Took a 50w MH ballast I had lying around and installed it in this aluminium project box to make this enclosed ballast. It's currently used with my 75w Eye Merc in my Powerlite gumball. I didn't want to modify the gumball nor the ballast above the lamp so I remote mount it in this custom box. The ignitor is installed but wired out of circuit.
AWESOME! Love the foil nameplate. I tried doing that with the school printer but the foil got creased and the rollers made marks in the foil so the labels came out horribly. And of course I have a stinkjet printer so that's no good lol. Did you use standard aluminum foil or is this thicker heavy duty foil or something?
Thanks! I also like the foil labels but they're a PITA to print. My printer also tends to pinch the foil and make crease marks. You can see one of the marks on the right side of the tag. I use standard aluminium foil but I wonder if I can find some thicker foil to print on.
Apparently you can use a inkjet printer to print on aluminium but you'll need to coat it with a coating to absorb the ink before printing.
Yeah they do sell heavy-duty aluminum foil at the grocery store, which is thicker. It might do a little better. Ah how many takes did it take you? I actually saved a piece of gold foil from a candy wrapper (yes, crazy, LOL, but I wanted the gold foil to make a HPS NEMA tag) but I need to wait until I can get my hands on a laser printer and if I screw up, that's it, since I only have enough foil for one NEMA tag.
One thing I noticed, the foil label says 70W but ballast is 50W? Or is the same ballast sometimes used for both lamps? I should get some low wattage PSMH ballasts and lamps. I got that 70W PSMH deck fixture we never use. I could convert it to incandescent...
Thanks, the "70W" is actually a typo on my part. I meant to type in 75w instead lol. 50w PSMH ballasts can also run 75w mercury lamps at close to rated current. Yeah the low wattage PSMH ballasts are pretty neat, useful for indoor HID fixtures. I suppose you could take the 70w PSMH ballast from your deck light and then put a HPS or a PL ballast inside or convert to incandescent and stick a LED in .
Still looking for a cheap magnetic 39w CMH ballast for running 50w MV lamps, they seem to be quite rare. All of mine are electronic which you can't easily disable the ignitor on. Electronic MV ballasts exist though, I have a 80w fixture that has one.
Ah I see. Yeah I'll probably just buy a 100W= LED and stick it in place of the 70W PSMH lamp and remove the gear and wire the socket directly to the button PC and mains. I'd like to find an empty cobrahead (or a cobrahead with a non-120V or non-240V ballast like my boxy OV-15 had) and convert it to 70W PSMH. I love my 85W induction boxy OV-15. The light from it is crisp like CMH and soft on the eyes like MV.
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Apparently you can use a inkjet printer to print on aluminium but you'll need to coat it with a coating to absorb the ink before printing.
Still looking for a cheap magnetic 39w CMH ballast for running 50w MV lamps, they seem to be quite rare. All of mine are electronic which you can't easily disable the ignitor on. Electronic MV ballasts exist though, I have a 80w fixture that has one.