Evening all well if you read my past threads on my 2 non functioning eballast

http://www.lumenlab.com/forums/index.php?showtopic=9415

I had my second ballast tested today and it doesnt have any output to the lamp, AC is going in ok .
They didnt open it up(they would have charged me from there on


Out off curiosity I opened them both to see if any thing noticable, i found some thing very interesting.
the AC input wirers the colours arent going to the right points on the board (see attached pic)
brown is going to neutral and blue going to live , this is on both. Is this a miss print on the board? or a mistake.



In theory hooking it up (properly )as brown to live and blue to neutral it would be backwards, if this board is wired wrong, it will blow..

Also there seems to be some missing componants ( see circle on right ) or maybe this is a slight model change, even though both internals look the same.

Please dont get me wrong Im not pissed in anyway, coz I know my PJ will work coz we (the LL community ) will make it work.

Well guys what do you think

Also Brian I emailed you please let me know if you got it I am now on broadband with a new ISP

Apparently missing components on a pcb are not uncommon, but where I live, brown is active, blue is neutral....

same here Brown live , blue neutral..

any who in the top pic, the first ballast you can see a black thing , well that is the fuse, it is the next thing in the curcuit after the blue(so called LIVE) wire which leads me to think that the blue is in deed the live wire, hense wired wrong to our and US specs, how can that be you say... I dont know, other peoples eballasts have worked. Well Im going to do it..Im hooking the live to the blue, but I may be too late damage may be done.

thanks

IT GOES , IT GOES. YEAH MAN IT GOES IT GOES...


WHOA WOO YEAH


MAN WHOO WHO..


BLUE IS HOT AND BROWN WAS NEUTRAL , GO FIGURE



IT GOES .....

Just in case brian u dont recieve the email..... its works .... yeah...

thanks guys..

the tension before flicking the switch was in tense....it clicked once and pow light light,, then green then bright

then scortched the wood it was on...thank god i put wood , it was on the kitchen bench..thanks guys

LL team , People you ROCK yeah........

I think Vidman rocks. Great Find. I am now thinking about my eballast because it runs to hot for me. They say there supposed to run warm to touch but mine gets pretty dadgem hot. It's also slow to start and my bulb is extremely tight. I removed it the other day and no signs of arcing. I'll have to check this out on mine. thanks, CS
ps.I ordered another eballast from LL to see if it gets hot to touch.

WOW...

I wonder if that's what's wrong with mine. Whats weired tho is that when i first got it it was fine, there was light. BUt one day it stopped working.

All i hear is clicks now, and maybe every 5 clicks a get a little spark in the bulb, but no light.

Has any1 else had luck getting in there 2 see what the problem is?

I guess your thinking if I hooked brown to brown and blue to blue , which in this case would make the wiring wrong so why didnt it go BANG like the first one ,well because in the second ballast the brown wire is in the "neutral hole" which meant I actually hooked the power to the neutal in the ballast and it should have gone bang, when i was putting it back together that wire was broken at the board but held in place by the glue.I dont know if I broke it when taking the side cover off , I dont think so. Hense broken wire stopped the power from going in the wrong input,hense ballast OK and why it still works, when hooked brown to blue and blue to brown.

Long shot... I dont think so other wise it would have gone bang like the first.

Any way it works at the moment thats all that matters. but since the colouring is wrong that might need looking into.


Sorry if this has thrown a spanner into the works with the Eballast but the manufacture got it wrong with the colouring , unless theres is blue for live and brown for neutral of course..

Vid

Heres apic if light going, pic is brighter I can actually see the wood in the front half. It's bright ..you can look inside box until you see the arc..(use the side of the wood as a blind) but as soon as the arc starts to appear theres no way you can look at it..I assume thats bright enough



this is with lights on 2 tube lights and 2 100x bulbs

Was there an earth connection some ware on the board to the metal case or to any earth wire that connects back to the power outlet? The reason I ask is that if there was then this could mean that the electronics use this as a reference for some reason and it could be possible that the ac input connections are sensitive to the orientation. It is my understanding that it should not make a difference which way the AC is connected because AC is just that, Alternating Current. Every half cycle the polarity changes or to put it another way, every half cycle the wires are swapped. Maybe while you had the ballast apart you managed to rejoin a broken connection some ware or there may have been a dry joint that re-connected.

DJ

yes from the board to the case then to the AC



Sorry what?




How come this forum pays great detail to which way the live and neutral are connected. It was mentioned when I hooked my first ballast I hooked brown to brown and blue to blue it want bang, indicating wired wrong. But colour wise it wasnt. Now with the internal colour of the wires is technically wrong the second ballast works. Im not pushing my luck Im not going to wire it brown to brown etc , I even read here only the live side needs a fuse and in the ballast the blue wire in the pic has a fuse .

Thanks for the reply , this electicity stuff can be high techish when your used to just putting the plug in the wall. I was told with an earth you have to have live to live and neutral to neutral, unless your applianace only has 2 wires it doesnt matter which way they go.

I have taken a few risks doing this project and Im not going to push my luck The ballast goes this way

Thanks again for the info it all helps

thanks man