Nice! I'd like to get my hands on some CMH lamps and some low wattage PSMH ballasts. I know you have some ballasts but i just spent close to $70 bucks on supplies to make a street light stand for my room so my funds are dry ATM lol. Also, no update on your light yet or joe's. sorry. i just got my wisdom teeth out today so i'm taking it easy. Every now and then i get these really sharp pains in my mouth but right now i'm not in twoo much pain. my vision isn't too great though so don't pick on my splleing (okay, i spelled spelling wrong on purpose lol)

oh well ill have plenty of ballasts for months, they probably wont go anywhere soon lol

thats ok, whenever you can get them thats fine

yeah 2 years ago around Christmas i had mine pulled, for 3 days straight it was awful and i could only mumble. then it slowly got better from then on, after a week or so i could eat normal foods

Hi Mike, I also got one of my windsom tooth pulled due to cavity last Feburary. I was sore for a quite while. So, you are not alone here.

thanks for the compassionn guys. and yeah please set aside a 150W PSMH, 175W MH and 400W MH ballast side for me. Thanks. Maybe once i get the fixture to send to you we can work out something.

ok awesome

I wonder if they make a 400w and a 1kW CMH lamp now. But yeah low-wattage CMH is pretty nice to look at. I recommend getting 70w lamps and ballasts since they seem to be the most common and plus you can use the same ballasts to run 100w mercs with the ignitor disabled.

yeah also i have the 400W CMH lamps in the warehouse! not seen a 1kw yet..

Cool! I don't think I've seen a CMH higher than 150w in use here.

I think CMH is made in 200 and 320W too but i think 200W is for CMH only, not PSMH so you'd be forced to use an electronic ballast. IMO, i think electronic ballasts are odd with HID since you automatically associate HID lamps with a little bit of buzz or hum. Odd that the CMH lamp is the HPS shape and not ED/BT 28

Hmm it looks like Venture makes magnetic 200w PSMH ballasts. It seems a lot of the newer CMH lamps are intended for electronic ballasts though and I have to say it's odd seeing one warm up without that bzzztmmmmmm sound it makes when the lamp strikes.

ahh cool i didn't know that. it seems that fixtures that are ordered as CMH fixtures have electronic ballasts but ordering a PSMH fixture with a magnetic ballast and running a CMH will work and it's the best of both worlds too- awesome color rendering and the quality and reliability of a magnetic ballast.

Yeah it seems most of the CMH lamps will run on magnetic PSMH ballasts anyways except probably the special ones like Philips Cosmopolis (I'm not even sure if North America has them though) so you should be fine.

And plus with a magnetic ballast most still have replaceable components so you don't have to replace the entire ballast when a ignitor dies.

unfortunatly most companies including ours dont order a replcement ignitor or cap so the whole kit has to be changed i already asked my boss but nope not going to happen

My uncle's friend's friend works for NGrid Massachusetts (he's actually the one who removed my OV-10IB from service) keeps the igniters from damaged HPS fixtures that he has to remove and keeps a couple spare parts he scavenges from mangled fixtures so he can sometimes fix a light that needs more parts than nGrid will give him. All NGrid will supply are new lamps, photocells, and refractors. I've seen doors get replaced but they're always used doors, obviously from dead fixtures that were removed.

Ahh, good on your uncle's friend for keeping extra parts on his truck to keep the older lights in service longer.

I guess in Aaron's case you could probably make a working ballast from all the ones with dead caps and ignitors too.

I see why people don't want to order just an ignitor though, I asked around a few years back for a 70w HPS ignitor and most places suggested I buy a ballast kit and replace the entire thing. I converted to the fixture to use a manual ignitor but I recently found some Advance ignitors at Restore I might stick in.

yeah i havent had to replace any bad ones yet but my coworker has one now and then its just the ignitor
i have some spares just need to find them, i saved some from the autozone project which is still active

I understand why some cases they don't want to replace the cap or igniter since the ratings aren't standardized between different manufacturers but NGrid for example installs GE lights religiously (except for some coopers every now and then when GE has some quality issues and the big wigs at NGrid want to piss off GE) so why not carry GE igniters? About 2/3s of the lights in Rhode Island are GEs so why not carry igniters that fit the majority fixtures? To be honest, they really don't care since they get their lights from GE for pennies and get good money out of the scrap from dead fixtures so replacing a fixture versus fixing it won't cost tham anymore so it makes sense to replace over repair. Smaller utilities can't bargain fixtures for dirt cheap like NGrid or Florida Power for example so they are more likely to repair over replace. I guess another good thing about small businesses. Eventually these big companies are going to be more powerful than any goverment.

as far as my tests have gone any ignitor for the right wattage lamp works on any brand ballast without any problems

Hmm interesting. I know there are variations becuase my 400W Sylvania Eco HPS lamp says "DUE TO THE ELECTRICAL DIFFERENCES BETWEEN IGNITERS AMONG BALLAST MANUFACTURERS, THIS LAMP IS NOT COMPATABLE WITH COOPER LIGHTING IGNITERS (Part#blahblahblah)."

but will the lamp fire up on a coooper ignitor? i bet it would