Cat: reviews schematic for accuracy. Diodegonewild: pets cat. The force is well balanced here.

Excellent and comprehensive explanation as always. You're the best teacher I've ever seen. If you explain anything, the crash test dummy will understand it, and so will my cat. Bravo!

Thanks for revealing the black magic behind the schematic

As a lighting engineer, I am amazed at how well this was explained. Many people will miss the fine details like the spluttering of the electrodes, etc. Excellent explanation of these now archaic devices.

Its just amazing how much new stuff I learn from just one of your videos about a pair of old and broken CFL bulbs.

This guy is the most didactic to teach that I have seen on KZfaq Genius!

11:05 "dog location" to the "cat location"😂, I like it!

2:01 The safest method to test a CFL !

The dog looks worried. " Master is playing with electricity again. Hope he fills my feed dish first in case something goes wrong!"

After early 2000s, there where many CFLs discarded all around here in Brazil. I kept as many as I could, disassembled and kept the little circuit boards inside. These had good inductors, which could be rewound to make large bandwidth transformers for radio, and the 22uFx250V electrolytic could serve as a replacement filter in an old AA5 tube radio. :)

Your cat is an extrovert and your dog is an introvert XD Love both ❤️

13:41 Schematic including the cat LOL

I always learn something new from you. Sniffing the inductors with a single turn is just too good. I will remember that.

Missed you a lot, Danyk. Thank you for another video!

Nice detailed breakdown of how they work.

Testing cfl with two screwdrivers off the live socket? :) are you trying to beat electroboom guy? ;)

I would have never understood this circuit in my life without this video.

Fun Fact: CFLs generally have two inductor cores (a cylindrical one and a toroidial one) which can be re-wound to use in a simple "Joule Thief" circuit. In fact, there is plenty of wire on the cylindrical inductor for you to re-wind both of them with lots of wire left over. You know those cheap LED strings which use 2x 1.5V AA cells? I've re-wired a few of those and packed the Joule Thief circuit into the space taken by one AA cell so the whole string runs off of the remaining AA cell. You get around the same life, but for half the cost.

Quite clever location of the electrolytic cap, in the base as far from the hot lamp as possible

It is always a good day when DGW uploads

I learn so much from your videos. You give great explanations and lots of detail, but in a way thats easy to understand. Thanks for the quality content!

They look remarkably similar to a couple in my kitchen, you've saved me the job of doing my own autopsy on them

Ah, this video brings back memories. A few years ago I was obsessed with these lamps and especially with these driver circuits. I would always tear them out of the CFL and use them to power normal linear tubes in my homemade fluorescent lamp fixtures. During that time I noticed how crappy these circuits actually are. One time out of curiosity I powered a dead tube (good heaters, but wouldn't start in a traditional setup with glow starters) with one of these circuits. It was working normally and then suddenly it went out and shortly after the transistors blew up. It really made me realize that these circuits were designed to work until the tube is good, and then they are free to break (makes sense since the tube is irreplaceable). Since then I was wondering how I could modify the design in order to prevent them breaking when the tube reaches EOL. What do you think? Would it be possible to make this design more reliable and reusable? I would love to hear your thoughts. Cheers! - David

Excellent and interesting information about those circuits! Thank you.

Diodegonewild is best video channel. Thank yous so much , i learn more infromation from this channel

Excellent explanation of functions of all components. Best I've seen. Thank you.

Very nice explanation as usual, keep it up. Thanks for sharing knowledge and experience.

"There is the smoothing capacitor (an electronic one), the interference inductor, MY CAT, the interference capacitor here..." Is your cat a part of the circuitry? How can it fit into the tiny CFL box?

You are so smart, I love watching your videos, so educational.

Excellent analysis

Very good explanations.Keep it up.

Fascinating as usual.

Fantastic idea and cool content

But the most important question still remains: What is the doggo called and is he a good boi?

Thanks Mr. DGW for this long awaited video about CFLs. As always including schematic and details of operation to your videos makes them invaluable. A small remark: I think the component in 22:07 is a diac not a diode.

Finally found a great explanation for those, TY!!!!!!!

Gosh that screw driver hack got me laughing. I do that sometimes too. Hahaha

Power the burnt tube with a much bigger choke! And manually ignite the tube and make it run at very high power like 40watts or more.

Very nice explanation 👍 Thank you very much.

9:00 Wow, as a child I had the same metal tea box to collect something in it. TIME WARP. 🙃

I should adopt your disclaimer for my channel. It’s epic

Transistors blow up because the cat was in wrong polarisation:)

hey, have you every thought of recording a time lapse of you drawing a schematic?

Thanks for sharing!

You can also use an 141Am radiation source from a smoke detector to ionize the mercury vapour inside the tube to start the gas discharge immediately.

TNX 4 ANOTHER GREAT VIDEO !!!

That portable scope is nice. I need to find one like that.

Excellent explanation. You are great at explaining all the details of the circuit and how it operates. Would you consider explaining the circuit of a crt tv? Things like the horizontal and vertical circuits and how they work in conjunction with the flyback transformer. Or just the workings of the whole circuit.

Thanks for sharing.you're the best.keep going👍👍👍👍

Please do a video on induction cooker.

Thanks for the info..👍👌

8:31 better don't do it, I also thougth the same, but after shorting it, the lamp worked for a few seconds and exploded. Btw. when the heater blows up, sometimes the oscillator still runs, producing too high voltage and blowing itself. That's why those circuts should have some protection against it, but of course they don't, because of cost-cutting process. I have even seen a ballast for those normal straight tubes without this protection, exploding if the tube accidentally disconnects during operation. That's horrible

Great full ideas

2:03 - nice tips & trick

That would be awesome if you could elaborate on how circuits could be manipulated by changing values of components, in order to achieve different output.

They look similar to the one you took completely apart 3 years ago, nice :)

Pls make video on what's inside chargers i love to watch 😍😍 And love you from India ☺️☺️

Wonderful vídeo, I never get how this lamps works, the schematics looks super weird for me, thanks for sharing

I love your vids

Complete informative video.i also like to UV light driver thanks

17:00 this actually is not a classic forward switcher, but an LC resonant switcher. The capacitor is not a middle point but part of the LC resonance and periodically charged and discharged over the half bridge (hence the 160V on average).

Great video as always Dany, one observation, If the heaters/filaments are in series it may have been better to bypass the open one with a resistor so the good one doesn't see twice the normal voltage/current 🤔 its very similar to the " electronic transformer " circuit

can you replace the broken heater with equivalent resistor? Or maybe with inductor?

Hey, I have a question. Is it possible to add a PTC thermister on a instant-on CFL (at the place one is in a pre-heat CFL)?

I open mine broken osram cfl and reuse bulb part, on mine electronic failed. Reuse bulb part and make it preheat, put some magnetic ballast and old neon starter. still works fine in my homemade lamp.

You are great!!!

Perhaps using a resistor between the wires to the blown heater rather than shorting them would provide a more durable repair.

Let's test them using a dodgy way... I bust out laughing! That was AWESOME.

Nice info, can we replace the flourescent tube only, one element is open, thanks :)

Does anyone know what material this electron emitting support material around the glowing wires in the inside of the tube is,?

Kitty cat doing excellent job of helping

hi, how are you are measuring the ac power with that dmm ? can you please teach us ? :)

I can not understand how the half Bridge work, I mean how can it make the square wave and the switching sequence of the transistores by colored lines like in SMPS videos?

Nice video. I love the video, unfortunately you didn't really specify how the current moves inside the tube. I was thinking during start up (transistor below turns on from the diac) then the current moves from the positive terminal through the tube and then move from the inductor to the floating point moves through the transistor below back to the negative terminal. Then my question is how would the current move when the upper transistor turns on ?

It is probably not based on the transformer saturation, but a ZVS steup

Nice teardown :) I don't like CFLs though to be honest, because LEDs are way better in terms of lifespan, switching on/off cycles, and energy efficiency. Incandescent and halogen bulbs (whilst you can still get them on eBay) are also nice for use with dimmer switches, or for a traditional light (or in cupboards/areas where rapid switching of the bulbs means that CFLs and LEDs make no sense).

Hey does it is possible to use the electonic blast within the CFL or Tubelight as SMPS without feedback

Don't short heater pins.... use 4.7 ohoms 1/2w resistor .... it will run last long

11:48 Best WELL ever!

Nice video. What he says about the resistor in 13:40 please?

are the voltages directly on the tube measurables?. Amazing video theres a lot of tricks

Just gave me an idea how to make a CFL test tool for older TVs

Kde jsi je sehnal (v té době)? Taky sháním podobné GU10.

I actually screamed out loud at 2:01!

More smps repairs please

Never knew if there's any sealed ccfl, usually saw the one with exposed spirals

You can use again CFL. Use plasma ball and put near CPL

How much exactly is the voltage across th neon tube... (across the 1,6 kv capacitor)?

Can you explain how your power-meter works?

"...and this is my dog." 😅 🐶😒 "Oi, cut it out hooman! You're embarrassing me..."

Need to train the cat to get some beer for the frig so next time he visits you will have some thing cool to drink! Lol Great video, Thanks! :-D

i think the uv, visible light and heat from the tube broke down the plastic and made it offgas/turn brown. These things would have been more reliable with better thermal management

can you please show us how to draw schematic diagram from pcbs?

I wonder if the old tube repair would last longer if you put an 8Ohm resistor in place instead of shorting the old heater. It may make the other heater last longer.

Never bypass a dead heater with a short! You have to add a resistor!

👏👏👏

You should add more dog autotransformer controller in your videos too. Or perhaps both pets.

Stylish way... 23:58 lowerrrr

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I think this lamps same as you open them few years ago when one of them making pink light due to no mercury inside of tube.