full brightness, doesn't cost much to leave them on. Some CFL's just plain suck and I don't hesitate to take them back to the store. It's still to early to go to LED lighting. The bulbs that will be effective enough for main lighting are terribly expensive. The smaller bulbs with a lot of little led's aren't that great. The LED's fade out and lose their brightness. I have some in my basement that are on 24/7 and last about a year.
There's one big caveat to everyone trying to conserve energy, the power companies aren't getting the revenue they used to get so they got to raise their prices to compensate plus all the government crap that's going on.

[ErnieHorning]

Max-Paul wrote:

I notice that any kind of fluorescent bulbs are dimmer when my garage is cooler.

I bought some fixtures a couple of years ago that claimed operation down to -10ºF. Even at -10ºF they snap on at full brightness after the typical 1/2 second delay. In fact with the standard 40 watt T12 tubes, they're also a lot brighter (then claim 190%) too.

Because they were so bright, I needed only half of what I had expected so the rest went into the attic of my house where it gets down to around zero.

[ErnieHorning]

Incandescents aren't going away totally. Neither florescent or LED is going to work in an oven.

The mandate excludes decorative lighting so low wattage bulbs will still be around for awhile.

[Max-Paul]

I'll have to look around and check out these newer fixtures. I suspect that these are those new electronic ballast that work at higher frequencies. Almost sound like a flyback transformer out of a T.V.

[-klb-]

Odds are you won't find a good ballast in a CFL, as the ballast is disposable.

But, on T8 fixtures, it is now pretty common to find ballasts that are supposed to run at 18KHz or faster. The problem is that sometimes when they go bad, they start drifting into lower frequencies. I ran into one at work that had drifted down to 13KHz, and 90% of the people could not hear it, (including facilities staff and management) Thankfully we finally found someone in Sr IT management who not only could hear it, but stated that he would rather have a root canal than sit under it...

Other than when the frequency drifts low, I much prefer the high frequency ballasts. Faster starting, and zero 60/120 Hz noise.