BulbCollector Forums
BULB BANTER => General Discussion => Topic started by: roope on June 20, 2008, 11:58:36 am
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Hi. We are the company who are developing the Plumen CFL bulb concept (please see http://www.plumen.com ). Our company is called Hulger ( see http://www.hulger.com )
We are trying to get to the bottom of issues relating to the construction of alternative shapes to conventional CFL bulbs. Is there anyone who has experience in this area that might be able to give us some pointers?
I found Bulbcollector.com as it linked to the plumen project when we launched the concept design last year
http://bulbcollector.com/forum/index.php?topic=1047.0
Since then the design has been included in the MoMA New York's permanent design collection. So now we are even more eager to get it into production.
Any help would be very much appreciated.
All the best
Nicolas
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WoW, that seems like a lot of work for art! If you are using only one RF power oscillator to generate the voltage, how would you get similar brightness from different diameter tubes in one fixture? Could you actually use a voltage divider to give similar brightness to different diameter tubes?
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Welcome to the forum Roope. What kind of production issues are you having? Providing further details of the problems encountered may help in receiving advice.
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Hi.
To answer oz4s11 first:
This is just a prototype bulb. We're no longer proposing different width tubes so I hope this will be simplify the engineering task for us.
And to Tim's question we're really facing a series of issues around the ability for manufacturers to produce a reliable burner that will last. The shapes we are now testing are simpler forms that take on board the manufacturing constraints but we are still being told they are problematic to produce. I don't really understand why our alternate shapes can create such a problem?
Thanks again for your help so far.
Nicolas
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"And to Tim's question we're really facing a series of issues around the ability for manufacturers to produce a reliable burner that will last. The shapes we are now testing are simpler forms that take on board the manufacturing constraints but we are still being told they are problematic to produce. I don't really understand why our alternate shapes can create such a problem?"
Obviously, these are probably manual labor involved to produce the shape. How is the phosphor applied evenly inside the bulb? I can see on the bottom of the normal CFL helixes that there is a thicker layer of phosphor that appears to impede the transfer of light from the UV-activated phosphor exposed to the plasma discharge; maybe there is problem in applying the phosphor after the shape is made? Or is the phosphor applied before the tube is bent? Can phosphors survive the temperatures used to bend glass? Knowing nothing about CFL bulb production, exactly HOW is the phosphor applied? Is it like the phosphor screen to an imaging tube e.g. the phosphor is apparently in an aquatic suspention and the water allowed to evaporate, leaving the phosphor grains uniformly distributed? Is that the problem?
If so, maybe the production bottleneck is in applying the phosphor?
Maybe a production apparatus could be developed where the a flexible tube could be inserted into the CFL bulb, with one end having an applicator that would spray out the phosphor solution in the form of a fine mist while a mechanism would uniformly move the mister through the CFL tube? How would you create a phosphor mist? A mechanism that would use an ultrasonic crystal where you would shoot the phosphor liquid on so that it would shatter into a zillion pieces?
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Thanks for your help. I thin the phosphor application is only one of the issues. Like you say though I think we can get around that.