My diminishing stash of incandescent light bulbs is giving me grief at the moment. I have managed to blow two 60 watt "Philips, Made in Indonesia" bulbs in one day. With the most recent one tonight there is no evidence of the tungsten filament at all. Only the bare support wires remain.

As is usually the case, they are blowing at switch on.

Oh well, hopefully by the time my bulb cupboard is bare those LED bulbs will have come significantly down in price. (Can't stand CFL bulbs!)

I started buying those vintage bulbs that bunnings were selling.
I like the way they look and all the different styles look great in my 50s lamps and 50s ceiling fixtures.
But their life time turned out to be very short. Very!
I did some rep sales work for Lutron about 2 years ago and many city cafes and bars used their vintage bulbs and they just looked great , they were leds though in the bars and cafes.but you could dim them down to 5%
Pete

Yes, those "retro/vintage" bulbs are almost the lighting equivalent of a cliche in shops and restaurants these days.

I'm interested in the standard GLS form bulb with an output equivalent to a 60 watt incandescent, and a better lifetime, too.

I gave up on the quartz bulbs as they were not lasting anything like the advertised hours, the exception being a dozen pack that I bought from Aldi once but haven't seen again since.

Yeah I know the ones you mean.
These ones at bunnings last about 1 month

https://www.bunnings.com.au/verve-design-25w-g95-vintage-decorative-b22-globe_p4340457

I still have plenty of old-style globes here, and I usually get about 10 years out of each one. At this rate I'll still have heaps by the time I go.

Guess it depends on where the bulbs are made, generally the halogen bulbs give reasonable life although have noticed the halogens are bit fragile if bumped when switched on.

Some years ago was given a stash of new Aust made incandescents which will keep me going for a long time I hope. Would not part with them.

In any case the heavily used lights in the kitchen and my workshop are fluro tube types so my usage of light bulbs is very much reduced now.

The days of good Aust made bulbs is long gone.

I buy mine online usually Ebay, but I had a bad batch apparently made in Poland, rated at 220volts which blew often, but I managed to source 240v ones from England and they've been really good.

If they made them rated for 260 volts, they'd last even longer.

BTW:

QUOTE: The [Phoebus] cartel took its business of shortening the lifetime of bulbs every bit as seriously as earlier researchers had approached their job of lengthening it. Each factory bound by the cartel agreement—and there were hundreds, including GE’s numerous licensees throughout the world—had to regularly send samples of its bulbs to a central testing laboratory in Switzerland. There, the bulbs were thoroughly vetted against cartel standards. If any factory submitted bulbs lasting longer or shorter than the regulated life span for its type, the factory was obliged to pay a fine.

Thanks for the link G,

What an incredible article. Cartels are usually associated with drug lords and oil companies (ha, what appropriate bedfellows)

A couple of years ago when we were getting CFC's rammed down our throat so we could save the planet I bought one rated for 5000 hours (it didn't last a fraction of that time).

I pulled it apart and repaired it by replacing the filter electro. It was crammed hard against a bridge rectifier and the heat shortened its life.

I put it down to "typical crap from you-know-where" but after reading the article you posted, built-in component failure?

Years ago I would roll up for work on a Monday morning and the boss would give me my job cards for the day. A typical scenario would look like this;

Five Sanyos, three Philips. More often than not, all the Sanyos had the same faulty capacitor. The three Philips---shorted tripplers. All eight televisions died during the weekend.

A senior tech who I worked with had a grand sense of humour, and he told me about his "Silicon Bug' theory. Apparently, the bug attacked silicon, and was so small that it could travel between electrons in power lines. Once it got into homes it would end up eating semiconductors inside TV's. (As well as carbon and aluminium)

It was a good laugh to always blame the SB whenever the above scenario occurred, but more than likely the SB was (still is) clever engineering.

Cheers,

G.

Regarding capacitors, there was the "plague" period that caused enormous problems for industry for many years. Industrial espionage is thought to have been the catalyst for it:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capacitor_plague

built-in component failure

With so many appliances now containing embedded microprocessors, it is very easy indeed to program a lifetime counter into them so that, after a certain period of use, the software essentially switches itself off, causing either a service call to replace that chip or, more likley, the appliance goes to the tip.

I have a 1957 bar advertising sign that has its original lightbulbs! Since it regularly gets switched on, I opened its back sliding panel to access the old bulbs: There were two GE 130V 25W (rated +12%) only warm to touch 'Longlife' bulbs. These light a translucent white plastic panel for a photo transparency - still achieved accurate neutral spectrum illumination!

Until recently, Luna Park in Sydney used 100V lamps bought in bulk from Japan in the early 1950s. Apparently branded Luna Park. These lamps lasted a VERY long time.

There being 100V lamps there would be understandable as 'Luna Park' was a franchise and there may be pre-fab elements from the designers of the mother park at Coney Island New York where electric illumination - 100V Edison DC - was a feature attraction. And where would they find replacement lamps in the 1950s & 60s? The only place still using 100V: Japan. These were probably industrial-grade long-life bulbs at that!

If when a globe blows there is no filament left at all (turn the globe so the glass faces down to ensure it's all gone) then there is a hole in the envelope somewhere, causing oxygen to burn the tungsten away. If you break the glass and don't hear the 'pop' which indicates that the vacuum inside the envelope would still exist then this will confirm it.

Light globes of all types are designed to not last long anymore. Philips is a leading brand but they'd be in the same boat these days. The factory in Indonesia probably operates in a similar way to the one we once had here. It'd make globes for a dozen companies and just take it in turns stamping different brands on the globes before boxing them. The factory that once made globes and fluoro tubes in Newcastle made globes for Philips, Osram, Sylvania, GE, Crompton, Thorn and many generics such as Home Brand, Embassy, No Name and Black & Gold.

It is a reflection of the desire to pump out rubbish that just fills up the tips and manufacturing companies simply don't care about the waste because it is the shareholders and not the pollution control authorities that the boards answer to.

If when a globe blows there is no filament left at all (turn the globe so the glass faces down to ensure it's all gone) then there is a hole in the envelope somewhere, causing oxygen to burn the tungsten away.

I've tossed that bulb away but, if another one blows in a similar fashion, I'll check for residual vacuum.