Source of high voltage components.

[hansomcommon]

It should not be overlooked that the PC board which drives compact fluorescent lights is a source of 1amp 400v diodes, a high voltage electrolytic, capacitors transistors & zener diodes as well as small components. Far better to reuse these parts than send them to landfill when your bulbs fail.

[paulsherwin]

Be very careful that the capacitor has discharged when scavenging the components. You can get a nasty belt (I speak from experience )

[robjkmannering]

And small ferrite beads that can be used with the scavenged transistor to make a blocking oscillator to light leds from a single used AA battery.....
We have recycling facilities for CFLs at work, some don't make it that far!

Rob

[AC/HL]

These are typical circuits:
http://www.pavouk.org/hw/lamp/en_ind...tronics_repair

[yesnaby]

Hello,

The garbled text is wonderful!

Michael

[broadgage]

But do be aware that electrical wear-out of the discharge tube is apt to kill some or all of the electronic components.

Still worth scavenging, but be aware that you may have to try several failed lamps in order to obtain reuseable parts.

A lamp that has been dropped or otherwise physically broken is more likely to yield useable parts than one that has worn out.

[Mike Phelan]

The diac used in some of these could be useful for Philips G8 CTV restorers if the breakover voltage is similar.

[turretslug]

I wouldn't be surprised if the cheapie little HV electrolytics take a bit of a caning over time and self-healing film caps in "X" position probably aren't as good as they once were. After all, the art of production engineering is to only spend as much as necessary, having things last much longer than the "customer-facing" bit, i.e. the tube, represents inefficiency. The very antithesis of a vintage forum's philosophy! Nonetheless, they're free and fine for checking/tinkering. There's some nice little HV transistors in them but I fear SM components will steadily become dominant.

[G6Tanuki]

There are people out there who've successfully used the components from dead CFLs as the basis of a CW transmitter for 80-Metres.

http://fhs-consulting.com/aa1tj/dasderelicht.html

(which idea sort-of feeds back into an up-to-date version of the discussion a few weeks back regarding components for improvised radios in PoW-camps etc)

[k_yller]

hi
of course each source of components is good, but the best source of components with matching age are ex army equipment. Very often army electronic was used very rarely.
its part of russian army equip. such a thing you could by inside EU means no hassle with import charges ,vat etc.