A visit to the incandescent lamp factory

[AlbertL]

Showing an amazing array of purpose-built machinery.  Imagine the hours of design, drafting, testing and fabrication embodied in that equipment! 

[floobydust]

Impressive machines, and at 3,800hr rated life they beat LED bulbs lol. I wonder what the liquid dip of the filament is about at 3:00. Gauge reads -1,250 mbar ?

[Adrian_Arg.]

Very good.

[LaserSteve]

The red "dip" is a phosphorus compound in a liquid suspension  used to remove any remaining oxygen in the lamp upon first ignition.  Its the least possible cost, simplest possible, getter on world's least expensive vacuum tube.  Some times it has other additives.

This lets them get away with just a roughing pump on the Sealex machine and a simple piece of rubber tubing to seal around the fill stem on the carousel. 

Notice they pulse the lamp on the first ignitions? That is why. To burn off any oxygen and to outgas the tungsten.

My guess is that is a gas filled lamp.  Argon or nitrogen filled.  Filled somewhat below atmospheric pressure so the pressure differential  crushes the fill stem closed when the final set of flames heats it.

What they don't show is the machine that etches away  the molybdenum mandrel  that the filament is wound on, and how the delicate coiled coil filament is shipped and then oriented by the Sealex  machine. Always wanted to see film of that, but the process is just not talked about to this day.

I live in part of Ohio that was surrounded by roughly a dozen GE lamp and lamp parts  plants, now almost all gone save for one. All of it that was not closed went to Hungary about 15 years ago. Never got the tour, always had a college exam on tour day. You had to know some one and be over 18 to get in anyways.  Mom and Dad got the linear halogen and high pressure sodium lamp tours.

I was interested, really interested, but by the time I got out of College, lamp jobs were departing.  Our local science library had some real interesting lamp textbooks because of the proximity to Nela Park. My mentor at my first serious job was a former research scientist on Sodium Lamps and plasma  discharges for gas lasers.  Brilliant fellow, Thank You DAN for all that you taught me!!!!!

Much interesting reading here: http://www.lamptech.co.uk/index.html  God Bless him for posting much of what he knows.



Steve

[BravoV]

Why every times watching this kind of video, just feel relaxing and feel good ? Surely I am not alone here.

[james_s]

Fascinating stuff. While I do like LEDs for illumination, they sure have made lighting boring. There used to be numerous different technologies that coexisted for many years, light bulbs in a thousands of different shapes, sizes and characteristics, many of them customized for specific applications. Now virtually all of that is replaced with LED chips arranged in various ways.