"Can you read the colour code? Yes that's righ it's black black black black" You cracked me up! This is why I love BigClive... Interesting teardown of the most spicy electronic excrements sprinkled with these amazing one-liner.... Greetings from Italy!
I’ve seen these in older church fixtures for eternity candles. They are a lamp intended to stay on all of the time as a memorial to someone or as a prayer focus. The bulbs are available in the US in Walmart or hardware stores, mostly around Christmas time. I’ve not seen an LED replacement yet, though I expect that is coming.
I think the end result looks MUCH better with that slender, colour-matched lamp holder rather than the fat yellow original one - maybe they'll see this and revise their design to suit! :)
I absolutely adore those neon flame bulbs. My grandmother had one in a candle shaped lamp body that would come out for Christmas every year. As a kid, I would just sit and stare at that thing for God knows how long. Eventually she just left it out all year round for me. Wish I knew where the hell that thing went.
If she's passed I can guarantee it was one of your parents who said 'Quick, get rid of that before Thor sees it and wants to drag it home'. If was then swiftly 'disappeared' before you thought about it. The same thing may have happened during downsizing or moving into sheltered accommodation. I speak from experience. 😁
I still have a wreath with a flicker flame candle in the center, it's about 30 years old, haven't used it the last couple of seasons but it does still work.
Thanks for that Clive, very interesting indeed. Thanks also for including the OpenSCAD script. I love looking at how different people, overcome different issues with simple coding.
That smaller flicker flame lamp you added looks much better with those color changing LED flames. The convenience of being able to unscrew the bulb is a definite plus. Clive I've been wanting to tell you that I recently purchased a Yihua 995D+ soldering station with soldering iron and hot air rework pen. I absolutely love it. I also purchased a basic Kungber SPPS-S3010 0-30VDC 10A power supply. I got both of them at less than half price at Amazon on sale while signing up for Amazon Prime. Both were early Christmas presents to myself. Merry Christmas to you, brother Ralfy and all the kitty's! 🤗
As an owner of both a Yihua 939D+ soldering station and the exact same Kungber power supply, I think you'll be quite happy with them. You may wish to replace the leads of the Kungber with something better down the road, but it's still a great value. The Yihua is heats up quickly when you first turn it on, recovery time is fast as well, and if you have a quantity of wires to solder you can get through them at a much faster pace than a standard iron. Merry Christmas, enjoy your new "toys!"
Thanks dashcamandy for your comment. You are exactly correct. I built up 20 wiring harnesses a few days ago and I was very happy with the performance of the Yihua soldering station. Merry Christmas to you and yours! 🤗
Neon lamps have a limited lifetime, although quite long. What happens is the electrodes are etched by the ionic bombardment and slowly evaporate. You can see this in old switches and night lights using neons. That being said, the old neon lamps used to incorporate a bit of radioactive material to enhance ionization in darkness. The new lamps from China apparently do not have this and so have different starting voltages between light and dark environments.
A bit more--the so-called "dark effect" is sometimes used to advantage. For example, a neon relaxation oscillator when adjusted and exposed to a mains-connected fluorescent lamp will synchronize to the power line frequency. Usually Krypton 85 is added to the gas mixture; it's mildly radioactive and helps to reduce the "dark effect". There's also a 3-electrode neon lamp, named the NE-77; a very small current on the third electrode can cause a lamp held just below the strike voltage to fire. Neon lamps can be made to function as logic devices, including counters. Fascinating creatures.
If you have some flickery, or dead neon lamps in your appliances, power strips, or whatever, shining a bright LED flashlight onto the lamps(when powered up) will usually get them shining brightly and steadily again. The shorter the wavelength of the light shined on them, the better it works... (Think blue or UV LEDs) The extra light photons shone into the weak neon lamps gives then a little extra conduction between the electrodes, and many times it's enough so that the lamp can fully strike and work again. Kind of counter-intuitive though to have to provide light so that your lamp works... 😕 As mentioned above, there are some practical applications in some electronic circuitry that can take advantage of this phenomenon with neon bulbs.
With the amount of stuff you work on being able to print in abs is a key tool. In my experience and ender 3 just about fits in any under counter cabinet if you remove the upper drawer. I then tape a cardboard flap on the inside of the removed drawer and one side of the door to create a good seal. This will print abs perfect and better than any purpose made off the shelf enclosure I have found. Edit: Just make sure you have heat soaked it.
I lived in Slough for a while, which has a large Indian community, and most of the larger Indian goods shops used to sell these kinds of lamps and other religious artifacts. I used to love looking at them while I was buying my Indian sweets and samosas!
They do last a very long time. The front door carriage light has one neon light. It is on all the time for more than 30 years. Just doesn't flicker now.
I love the Indian temples we see on travel blogs. So much light and every colour you can thing of at some point if not all at once flashing light a lighting storm. ❤❤ nice lights 👍👍
During a walking tour in NYC we got to see some small shrines and temples, but the Chinese ones really knocked me out. I'm sure some of their stuff is painstakingly hand-made.
What would the actual voltage be across that 50V capacitor on the output of the rectifier? I realise there's a capacitative dropper but 50V does seem like a worryingly low rating for something connected to rectified mains.
As a colorblind person I am amazed that people seemingly can decode resistor values at all... I always have to use a multimeter. I am even more amazed that color information is retained in a charred resistor package that to me only looks like gray/beige smudge with stripes on them...
I guessed wrong twice trying to replace a burnt resistor in a 40 yr old potters wheel power supply, eventually I found a schematic online for a similar model in a forum. God bless the guy who posted it (and tiny Tim too).
I wonder if there is "an app for that" - if there isn't, there should be, I remember my brother being told that he couldn't be an electrician or a train driver etc due to his Daltonism. My father was also red/green colour blind, he worked as Haz-Chem tanker driver, when we asked him about traffic lights, he said it's easy, the red one is on the top! (If we ever played snooker, arguments ensued). I dodged the genetic bullet, don't think life as a chemist would have been so easy if I hadn't had full colour vision, though I've met a couple of people who got by.
@@Derek_Garnham I built myself a switchable "decade box" of resistors just for that purpose... Start high, until your item works properly, then read the box, and that's your unidentifiable resistor.
Keep in mind that PLA is in fact one of the harder plastics out there, but - it softens at around 60 degrees (not F or R or any of that nonsense). If you need something that can stand higher temperatures, PETG can handle around 80 (but is a wee tad softer) and ABS or ASA (around 105 degrees, but those will require a closed printer, preferably with good filtering to get rid of the stink and the gases).
1:11 Wow, what a decent build quality, the leads of the LED's just twisted together, why didn't i think of that. Really nice quality. (Sarcastic mode on 🥳)
We had a Christmas star full of these blinking LED's here in the south of India. It was permanently hung outside (but out of the rain), and it lasted for three or four years. I took it apart (a back panel was pressed in) and the leads of the LED's were not even twisted together, just bent once so that each one hooked the lead of the next. The leads were all rusty, but I would expect nothing less because of our rainforest humidity. So I bought a new one, made exactly the same way, and cost me almost 5 USD.
@@davelowets No doubt. Maybe I'll get around to doing it sometime. Or not. One thing that certainly worked in the previous star's favor is that Christmas falls in our very short dry season between monsoons and the star stayed switched off the rest of the year, so any electrolytic corrosion was probably minimized.
I noticed that the plates in the old neon bulb didn't appear to be gapped properly. If that old bulb was given more current it may have worked better(till it failed from overdriving it).
Yep. If the gap is much too small at the bottom, compared to the rest of the plates, the neon will only glow and flicker around at the bottom like that. The reverse is true if the gap is large at the bottom, and narrow at the top. If you are buying one of these bulbs, look for the plates to be fairly parallel to each other, and it should work OK for you.
Very neat. Slightly surprised you didn't try to put one of the LED flame effect bulbs in it, but they might have been too big. Maybe a future project to 3D print a complete unit with one of those included?
I am thinking the cause of degradation might be the penetration of oxygen into the bulb itself and oxidizing the "filament". Hence the greyish color. Technology Connection did a video about those lights and he stated in the video after crushing the bulb, the black surface quickly turned into a greyish-rough texture.
If that neon bulb was the one in the shop window, as you said, it probably just died of old age--lit all day every day. That's how they fail unless they're underdriven to prolong life. The electrodes in that old one looked like they'd been through a war.
They did... Could have been slight oxygen ingression or a "gassy" lamp, or like you said, simply "old age". I'm sure that the plates not being parallel in that lamp had something to do with it as well. When I buy those flame neon lamps, I look at the plates of them, and pick the ones with the most even gap between the top and bottom of the plates. Those seem to last the longest in my experience.
Crispy burn resistors ... right ! Now I know why people pray :) "Please let there be now fire, .25W resistor will suffice, please let my property not burn" ahahaha :) Thank You mate, have a nice day !
I haven't seen carbon-film resistors with "cap ends" like that in quite some time. Old Soviet stock they used...? Nice use of the 3D printer, making that adapter/insert!
I'm glad to see that they are so concerned about their workers that they don't use solder on any of the discrete components. I'm sure it is not to save money... Of course we won't talk about the fire hazard or easy-open cover
In India 230V is not considered particularly dangerous. Back when the first gen ventilated LED bulbs were common, people would remove the diffuser because it filled up with trapped insects in no time.
@@bigclivedotcom I've heard people say it's down to the dominance of fatalist philosophy, other less generous just say "life's cheap", I prefer the former.
@@bigclivedotcom In my region of India, every house has always had grounding and newer wiring has RCCB's. The socialist government monopoly "Electricity Board"'s distribution infrastructure has always been much sloppier. In the early 90's as I was growing up, I would often assist (holding up a light mostly) in fixing a distribution fuse for the entire neighborhood because no one would come from the "Electricity Board" unless you bribed them. Of course everything is live and sparking, and the fuse block is exposed and likely wet from monsoon because they rarely put them in any kind of box. Things are much better and less socialist now.
I've got a question to you and your knowledgeable viewers may be able to answer, I've got a fibre optic Christmas tree base who's power adapter has failed, instead of ordering a replacement it would be cheaper to replace the lamp with a lower power LED one as I have an AC adapter that fits but only puts out half the current of the original, but would it still work? The item consists of 20w 12v halogen lamp and a small synchronous motor to spin the colour disk, they appear to be wired in parallel but rather curiously when the lamp wasn't installed the motor didn't rotate, it only oscillated about 15 degrees back and forth. I can think of reasons why it would/wouldn't work but I'm interested to see what you all think.
If you replace the lamp with an LED one you will still need to use an AC adaptor, as the synchronous motors require AC to work. If it is an actual AC adaptor, and not putting out DC then it's possible that the voltage is not correct for the motor.
@@bigclivedotcom The voltage is definitely correct, both the new and old adapters are 12V AC, it's just the new one I've got puts out .83 amps instead of the 2 amps of the old one. I suppose there shouldn't be an issue with using an LED lamp but I thought I'd ask in case I'm missing something, and if anyone can explain the odd phenomenon where the motor only oscillated wihout a lamp fitted.
resistor color code, I mean colour code... is black black black LOL... in other words: charcoal... The resistor tolerance? I'd say it had a very low tolerance to power dissipation! The store owner said was that it would work when it warmed up... um... Really!? I'd say it got plenty warm.
Technology Connections just did a video on these! The failure comes from years of use, just like a power strip neon bulb starts flickering after a few years.
They have no idea of thermal management in the design.Put two resistors right next to each other and heat can not escape from one side where the other resistor is, so you would need to de-rate them. It would be better to connect resistors in series as it would offer more surface area to get rid of heat as the resistors would be located away from each other. Also putting it a sleeve will increase thermal resistance making the situation worse.
It actually sounds nothing like that because the "Na" is a retroflex sound. In my Indian language (Malayalam) we have three different "na" sounds, most Indian languages have at least two I would guess.
@@rexsceleratorum1632 oh! Thanks. I didn't know that. I meant it more as a joke. You see, I said that _a person with a specific Indian accent_ - from the many there are - would say it like that. Not meant to be an offensive one, so if I have offended you, please accept my sincerest apologies.
@@mattmoreira210 I'm not sure that the "specific accent" you want exists. I just checked languages from the north, east, and south, and they all use the retroflex sound in "veena" (easy to tell because Indian scripts have a separate letter for the retroflex version). I'm not offended, no need to apologize.
You might like to know Clive that you got a mention on LGR. He was sent some old fairy lights and at one point said he was starting to feel like Big Clive. Haha.
A fellow OpenScad user! FYI FreeCAD import finally works quite well too. And time to practice some better materials. Give me a shout if you need any advice. I have been building printers, heads, extruders and tuning material profiles for years now.
The original lamp looks like the flame pieces have scorchmarks on them from being overheated in that one spot, probably from being overdriven for too long...
@@bigclivedotcom This is a crude electric imitation of a traditional south Indian lamp called "nilavilakku" (literally 'tiered lamp'), a ceremonial lamp used for religious purposes by both Hindus and Malabar Christians. Often used as a cultural symbol of Kerala. Diwali is traditionally a northern festival, so I would assume it is completely unrelated. The "veena" in the name is also a south Indian musical instrument used in southern classical music.
i have a BC based flame neon, that also seems to have 'degraded', i probably got it 40 ish years ago, when i was about 10, from a nice old electrical shop in a nearby town(gone for quite a few years now) maybe a common problem with them?
What's the rule of thumb for discharge resisters? I'm guessing that there's not much current running through them normally, so 1/4W 1M Ohm on a 120V circuit is fine? (Oh wait, duh: 120V^2 / 1M Ohm = 0.0144 watts, never mind.)
They're purely to reduce the voltage across the capacitor fairly quickly when the light is unplugged, so they can be a high value. Usually 330K to 1Mohm.
I'd say the RC multiple needs to be shorter than the time for a human to enter the danger zone. For example it takes at least 1 second to unplug the bayonet lamp and risk touching the bottom pads, so 1M times 1000n is small enough.
"Can you read the colour code? Yes that's righ it's black black black black"
You cracked me up!
This is why I love BigClive... Interesting teardown of the most spicy electronic excrements sprinkled with these amazing one-liner....
Greetings from Italy!
Interesting hack to fix the neon flicker bulb. I've never seen one in real life and then you and Technology Connections show them off.
Are you a young man? As a 50+ individual, I can fondly remember these from decades ago.
@@davelowets Nope, a geezer. The only novelty bulb I remember are bubble lights on our Christmas Tree.
@@davelowets Mid-40s, never seen these either (Before TC a couple of weeks back).
I’ve seen these in older church fixtures for eternity candles.
They are a lamp intended to stay on all of the time as a memorial to someone or as a prayer focus.
The bulbs are available in the US in Walmart or hardware stores, mostly around Christmas time. I’ve not seen an LED replacement yet, though I expect that is coming.
I think the end result looks MUCH better with that slender, colour-matched lamp holder rather than the fat yellow original one - maybe they'll see this and revise their design to suit! :)
That makes it look less Indian, though.
And it would cost more..
I absolutely adore those neon flame bulbs. My grandmother had one in a candle shaped lamp body that would come out for Christmas every year. As a kid, I would just sit and stare at that thing for God knows how long. Eventually she just left it out all year round for me. Wish I knew where the hell that thing went.
i guess Santa took it ...
If she's passed I can guarantee it was one of your parents who said 'Quick, get rid of that before Thor sees it and wants to drag it home'. If was then swiftly 'disappeared' before you thought about it.
The same thing may have happened during downsizing or moving into sheltered accommodation. I speak from experience. 😁
I still have a wreath with a flicker flame candle in the center, it's about 30 years old, haven't used it the last couple of seasons but it does still work.
I have one out front in a pole light. People ask if it's a gas light. The color isn't close to gas, but they still ask.
Nice pen. Mine helped me through 3 years of Electronic Engineering 224 - It was my pride and joy.
Thanks for that Clive, very interesting indeed. Thanks also for including the OpenSCAD script. I love looking at how different people, overcome different issues with simple coding.
India saw leds and then said "lets use this for every holiday in extreme excess" ive been told durga puja is pretty spectacular.
LED's just made them cheaper and thus more ubiquitous. The flicker lamps were in every house decades ago.
India had the right idea.
Thank you Clive for the openscad script. I have just started to learn/play with it and the item you made is easy for me to understand.
Love those 100 nano farad resistors.
With a bleed resistor across them... 😆
We've all made mistakes, but the better people amongst us can laugh at themselves along WITH everyone else.. 🍻
Wonderful little lights... very neat! Also loved the resistor color coding bit.. it got me.
Nice.
Totally re-engineered!
Your friend owes you a huge favour now for fixing it. 👍🏻😀🇬🇧
To be fair, they did me a huge favor by buying it for me.
Aha! More Flicker Flames! Just saw these on #TechnologyConnections the other day! My favorite kind of decorative lamp!
Always loved those flickering fiery lamps 😍
Better than LEDs in some cases
I love it when a project requires a 3D printed part, even moreso when the print is done before I'm ready for it!
Thats a good rebuild now the lamp can be replaced Merry Christmas to all Clive's people .
That smaller flicker flame lamp you added looks much better with those color changing LED flames. The convenience of being able to unscrew the bulb is a definite plus. Clive I've been wanting to tell you that I recently purchased a Yihua 995D+ soldering station with soldering iron and hot air rework pen. I absolutely love it. I also purchased a basic Kungber SPPS-S3010 0-30VDC 10A power supply. I got both of them at less than half price at Amazon on sale while signing up for Amazon Prime. Both were early Christmas presents to myself. Merry Christmas to you, brother Ralfy and all the kitty's! 🤗
As an owner of both a Yihua 939D+ soldering station and the exact same Kungber power supply, I think you'll be quite happy with them. You may wish to replace the leads of the Kungber with something better down the road, but it's still a great value. The Yihua is heats up quickly when you first turn it on, recovery time is fast as well, and if you have a quantity of wires to solder you can get through them at a much faster pace than a standard iron. Merry Christmas, enjoy your new "toys!"
Thanks dashcamandy for your comment. You are exactly correct. I built up 20 wiring harnesses a few days ago and I was very happy with the performance of the Yihua soldering station. Merry Christmas to you and yours! 🤗
The flickering neon flame.
Still loving it!
Neon lamps have a limited lifetime, although quite long. What happens is the electrodes are etched by the ionic bombardment and slowly evaporate. You can see this in old switches and night lights using neons. That being said, the old neon lamps used to incorporate a bit of radioactive material to enhance ionization in darkness. The new lamps from China apparently do not have this and so have different starting voltages between light and dark environments.
A bit more--the so-called "dark effect" is sometimes used to advantage. For example, a neon relaxation oscillator when adjusted and exposed to a mains-connected fluorescent lamp will synchronize to the power line frequency. Usually Krypton 85 is added to the gas mixture; it's mildly radioactive and helps to reduce the "dark effect". There's also a 3-electrode neon lamp, named the NE-77; a very small current on the third electrode can cause a lamp held just below the strike voltage to fire. Neon lamps can be made to function as logic devices, including counters. Fascinating creatures.
If you have some flickery, or dead neon lamps in your appliances, power strips, or whatever, shining a bright LED flashlight onto the lamps(when powered up) will usually get them shining brightly and steadily again. The shorter the wavelength of the light shined on them, the better it works... (Think blue or UV LEDs) The extra light photons shone into the weak neon lamps gives then a little extra conduction between the electrodes, and many times it's enough so that the lamp can fully strike and work again.
Kind of counter-intuitive though to have to provide light so that your lamp works... 😕
As mentioned above, there are some practical applications in some electronic circuitry that can take advantage of this phenomenon with neon bulbs.
Classic light teardown and hack video. Love it.
With the amount of stuff you work on being able to print in abs is a key tool. In my experience and ender 3 just about fits in any under counter cabinet if you remove the upper drawer. I then tape a cardboard flap on the inside of the removed drawer and one side of the door to create a good seal. This will print abs perfect and better than any purpose made off the shelf enclosure I have found.
Edit: Just make sure you have heat soaked it.
I lived in Slough for a while, which has a large Indian community, and most of the larger Indian goods shops used to sell these kinds of lamps and other religious artifacts. I used to love looking at them while I was buying my Indian sweets and samosas!
Those are lamps inside almost every temple indian home.
They do last a very long time. The front door carriage light has one neon light. It is on all the time for more than 30 years. Just doesn't flicker now.
I'd love to see the old flame bulb on 240V with no resistor. From my understanding, it would be spectacular.
Technology Connections just did a video on these! He does blow up a few bulbs without the resistor :)
💣 BANG!!
The best chance scenario there, is that you dont end up in the E.R. having them pick glass shards out of your eyes.
I love the Indian temples we see on travel blogs. So much light and every colour you can thing of at some point if not all at once flashing light a lighting storm. ❤❤
nice lights 👍👍
During a walking tour in NYC we got to see some small shrines and temples, but the Chinese ones really knocked me out. I'm sure some of their stuff is painstakingly hand-made.
@@tncorgi92 very different from my take on a religious building. They look great even the small ones are rally great to see.
@8:46 a 100nF resistor you say? 🤔🙃
Yeah. I spotted that after.
He's testing how carefully we watch the videos - Clive might have been disappointed if no-one spotted that! ;-))
What would the actual voltage be across that 50V capacitor on the output of the rectifier? I realise there's a capacitative dropper but 50V does seem like a worryingly low rating for something connected to rectified mains.
It will be the combined voltage of the LEDs. So about 15V here.
It will be the combined voltage of the LEDs. So about 15V here.
Merry Christmas for this week 👍 hope you have a good one. Ps keep the great videos coming 👍
As a colorblind person I am amazed that people seemingly can decode resistor values at all... I always have to use a multimeter. I am even more amazed that color information is retained in a charred resistor package that to me only looks like gray/beige smudge with stripes on them...
I guessed wrong twice trying to replace a burnt resistor in a 40 yr old potters wheel power supply, eventually I found a schematic online for a similar model in a forum. God bless the guy who posted it (and tiny Tim too).
I wonder if there is "an app for that" - if there isn't, there should be, I remember my brother being told that he couldn't be an electrician or a train driver etc due to his Daltonism. My father was also red/green colour blind, he worked as Haz-Chem tanker driver, when we asked him about traffic lights, he said it's easy, the red one is on the top! (If we ever played snooker, arguments ensued).
I dodged the genetic bullet, don't think life as a chemist would have been so easy if I hadn't had full colour vision, though I've met a couple of people who got by.
@@Derek_Garnham I built myself a switchable "decade box" of resistors just for that purpose... Start high, until your item works properly, then read the box, and that's your unidentifiable resistor.
It's amusing how that quirky lamp became a lamp that has a lamp screwed in.
Clive, Your videos and audio recordings are all so good! What type of camera and audio equipment are you using?
A Moto G7 power phone.
Keep in mind that PLA is in fact one of the harder plastics out there, but - it softens at around 60 degrees (not F or R or any of that nonsense). If you need something that can stand higher temperatures, PETG can handle around 80 (but is a wee tad softer) and ABS or ASA (around 105 degrees, but those will require a closed printer, preferably with good filtering to get rid of the stink and the gases).
A neat solution. 👍
1:11 Wow, what a decent build quality, the leads of the LED's just twisted together, why didn't i think of that. Really nice quality. (Sarcastic mode on 🥳)
We had a Christmas star full of these blinking LED's here in the south of India. It was permanently hung outside (but out of the rain), and it lasted for three or four years. I took it apart (a back panel was pressed in) and the leads of the LED's were not even twisted together, just bent once so that each one hooked the lead of the next.
The leads were all rusty, but I would expect nothing less because of our rainforest humidity.
So I bought a new one, made exactly the same way, and cost me almost 5 USD.
@@rexsceleratorum1632 Quickly soldering the ends together would most likely greatly increase the reliability of the unit.
@@davelowets No doubt. Maybe I'll get around to doing it sometime. Or not.
One thing that certainly worked in the previous star's favor is that Christmas falls in our very short dry season between monsoons and the star stayed switched off the rest of the year, so any electrolytic corrosion was probably minimized.
Pretty neat...I like these type of neon flicker flames :)
I noticed that the plates in the old neon bulb didn't appear to be gapped properly. If that old bulb was given more current it may have worked better(till it failed from overdriving it).
Yep. If the gap is much too small at the bottom, compared to the rest of the plates, the neon will only glow and flicker around at the bottom like that. The reverse is true if the gap is large at the bottom, and narrow at the top. If you are buying one of these bulbs, look for the plates to be fairly parallel to each other, and it should work OK for you.
Very neat. Slightly surprised you didn't try to put one of the LED flame effect bulbs in it, but they might have been too big. Maybe a future project to 3D print a complete unit with one of those included?
Those bulbs look far less like flames than this one does.
@@mikemondano3624 They probably use more power too.
Wow that's so beautiful, fun indeed 😍 😊
I am thinking the cause of degradation might be the penetration of oxygen into the bulb itself and oxidizing the "filament". Hence the greyish color. Technology Connection did a video about those lights and he stated in the video after crushing the bulb, the black surface quickly turned into a greyish-rough texture.
That, or the plates inside that weren't parallel to each other, were most likely the failure points.
Very interesting.
Thank you 🙏
Those black Black black Black black resistors are always the ones that burn out!
surprised to see an "old school" bridge rectifier, I have only ever seen the one component type in the tat that I disassemble.
There tends to be a significant cost difference between four discrete diodes and a bridge. They're a lot cheaper now.
I'm a bit confused Clive... I see the LED lights flashing around the center light. What circuit component on your schematic is flashing the lights?
Each LED contains a chip that alternates between two different colour chips.
If that neon bulb was the one in the shop window, as you said, it probably just died of old age--lit all day every day. That's how they fail unless they're underdriven to prolong life. The electrodes in that old one looked like they'd been through a war.
They did... Could have been slight oxygen ingression or a "gassy" lamp, or like you said, simply "old age". I'm sure that the plates not being parallel in that lamp had something to do with it as well. When I buy those flame neon lamps, I look at the plates of them, and pick the ones with the most even gap between the top and bottom of the plates. Those seem to last the longest in my experience.
Spot the deliberate mistake, 100nF resistor at the base of the neon lamp.
those neon plates have touched together smoking the resistors . give it a bang on the table to move the plates appart and replace the resistors :)
I miss the explosion containment pie dish...
"Can we get this onto a tray? Nice!!"
You should try and get your hands on a high pressure sodium streetlight and do a video on how it works
Crispy burn resistors ... right ! Now I know why people pray :) "Please let there be now fire, .25W resistor will suffice, please let my property not burn" ahahaha :) Thank You mate, have a nice day !
Brilliant fix
100nf resistor?. (8:45)
Coincidentally Technology Connections just did a video on flame effect neons
Clive, at 8:48 or 8:49 you say you put a, "100 nanofarad resistor." Otherwise a great video. Happy Christmas!
He also twice wrote mu without the descender and the voltage rating over the value. Obviously, Clive's losing his mental acuity. 😉
I haven't seen carbon-film resistors with "cap ends" like that in quite some time. Old Soviet stock they used...?
Nice use of the 3D printer, making that adapter/insert!
Those are common, especially as the machinery that made them likely is at a local supplier, churning out millions of them a month.
Thinking of lamp holders of the pendant variety in the UK, when did Screwfix, Toolstation etc stop selling E27 and what's the justification?
I've never really noticed E27 holders sold by them. Always bayonet cap.
I'm glad to see that they are so concerned about their workers that they don't use solder on any of the discrete components. I'm sure it is not to save money...
Of course we won't talk about the fire hazard or easy-open cover
In India 230V is not considered particularly dangerous. Back when the first gen ventilated LED bulbs were common, people would remove the diffuser because it filled up with trapped insects in no time.
It was originally glued shut. India has a more relaxed approach to live mains connections. I'm not sure they use grounding much.
@@bigclivedotcom I've heard people say it's down to the dominance of fatalist philosophy, other less generous just say "life's cheap", I prefer the former.
@@bigclivedotcom In my region of India, every house has always had grounding and newer wiring has RCCB's. The socialist government monopoly "Electricity Board"'s distribution infrastructure has always been much sloppier. In the early 90's as I was growing up, I would often assist (holding up a light mostly) in fixing a distribution fuse for the entire neighborhood because no one would come from the "Electricity Board" unless you bribed them. Of course everything is live and sparking, and the fuse block is exposed and likely wet from monsoon because they rarely put them in any kind of box. Things are much better and less socialist now.
@@Derek_Garnham Life is definitely cheaper in the third world.
I've got a question to you and your knowledgeable viewers may be able to answer, I've got a fibre optic Christmas tree base who's power adapter has failed, instead of ordering a replacement it would be cheaper to replace the lamp with a lower power LED one as I have an AC adapter that fits but only puts out half the current of the original, but would it still work? The item consists of 20w 12v halogen lamp and a small synchronous motor to spin the colour disk, they appear to be wired in parallel but rather curiously when the lamp wasn't installed the motor didn't rotate, it only oscillated about 15 degrees back and forth. I can think of reasons why it would/wouldn't work but I'm interested to see what you all think.
If you replace the lamp with an LED one you will still need to use an AC adaptor, as the synchronous motors require AC to work.
If it is an actual AC adaptor, and not putting out DC then it's possible that the voltage is not correct for the motor.
@@bigclivedotcom The voltage is definitely correct, both the new and old adapters are 12V AC, it's just the new one I've got puts out .83 amps instead of the 2 amps of the old one. I suppose there shouldn't be an issue with using an LED lamp but I thought I'd ask in case I'm missing something, and if anyone can explain the odd phenomenon where the motor only oscillated wihout a lamp fitted.
resistor color code, I mean colour code... is black black black LOL... in other words: charcoal... The resistor tolerance? I'd say it had a very low tolerance to power dissipation! The store owner said was that it would work when it warmed up... um... Really!? I'd say it got plenty warm.
Very good Clive shame they can’t make them to last, modified to perfection 😊
Nice fix I'm surprised you needed a discharge resistor because the flickering candle light should discharge the capacitor
8:47 100 nf resistor. Interesting! Lol
The smaller bulb makes it look much better, it looks like a flame instead a glass bowl.
Very laborious construction is not a problem in India, where there is an abundance of available labour.
Laborious? nah the kids love doing it and they might get a bite to eat at the days end !...cheers.
It looked to as if the other lamp with the crucifix was missing one of the sticky out bits that engage in the lamp holder. Was that the case? Cheers!
Yes it was. Thoe plastic version of those pins break easily.
Can that bit of exposed lamp base be at 240V potentially? (pun?)
Hence your mention that the 3d print collar could have been a bit higher...
Yes, and yes.
I love the random digging through as Clive discovers what the baddies have done, lol.
was there any solder in the lamp at all?
There was on the PCB.
I love the live Clive ssshkematic drawing.
Judicious use of a magnet with flicker flame lamps can be interesting , only try on a spare that you don't mind loosing
Clive u have gotta scan ur notebook! Put it up for free public use. Or publish it, I know I would buy a copy.
Nice one Clive good print
Blue grey orange?
Would love to see you review and tear down the "tesla speaker" I saw advertised recently. Looks suspect.
Delicious Cajun blackened resistors
Technology Connections just did a video on these! The failure comes from years of use, just like a power strip neon bulb starts flickering after a few years.
They have no idea of thermal management in the design.Put two resistors right next to each other and heat can not escape from one side where the other resistor is, so you would need to de-rate them. It would be better to connect resistors in series as it would offer more surface area to get rid of heat as the resistors would be located away from each other. Also putting it a sleeve will increase thermal resistance making the situation worse.
How long did you let the neon flicker lamp warm up ? Ours took weeks to start working properly. Neon lamps can be weird.
They can take a while to bed in when new.
Where do I buy a 100 nF resistor? :-) I love your video's
8:49 100 nano farad resistor? Anyone else notice Clive's deliberate mistake?
I love how the brand "Veena" sounds just like a very heavily-accented version of the word "wiener." Fantastic!
It actually sounds nothing like that because the "Na" is a retroflex sound. In my Indian language (Malayalam) we have three different "na" sounds, most Indian languages have at least two I would guess.
@@rexsceleratorum1632 oh! Thanks. I didn't know that.
I meant it more as a joke. You see, I said that _a person with a specific Indian accent_ - from the many there are - would say it like that.
Not meant to be an offensive one, so if I have offended you, please accept my sincerest apologies.
@@mattmoreira210 I'm not sure that the "specific accent" you want exists. I just checked languages from the north, east, and south, and they all use the retroflex sound in "veena" (easy to tell because Indian scripts have a separate letter for the retroflex version). I'm not offended, no need to apologize.
Missed opportunity to name the video "Doing the needful with an LED & neon light"
Clive, can you attempt to resurrect the failed original bulb to see if the bulb is still good and it’s just a failed resistor?
I tried it with a new resistor and it still just glowed at the base despite drawing full current.
@@bigclivedotcom Interesting, thanks!
Happy All-The-Days!
You might like to know Clive that you got a mention on LGR. He was sent some old fairy lights and at one point said he was starting to feel like Big Clive. Haha.
They have similar LED/neon lights in the Philippines and they run very hot up to the point when I'm thinking it's going to go up in flames any minute
That's how LED tat should behave.
Is that the headlamp from an Indian EV?
All headlamps should be like this.
Indian EV's would technically include Jaguars and Landrovers though
A fellow OpenScad user! FYI FreeCAD import finally works quite well too. And time to practice some better materials. Give me a shout if you need any advice. I have been building printers, heads, extruders and tuning material profiles for years now.
The original lamp looks like the flame pieces have scorchmarks on them from being overheated in that one spot, probably from being overdriven for too long...
No, that black stuff is actually a coating of the electrode to make it flicker
Is this lamp for Diwali?
I'm not sure. Diwali is a Hindu festival which would make the Jesus one out of context.
@@bigclivedotcom This is a crude electric imitation of a traditional south Indian lamp called "nilavilakku" (literally 'tiered lamp'), a ceremonial lamp used for religious purposes by both Hindus and Malabar Christians. Often used as a cultural symbol of Kerala.
Diwali is traditionally a northern festival, so I would assume it is completely unrelated.
The "veena" in the name is also a south Indian musical instrument used in southern classical music.
1:58 Didn't the UK colonise India? That might be why the have the same silly lamp socket.
It's probably the residual British bureaucracy that is holding India back.
The two metal plates are to far apart inside the bulb, if you flick it well its on they will get closer to make contact and fix it.
100 nano-farad *resistor* ?
Don't you mean capacitor?
Have you seen the ad on UA-cam for the Quentara room heater and it’s outrageous claims. What a scam. Worth a look.
Neat. Those restistors were a bit cooked.:)
i have a BC based flame neon, that also seems to have 'degraded', i probably got it 40 ish years ago, when i was about 10, from a nice old electrical shop in a nearby town(gone for quite a few years now) maybe a common problem with them?
Still available on eBay.
That's E10, not M10, mind. E for Edison.
Interesting results.
What's the rule of thumb for discharge resisters? I'm guessing that there's not much current running through them normally, so 1/4W 1M Ohm on a 120V circuit is fine? (Oh wait, duh: 120V^2 / 1M Ohm = 0.0144 watts, never mind.)
They're purely to reduce the voltage across the capacitor fairly quickly when the light is unplugged, so they can be a high value. Usually 330K to 1Mohm.
I'd say the RC multiple needs to be shorter than the time for a human to enter the danger zone. For example it takes at least 1 second to unplug the bayonet lamp and risk touching the bottom pads, so 1M times 1000n is small enough.
I just realized the little arrows clive draws on LEDs in his schematics look a lot like a cat face...
I have slight deja vu too.. I think it may have been a musical one.. but I'm not 100%