Driver to drive?

[Neon John]

On Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:14:08 -0500, "Carl Ijames"
<carl.ijames@NOverizon.net> wrote:

So, is there any kind of bulb you would leave on with no one home? Am I
just unlucky or is this the new normal?

Definitely not the normal. When I moved into my mountain cabin about
18 years ago, I replaced all my incandescent lamps with 100 watt
equivalent CFLs.

I Sharpie a date on each lamp so I can know how long it lasts. I had
a few fail at the 10 year mark. I just changed out the longest
lasting failure - 17.5 years old.

I autopsied each lamp. All have failed from the same cause - one
filament opened. Looking at the tiny filaments, one can see the
obvious designed-in failure mode.

I make neon as a hobby so I took one of the early failures, cut off
the cheap filaments, replaced them with shorty neon cold cathode
electrodes, then pumped and filled the tube with the normal
argon/neon/mercury mix.

This unit is a bit dimmer because the voltage drop across a cold
cathode electrode is about 400 volts while a hot cathode is seldom
more than 30 volts.

This slightly dimmer lamp has been running for 15+ years and I expect
it to run at least that much longer. It runs much cooler than before.
The hot cathodes are the source of most of the heat.

Lately I have purchased a couple of Cree 100 watt equivalent LEDs, the
high CRI version. They were $9 ea but have already dropped to $6.

http://www.johndearmond.com/2017/07/28/progress-in-lighting/

I am so far VERY happy with these devices. The high CRI makes a room
look much brighter and cheerier than with any other common lamp.

One other point of interest. When we built the cabin in 1970, Mom
insisted that a light be placed over the sink (outside wall) to
welcome visitors any time, day or night. We've helped several people
over the years who have gotten themselves stranded or lost.

I installed a small fluorescent lamp (3 or 4 ft - not gonna get up and
measure) over the sink and it has burned continuously ever since. The
bulb has been replace 3 times over 47 years. The reason that many
have failed, I think, is the numerous 1-2 second power drops we have
up here. I could not get to its wiring without a LOT of work so it
runs from raw line voltage instead of my UPS-backed Vital buss.

I've used lots of CFL's in recent years. Few of them have been on for long
enough to fail, but none of them have failed to flames and smoke.

Never had a smoky failure.

Have you checked the actual mains voltage level at your home? Sometimes the
power supply company screws up and supplies an out-of-specification high
voltage to some houses - I've seen newspaper reports about customers
complaining about short-=lived light bulbs. My guess would be that these
would be houses that were close to a sub-station that also supplied houses
that were much further away ...

I would guess that to be the cause. I have a utility moving vane
voltmeter sitting on my desk. Normal voltage is 125 volts in the
winter. When all the summer folks arrive, the daytime voltage is 119
to 122. There's a 25 mile 7200 volt primary feeder for this small
community so I'm not surprised it hasn't varied more.

My guess is that LED lamps would fail gracefully as the emitting junction
turned into one that emitted less light per charge carrier, without changing
the heat dissipated in the junction.

Another hobby is building hot-rod flashlights. My experience with
flashlight-rated Cree LEDs (estimated life varies from 50 to 500 hrs)
is that the first failure is the phosphor turning black. I cut one
open (the packaging is a soft clear silicone rubber) and carefully
scraped off the phosphor without breaking the bonding leads. The
result was a brilliantly blue LED, almost painful to look at. I have
not yet run into one where the actual LED degraded.

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

 

[Neon John]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 09:49:12 -0600, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

But when they threatened to
burn down my house, emitted foul smoke and could contaminate my home
with mercury when they got broken, I went back to the incan bulbs. CFL
savings was not all that significant anyhow.

Boy, you come up with some good 'uns. Contaminate your house with
mercury? You gotta be kidding. 10 or 15 years ago the industry
agreed on a 100mg limit of mercury. The working standard now is 50mg.
A 50mg spot of mercury is difficult to spot without magnification.

Further, for the last 10 years or so, the manufacturers have come up
with novel variations on the concept of the mercury reservoir. The
reservoir is a sintered cube of a proprietary alloy that has the
characteristic of sucking in all the mercury into the metal at room
temperature while quickly releasing it as a gas when the lamp fires.

If you break open a cold CFL, unless you have the very most sensitive
ion drift detector, you will find no mercury in the tube.

I have a (now) casual friend who planned on exploiting civilians'
irrational mercuriphobia by selling household scans for mercury. He
bought one of the most sensitive (and expensive) ion drift detector
and set out trying to scare people.

His con was going to be "if you break a fluorescent lamp, call me to
localize the mercury and clean it up.)

Only one problem with that plan. He never found any mercury. Between
the fact that mercury slowly combines with the phosphor under ion
bombardment and the use of mercury capsules, there is essentially no
free mercury available. He quickly went out of business.

I let him survey my neon shop one time. I do NOT use the ridiculous
"hygiene" that the industry promotes. There are occasionally little
puddles of mercury laying on the processing table. He had a little
sampling gadget that clipped over my shoulder to grab the same air I
was breathing. That could determine the fractional PEL (permissible
exposure limit) around my face.

He detected nothing. As in, the pointer didn't budge off 0.

He did pick up a few readings by holding the wand right over my table
but they were all well within the 8 hour PEL.

That was very educational to me also.

Given that your a hypermecuriphobic, here's a little tip. Go to the
garden store and get a small bag of flour of sulfur. That's elemental
sulfur ground to the consistency of wheat flour. Put some in a little
salt shaker.

If you break a fluorescent lamp and are about to have heart
palpations, simply sprinkle the remains, especially the white stuff
with the sulfur. Mercury and sulfur get together to form mercury
sulfide, a stable compound. Just sweep or vacuum up the mess and
throw it away. Another panic attack avoided.
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

 

[Long Hair]

Neon John wrote:

Lately I have purchased a couple of Cree 100 watt equivalent LEDs, the
high CRI version. They were $9 ea but have already dropped to $6.

You're going to have to change your nym to LED Ned now.

 

[Lasse Langwadt Christense]

Den søndag den 25. februar 2018 kl. 18.55.07 UTC+1 skrev Neon John:

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 09:49:12 -0600, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

But when they threatened to
burn down my house, emitted foul smoke and could contaminate my home
with mercury when they got broken, I went back to the incan bulbs. CFL
savings was not all that significant anyhow.

Boy, you come up with some good 'uns. Contaminate your house with
mercury? You gotta be kidding. 10 or 15 years ago the industry
agreed on a 100mg limit of mercury. The working standard now is 50mg.
A 50mg spot of mercury is difficult to spot without magnification.

https://youtu.be/m8KzmlIEsHs

 

[Phil Hobbs]

On 02/25/2018 11:43 AM, Long Hair wrote:

pcdhobbs@gmail.com wrote:

Floor space is a bit of an issue, because we've got a lot of good stuff:

https://electrooptical.net/Lab_Tour/

https://electrooptical.net/Equipment

So I really need a shorter version of the big HP rack in the photos.



Are you planning on using the rack as a mobile device?

Because they are almost always fitted with small diameter hard casters.

If you look at the big rack, you'll find that it's sitting on a chunk of
butcher block with large cast-iron cylindrical casters with heavy solid
tires from McMaster-Carr. It rolls great. The smaller rack won't need
such beefy wheels.

Those Tek carts, BTW can have heavy items fitted right down next to
the floor. It ain't no scope cart. New ones sell for $1500. That is
all we use in our labs. The last one had four in it, right before the
boss moved.

Carts I can get for cheap, but I really want a rack. Failing all else,
I can get a couple of two-post relay racks and have some cross braces
welded on, but there must be some of the old-timey ones rattling round
out there. Maybe I'll do a road trip to the Dayton Hamfest this year.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Neon John]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 00:31:52 -0500, bitrex
<bitrex@de.lete.earthlink.net> wrote:

What's the point of leaving an interior light on when one's away from
home at all? Tryin' to help the thieves see better? It doesn't fool
anybody and just lets 'em know you probably don't have a real security
system.

The only reason is that I want them on.

As far as any bad guys go, we're an hour away from the Sheriff's
office so we take care of things ourselves. We have a radio net and
most of us have night vision equip.

If a bad guy comes up my lane to the apparently darkened outside of my
cabin, his first worry is my neighbors competing to get off the first
shot.

Our places are very brightly illuminated but with IR. Helps the night
vision stuff work better.

If he manages to get into my house, he's in for a VERY unpleasant
surprise. Multiple unpleasant surprises, actually. He'll live, but
just barely.

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

 

[Long Hair]

Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 02/25/2018 11:43 AM, Long Hair wrote:
pcdhobbs@gmail.com wrote:

Floor space is a bit of an issue, because we've got a lot of good stuff:

https://electrooptical.net/Lab_Tour/

https://electrooptical.net/Equipment

So I really need a shorter version of the big HP rack in the photos.



Are you planning on using the rack as a mobile device?

Because they are almost always fitted with small diameter hard casters.

If you look at the big rack, you'll find that it's sitting on a chunk of
butcher block with large cast-iron cylindrical casters with heavy solid
tires from McMaster-Carr. It rolls great. The smaller rack won't need
such beefy wheels.

Those Tek carts, BTW can have heavy items fitted right down next to
the floor. It ain't no scope cart. New ones sell for $1500. That is
all we use in our labs. The last one had four in it, right before the
boss moved.

Carts I can get for cheap, but I really want a rack. Failing all else,
I can get a couple of two-post relay racks and have some cross braces
welded on, but there must be some of the old-timey ones rattling round
out there. Maybe I'll do a road trip to the Dayton Hamfest this year.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs

https://www.amazon.com/s/ref=nb_sb_noss?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=18+U+rack+enclosure

 

[Neon John]

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 19:34:32 -0600, oldschool@tubes.com wrote:

I donr so much care about the blue color. In fact I find them annoying
when other drivers approach me with them super bright blue bulbs. I only
wanted more light, and it seems these Silverstar were the answer. I
probably gained 5% in brightness, and with a slightly more blue color,
but not anywhere near what the ads claimed.

If you'd spent a fraction of the time you've been bitching here on
researching your problem, you'd have quickly found the problem. The
problem from that era was that too small wire was run to the socket
and switches so the voltage could sometimes drop well below 12 volts.

The solution, one that even you could probably achieve, is to run
fused power directly from the battery using 8 gauge wire and a couple
of relays. The relay coils are connected to the high and low beam
wires formerly leading to the bulbs. The contacts go between the
battery and fuse, through the NO contacts and then to the appropriate
filament.

You can buy retrofit kits from places like rockauto.com or you can
roll your own from local parts.

John

Warranties and Insurance are both things that are always full of
loopholes. Both will do anything to NOT assist the customer. They
promise the sky, but once they got your money they screw you.

I always said that "Lifetime warranty" means the Life of the ITEM. (Not
your lifetime). I had a car battery with a 2 year warranty. It died in
one year. I had to pay HALF the price of a new battery to get a
replacement. I was not pleased, but they had me by the balls so I had
little choice in the matter....

John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

 

[Neon John]

On Wed, 21 Feb 2018 16:00:19 -0500, "Tom Del Rosso"
<fizzbintuesday@that-google-mail-domain.com> wrote:

But this means you're looking for a low voltage. I thought you meant
high.

he would be. But remember that bulb life varies as the 13th power of
voltage deviation from the norm (Westinghouse paper) or the 11th power
(GE paper.

The insufficient wiring is probably intentional. People were used to
the near infinite bulb life sealed beam lights that burned orange
provided.

I checked my 2012 Ford F150. They did it right. The alternator is
controlled by the PCM. At exactly 10 deg G, the voltage at the
battery terminals is 15.0. At that point the low beam bulb had 14.7
volts across it. The battery voltage quickly drops to around 14.2
volts. I'm not sure if there is a voltage profile algorithm built
into the PCM or it just happens to work that way.

In our (mild) winters, I watch the voltmeter and see that after a few
minutes of driving below about 50 deg F, the battery terminal voltage
sits in the 14.2 to 14.5 volts.

That seems a bit high but with the battery PCM managed, I got right at
5 years life out of the plain old wet cell.

Last year I replaced the battery with an Enersys Genesis AGM. This is
the best automotive battery on the market and priced accordingly.

First thing I checked when I got it installed was the cranking
voltage. It dropped a half a volt from resting to cranking.

The second test was accidental. I have a dashcam and a
refrigerator/freezer (12 or 120 volt) in the truck. I also have a
small charger installed to keep up with the drain.

I hadn't gone anywhere for a few days and was horrified to see the
voltmeter reading 9.9 volts. I flipped the switch to "crank" (the
actual cranking cycle is computer controlled) and watched the battery
voltage drop to 9.8 as the starter spun the engine right up.

I quickly grabbed my clamp-on DC ammeter and clamped it around the
alternator output. 140 amps, exactly what the alternator is rated at.
The battery continued to accept that charge rate until the voltage
reached the mid 14s. I was impressed!

The Genesis battery is available from Amazon with free (non-prime)
shipping. cost me about 3 bills. Now I've installed 4 of said
batteries in my MH. One cranking and 3 in parallel to run the house
and inverter.

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

 

[Neon John]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2018 09:47:59 -0500, Phil Hobbs
<pcdhSpamMeSenseless@electrooptical.net> wrote:

They're pretty good at the moment--I've bought two in the last 18 months
and couldn't be happier with them.

Ditto. I have a 2012 F-150. Other than changing out the battery last
summer, the only time a wrench has been laid on this truck was to
replace the windshield washer line! Two awshits to Ford for requiring
me to remove the fender well liner to gain access to that friggin
little tube. I have over 65k miles on the truck and still have the
OEM brakes and shocks.

I'm going to keep this truck for 15 years, whereupon I'll buy a new
one.

John

John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

 

[Long Hair]

Neon John wrote:

On Tue, 20 Feb 2018 00:31:52 -0500, bitrex
bitrex@de.lete.earthlink.net> wrote:


What's the point of leaving an interior light on when one's away from
home at all? Tryin' to help the thieves see better? It doesn't fool
anybody and just lets 'em know you probably don't have a real security
system.

The only reason is that I want them on.

As far as any bad guys go, we're an hour away from the Sheriff's
office so we take care of things ourselves. We have a radio net and
most of us have night vision equip.

If a bad guy comes up my lane to the apparently darkened outside of my
cabin, his first worry is my neighbors competing to get off the first
shot.

Our places are very brightly illuminated but with IR. Helps the night
vision stuff work better.

If he manages to get into my house, he's in for a VERY unpleasant
surprise. Multiple unpleasant surprises, actually. He'll live, but
just barely.

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address

I knew those old Neon sign supplies could be good for something!

Lite his ass up!

 

[Carl Ijames]

"Neon John" wrote in message
news:76o59dhlil6fub8f96j2nofbucg4ssptr9@4ax.com...

On Mon, 19 Feb 2018 19:14:08 -0500, "Carl Ijames"
<carl.ijames@NOverizon.net> wrote:

So, is there any kind of bulb you would leave on with no one home? Am I
just unlucky or is this the new normal?

Definitely not the normal. When I moved into my mountain cabin about
18 years ago, I replaced all my incandescent lamps with 100 watt
equivalent CFLs.

I Sharpie a date on each lamp so I can know how long it lasts. I had
a few fail at the 10 year mark. I just changed out the longest
lasting failure - 17.5 years old.

I autopsied each lamp. All have failed from the same cause - one
filament opened. Looking at the tiny filaments, one can see the
obvious designed-in failure mode.

I make neon as a hobby so I took one of the early failures, cut off
the cheap filaments, replaced them with shorty neon cold cathode
electrodes, then pumped and filled the tube with the normal
argon/neon/mercury mix.

This unit is a bit dimmer because the voltage drop across a cold
cathode electrode is about 400 volts while a hot cathode is seldom
more than 30 volts.

This slightly dimmer lamp has been running for 15+ years and I expect
it to run at least that much longer. It runs much cooler than before.
The hot cathodes are the source of most of the heat.

Lately I have purchased a couple of Cree 100 watt equivalent LEDs, the
high CRI version. They were $9 ea but have already dropped to $6.

http://www.johndearmond.com/2017/07/28/progress-in-lighting/

I am so far VERY happy with these devices. The high CRI makes a room
look much brighter and cheerier than with any other common lamp.

One other point of interest. When we built the cabin in 1970, Mom
insisted that a light be placed over the sink (outside wall) to
welcome visitors any time, day or night. We've helped several people
over the years who have gotten themselves stranded or lost.

I installed a small fluorescent lamp (3 or 4 ft - not gonna get up and
measure) over the sink and it has burned continuously ever since. The
bulb has been replace 3 times over 47 years. The reason that many
have failed, I think, is the numerous 1-2 second power drops we have
up here. I could not get to its wiring without a LOT of work so it
runs from raw line voltage instead of my UPS-backed Vital buss.

I've used lots of CFL's in recent years. Few of them have been on for long
enough to fail, but none of them have failed to flames and smoke.

Never had a smoky failure.

Have you checked the actual mains voltage level at your home? Sometimes the
power supply company screws up and supplies an out-of-specification high
voltage to some houses - I've seen newspaper reports about customers
complaining about short-=lived light bulbs. My guess would be that these
would be houses that were close to a sub-station that also supplied houses
that were much further away ...

I would guess that to be the cause. I have a utility moving vane
voltmeter sitting on my desk. Normal voltage is 125 volts in the
winter. When all the summer folks arrive, the daytime voltage is 119
to 122. There's a 25 mile 7200 volt primary feeder for this small
community so I'm not surprised it hasn't varied more.

My guess is that LED lamps would fail gracefully as the emitting junction
turned into one that emitted less light per charge carrier, without
changing
the heat dissipated in the junction.

Another hobby is building hot-rod flashlights. My experience with
flashlight-rated Cree LEDs (estimated life varies from 50 to 500 hrs)
is that the first failure is the phosphor turning black. I cut one
open (the packaging is a soft clear silicone rubber) and carefully
scraped off the phosphor without breaking the bonding leads. The
result was a brilliantly blue LED, almost painful to look at. I have
not yet run into one where the actual LED degraded.

John
John DeArmond
http://www.neon-john.com
http://www.tnduction.com
Tellico Plains, Occupied TN
See website for email address
=======================================================

Well, as luck would have it I just had another CFL burnout. This was all I
could hope for - turn lights on, about a minute later one of the three bulbs
silently and peacefully went dark, and that was that . Bathroom fixture
with four sockets that used to have 60 watt incandescents that I replaced
with 3 23 watt 100 watt equivalent CFLs (Commercial Electric brand from Home
Depot) soon after I bought the house 16 years ago. Fixture is a rectangular
box across the top of the mirror with solid sides and bottom and completely
open top. I can't remember if these are the first or second set of bulbs in
this fixture, so 8-16 years old. One of the original three burned out the
same peaceful way about 6-12 months ago, and the last original bulb is still
burning and I'm going to let it go as long as it will. The old and new
bulbs are barely warm to the touch. This fixture is on maybe .5-3 hours a
day so 10 years would be 1800-11000 hours and it gets turned on and off
several times a day.

John, I looked at the Cree 100 watt equivalent LED bulbs on amazon and
homedepot.com, and the price must have gone up since your comments last year
(about $12-14 each now). I read a lot of the reviews and questions, and no
one has commented on them running hot enough to burn. However, the reviews
are interesting. About 45-50% give 5 stars but 30% give 1 star, and the
comments are either "great, love it" or "it was great until it died after a
week to a couple of months". Seems like they have a real infant mortality
problem. Cree rates the life as 13.7 years but that's based on only 3 hours
a day so 15,000 hours (I guess that's not including the infant mortality
cases ). The fine print on the back of the package says "Do not use in
enclosed fixtures or recessed cans." Ignoring the infant mortality issue
that would be 1.5-2x the life of an 8,000 to 10,000 hour CFL but I think the
price needs to fall another 2x or more to beat the CFL. Also, I really want
a 150 or more watt equivalent . I'll definitely keep an eye on the LEDs
but I still have a package or two of CFLs on the shelf so I have some time.

--
Regards,
Carl Ijames

 

[Long Hair]

Carl Ijames wrote:

Definitely not the normal.

Why are you copying and pasting the same fucking previously ALREADY
POSTED BY YOU response again?

 

[George Herold]

On Sunday, February 25, 2018 at 1:35:04 PM UTC-5, Phil Hobbs wrote:

On 02/25/2018 11:43 AM, Long Hair wrote:
pcdhobbs@gmail.com wrote:

Floor space is a bit of an issue, because we've got a lot of good stuff:

https://electrooptical.net/Lab_Tour/

https://electrooptical.net/Equipment

So I really need a shorter version of the big HP rack in the photos.



Are you planning on using the rack as a mobile device?

Because they are almost always fitted with small diameter hard casters.

If you look at the big rack, you'll find that it's sitting on a chunk of
butcher block with large cast-iron cylindrical casters with heavy solid
tires from McMaster-Carr. It rolls great. The smaller rack won't need
such beefy wheels.

Those Tek carts, BTW can have heavy items fitted right down next to
the floor. It ain't no scope cart. New ones sell for $1500. That is
all we use in our labs. The last one had four in it, right before the
boss moved.

Carts I can get for cheap, but I really want a rack. Failing all else,
I can get a couple of two-post relay racks and have some cross braces
welded on, but there must be some of the old-timey ones rattling round
out there. Maybe I'll do a road trip to the Dayton Hamfest this year.

In grad school my prof found racks expensive, but the wood shop was cheap,
we had wooden racks, 2x4 boxes, with metal cross braces, slots in the
2x4 held plywood shelves.

George H.

Cheers

Phil Hobbs


--
Dr Philip C D Hobbs
Principal Consultant
ElectroOptical Innovations LLC / Hobbs ElectroOptics
Optics, Electro-optics, Photonics, Analog Electronics
Briarcliff Manor NY 10510

http://electrooptical.net
http://hobbs-eo.com

 

[Steve Wilson]

George Herold <gherold@teachspin.com> wrote:

In grad school my prof found racks expensive, but the wood shop was
cheap, we had wooden racks, 2x4 boxes, with metal cross braces, slots in
the 2x4 held plywood shelves.

George H.

Plywood takes a permanent sag under weight.

I use metal shelves from Global:

http://www.globalindustrial.ca/g/storage/shelving/Steel-Shelving-Open/steel-
shelving-20-gauge-97-high-open

With 20 ga steel, they can support 200 lb per shelf. That's enough for a HP
8566 plus a stack of signal generators, dmms, vna, etc. or inventory per
shelf. I get the 97" corner struts so I can cut them to whatever height I
need. I put angle iron on the bottom of the legs and drill holes for casters
or rollers to move them around. They are not expensive.

One thing that threw me off at the beginning is they do not itemize orders
when you buy multiple shelves. They simply send whatever shelves and support
struts are necessary to fulfil the order. You have to sort them out yourself
to match the type and number of shelving you ordered. But this is easy once
you figure it out.

Global is a Canadian company. You should be able to find equivalent companies
across the US.

 

[Robert Baer]

Robert Baer wrote:

..since at least Eagle ver 5 if not earlier.
Did you know that the produced Gerbers in cases DO NOT reflect what
you see on the screen?

Now, someone pointed out that Gerbers are vector.
True,but that has noting to do with fonts or anything else except the
Gerber strokes as a collection, are supposed to represent the original:
a PCB pad, a logo scribble, Cyrilic font, Arabic font, or any other font
AS CREATED AND SEEN ON THE SCREEN.

MOST irritating is that any text in proportional font on the screen
is rendered as their vector font.

Next, that the (vector font) characters look stunted; most especially
the "R" looks as if its legs were sawed off.
The screen version is elegant; you will NOT get what you see.

Also, some of the vector font symbols are totally trashed, for
example the Registered Trademark symbol ÂŽ looks like a rotated "L" and
there is no replacement unless one wishes to construct one using a
circle and (at least on the screen) a "R"; result has the inelegant and
trashy looking vector font "R".

Such junk is not seen unless one uses an independent Gerber viewer.
**

Now, on occasion, a layer may "inherit" AND/OR "ghost" something from
another layer, and move the position as well.
In one particular case, (so to speak) without asking, a text got
solder-masked (the "ghost" because i never saw it since i do not bother
turning that layer on). And that solder mask was (o be polite)
mis-positioned.
At the same time, a placed circle (layer 1 Top, made for no hole in
center) got duplicated in layer 30 Bstop and position was changed (here
is the "ghosting").
Furthermore, that layer 1 circle got duplicated in layer 290 Tstop
and the position was ALSO changed.
The result was a total mess
**
SO, VERY carefully review ALL layers on the screen at minimum and fix
as needed.
Use a Gerber viewer to double-check the results, especially fonts.

Naturally, because a rich owner of Eagle has decided to also be
greedy, expect these problems WILL NEVER be fixed.

Well, I just discovered yet another condition where you do NOT get
what you see on the screen.
Try printing to a PDF; text with NO regard to (source/screen) font
will be severely altered.
Seems there may be NO work-around, so documentation may be curtailed...

 

[Paul]

Robert Baer wrote:

Well, I just discovered yet another condition where you do NOT get
what you see on the screen.
Try printing to a PDF; text with NO regard to (source/screen) font
will be severely altered.
Seems there may be NO work-around, so documentation may be curtailed...

Try your Gerber Viewer application ?

Can it print ?

Do a Print To PDF from there ?

There's probably a ton of ways to do this,
some better than others.

You could even zoom into Eagle and do screen shots,
if you're truly desperate. As long as you're not
shipping the documentation to anyone, the file size
is irrelevant. If the doc is going to every customer,
then a bit more planning will be called for.

Vista or later probably has SnippingTool.exe for
taking screen shots. You don't have to use the
PrintScreen key any more

Paul

 

[gregz]

gregz <zekor@comcast.net> wrote:

"Carl Ijames" <carl.ijames@NOverizon.net> wrote:
In the good old days there were incandescent bulbs and fluorescent fixtures
with magnetic ballasts, and both seemed to have "graceful" failure modes in
the vast majority of cases. By graceful, I mean a simple transition to an
open circuit with no damage to the fixture or anything else close by. We
regularly left an incandescent lamp or two on for a week or more when we
traveled, to make it look like someone was home. Over the last twenty years
I've almost completely switched to CFL bulbs, and of the six or seven that
have gone dark (not counting the ones I broke knocking a lamp over trying to
reach the alarm clock ) four of them died by emitting flames and smoke
and one by emitting just smoke (I was right next to that one so got it off
within seconds, or maybe it would have progressed to flames too?). First
time was about 15 years ago, when I was sitting at my computer and heard a
noise behind me and saw flames about 6-8 inches tall rising from the top of
a lampshade. A year later another bulb did the same thing. The most recent
one was last month. Only two or three CFL bulbs have failed by just going
dark while lit or not turning on. I'm all for saving energy but I will not
ever leave a CFL turned on when I leave the house for more than a couple of
minutes, even just to go work in the yard. I rarely experience power
flickers or failure and have never lost an appliance or surge suppressed
power strip (knock on wood ). I've recently replaced a couple of CFLs
with LED bulbs and so far am happy with them output-wise but I have no idea
what excitement their eventual failure will bring.

So, is there any kind of bulb you would leave on with no one home? Am I
just unlucky or is this the new normal?

After over 20 years of using CFLs never had a fire. I usually replace if it
goes dim. I have some I leave on all the time. I am more cautious with
lampshades now. I have run them continuously outside, either plastic
encased, or a glass bulb type cover that got very hot in the sun. I prefer
an enclosure. I have some upside own in ceramic holders. I'm gradually
switching to LED, but trying to stay cautious with type of fixtures.

Greg

Just lost one today. Smelled it downstairs. End of tube dark with some
plastic deformation.

Greg

 

[Johann Klammer]

On 02/26/2018 09:16 AM, Robert Baer wrote:

Robert Baer wrote:
..since at least Eagle ver 5 if not earlier.
Did you know that the produced Gerbers in cases DO NOT reflect what
you see on the screen?

Now, someone pointed out that Gerbers are vector.
True,but that has noting to do with fonts or anything else except the
Gerber strokes as a collection, are supposed to represent the original:
a PCB pad, a logo scribble, Cyrilic font, Arabic font, or any other font
AS CREATED AND SEEN ON THE SCREEN.

MOST irritating is that any text in proportional font on the screen
is rendered as their vector font.

Next, that the (vector font) characters look stunted; most especially
the "R" looks as if its legs were sawed off.
The screen version is elegant; you will NOT get what you see.

Also, some of the vector font symbols are totally trashed, for
example the Registered Trademark symbol ÂŽ looks like a rotated "L" and
there is no replacement unless one wishes to construct one using a
circle and (at least on the screen) a "R"; result has the inelegant and
trashy looking vector font "R".

Such junk is not seen unless one uses an independent Gerber viewer.
**

Now, on occasion, a layer may "inherit" AND/OR "ghost" something from
another layer, and move the position as well.
In one particular case, (so to speak) without asking, a text got
solder-masked (the "ghost" because i never saw it since i do not bother
turning that layer on). And that solder mask was (o be polite)
mis-positioned.
At the same time, a placed circle (layer 1 Top, made for no hole in
center) got duplicated in layer 30 Bstop and position was changed (here
is the "ghosting").
Furthermore, that layer 1 circle got duplicated in layer 290 Tstop
and the position was ALSO changed.
The result was a total mess
**
SO, VERY carefully review ALL layers on the screen at minimum and fix
as needed.
Use a Gerber viewer to double-check the results, especially fonts.

Naturally, because a rich owner of Eagle has decided to also be
greedy, expect these problems WILL NEVER be fixed.
Well, I just discovered yet another condition where you do NOT get what you see on the screen.
Try printing to a PDF; text with NO regard to (source/screen) font will be severely altered.
Seems there may be NO work-around, so documentation may be curtailed...

I've been writing a gerber parser lately and thus researched the topic a bit.
There's a line type that eagle and ossibly other tools produce that's not in ucamcos standard.
namely line type 22. there are some in the gerbv testcases (am-test.gbr).
There may also be some bugs in some renderers with respect to overlapping primitives ending up wrong.
You might need a veryfing Gerber parser or sthg...

 

[David Eather]

On Thu, 22 Feb 2018 03:47:37 +1000, Carl Ijames
<carl.ijames@noverizon.net> wrote:

Thank you all for the comments. It seems that a few others have seen
smoke
so I'm not completely alone, just a bit more unlucky. No one seems to
have
seen an LED bulb fail violently so I guess I can feel pretty safe as I
gradually replace my CFLs. Given the still-rapid pace of improvements
and
price dropping I'm not quite ready to just buy a bunch of LEDs now, but
hey,
what are the odds of another smoky CFL?

If I had to leave a light on and wanted safety, I would be thinking of
rolling my own low voltage LED light using an old style, approved mains
transformer, bridge, cap and linear regulator, all conservatively rated,
plus fuse and over temperature protection.

--
I look forward to the day when a chicken can cross the road without having
its motives questioned.