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Author Topic: My first Xenon bulb experience Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 06-04-2003 02:06 AM                        People fall into one of two categories, IMHO - those who have experienced a xenon bulb exploding and those who have not. It's happened to me twice. The first time was the result of us overrunning the lamp because of a faulty ammeter. It eventually died with a severely blackened envelope and anode lead. I removed the lamp and as I was inserting it into the reinforced plastic tube it suddenly blew up (and yes, I had left the lamp plenty of time to cool before removing it - over two hours in fact). If I hadn't been wearing the full protective visor, gloves and jacket I don't think I'd be sitting here writing this now. The second occasion was after the cinema had been closed for almost a month because its basement had flooded. We were going through the process of powering everything back up for the reopening. About 2-3 minutes after striking a lamp it suddenly and without warning exploded. I wasn't in the box at the time but am told that there was a pretty impressive bang. Before these incidents a small part of me thought that there was an element of paranoia in the various urban legends about xenon explosions... not any more. I've often thought that someone (perhaps one of the major lamp manufacturers) should commission a short film which shows a bulb being deliberately blown up in an enclosed space in order to demonstrate the damage it can do. This could then shown as part of the training for anyone whose job involves handling xenon lamps, in the same way that films of nitrate fires were made for training projectionists in the '30s and '40s.  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 06-11-2003 01:49 PM                        I recall that NASA did make a training film that actually showed large xenon lamp explosions in slow motion. (They use them for solar simulators and lighting up launch pads): http://osat-ext.grc.nasa.gov/gso/manual/chapter_26.pdf http://osat-ext.grc.nasa.gov/gso/manual/chapter_index.shtml  |  IP: Logged Andrew Duggan Expert Film Handler Posts: 127 From: Albany, NY, USA Registered: Jun 2002 posted 06-11-2003 03:59 PM                        We were having an issue last night with one of our Xenons not striking at all (ended up being a faulty failsafe inside the lamphouse) and as I was upstairs with the lamphouse open, poking around inside, and at the same time trying to explain to one of the floorworkers (who was up in the booth for some reason) the kind of attention and care you have to give to a xenon bulb. I basically summed it up as: "Working with Xenon bulbs is a lot like mountain climbing. It can be really fun and rewarding, but if you don't give them the proper respect and care, you'll find out just how unforgiving they are. And it'll probably be the last thing you'll ever learn." Things like this always remind me of the time I was opening the booth one morning at my old job, and on my way to turn on the lights, my foot kicked something in the dark pretty hard. I'm sure you can guess where this is going. So I turn on the light, and lo and behold is a 2000W bulb, just laying there on the floor, looking for an excuse to blow up. I marched down to the office and started raising hell about it and got greeted with that same skeptical "stop being paranoid" attitude. And the kid who left it laying there the night before got no reprimand, no warning, not even a polite request to stop being an idiot... The gentleman who techs my booth and I have had more than one conversation about possibly one day going out into a feild with a Xenon bulb, painted a bright flourescent color, a long distance air rifle, and a video camera, to try and make a safety video showing the kind of power and range these bulbs have when they go off. Maybe one day...  |  IP: Logged John Pytlak Film God Posts: 9987 From: Rochester, NY 14650-1922 Registered: Jan 2000 posted 06-12-2003 07:09 AM                        I recall the NASA film used a metal rod on a pendulum, that was remotely released to strike the xenon lamp and make it explode in view of the high speed camera.  |  IP: Logged Leo Enticknap Film God Posts: 7474 From: Loma Linda, CA Registered: Jul 2000 posted 06-13-2003 03:00 AM                        That would be an extremely useful film to have available to the cinema industry for health and safety training, IMHO.  |  IP: Logged Frank Angel Film God Posts: 5305 From: Brooklyn NY USA Registered: Dec 1999 posted 06-17-2003 11:16 PM                        OSRAM offers a free VHS tape "Getting the most from your Xenon Lamps" that stresses safety pretty heavily and there are plenty of pictures of the proper way to use the protective gear and how to handle the bulb, but I am pretty sure it doesn't show a bulb explosion, which is a shame. Nor does it show what I think it should show -- what you look like when you've got shards of quartz sticking out of your forehead and eyeballs or how difficult it is trying to thread a projector with those missing fingers, courtesy of a xenon explosion. You need to force-feed this kind of stuff to overcome that inate "I'm invinsible" machismoism that is all to common amoung young guys before they've seen much of the world. You know....make 'em look at what the guy looks like AFTER the motorcycle crash sans the helmet. The tape says it is compliments of OSRAM and NATO, but it came directly from OSRAM/SYLVANIA -- 978-77-1900 and www.sylvania.com. We made all the spot operators who might have to handle the xenon lamphouses watch it. Frank  |  IP: Logged

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