Fire!

[Dave S]

Originally Posted by wa2ise

I've salvaged electrolytic caps from dead CFLs that did not fail so spectularly. Got 2 15uF at 250V 105C caps from one yesterday. Yes, I tested them, as I know these can lead hard lives. The bulb blew one of its filaments, and it looks like the electronics were fine. And got 4 1N4007 diodes out of it too, tested fine.

I wrote an article a while back about this for our club newsletter. People were surprised that they could get "free" restoration parts this way. The caps rarely seem to fail in a CFL circuit. They make great filters for AA5 receivers. The diodes are useful items too, if you can deal with the short leads.

But CFL fixtures have been sort of "exhibit A" for me in terms of contained danger. I've had any number fail (virtually all of them far sooner than the claimed life span!) but although some of them smoked, and most of them scorched the housing of the base, none of them failed with any external sparking or flames. Likewise with any previous vintage electronic equipment failures I've seen. Seeing how many stories you guys have about fires makes me realize I've just been lucky.

I "always" turn off vintage equipment when I'm done with it, but of course there've been times when I forgot and left a radio or record player, or worse yet a TV or a piece of test equipment (especially easy to forget) on overnight. Like I said, I guess I've been lucky. I guess we're gonna fuse all the working artifacts on display in the museum. Now just have to figure out how to account for human failure, the "forgetting" to turn it off part...