Cold Cathode owners.
 

I just got a blacklight cold cathode, and despite its name it gets quite hot. As in "Don't freaking touch it!" hot. Also the glow seems to intensify when it's been on a few minutes. Cold Cathode manufacturers claim that they are cold and need no warmup so I was wondering if mine's odd or if the name just is a cool (ha ha) name they made up. The light seems to work fine and lights up UV reactive stuff quite a bit up to as much as 1.5m (about 5ft I think), and that's in normal ambient light levels!

I recently got two of the 12" CCFL from.....ZX mods I think it's
called...offa Virtual-Hideouts page.

At first I was terribly dissapointed in the "black lights". I know not
to expect much ambient light from a black light, but these were
terrible, and they didn't even look like they were fully lit. Almost
like the inverter was not putting out enough for them. I let them
burn for a few minutes while I was looking for something around
my apartment that's UV reactive, and by the time I got back to
the two CCFLs with some glow in the dark yo-yos, it was like I
was looking at two completely different lights!

Since then they seem spot on right from the get go. It could also
be that the inverters were burning in? I don't know. But mine
seem fine now. I wouldn't worry about it unless yours get worse
rather then better...

After some testing it showed that in a dark room it will illuminate dye-lite'd water in a silicon hose over 5 metres away, giving it a bizarre spooky glow. Kinda cool. Does your lights also become very hot?

Yeah, all the lights do get a little hot, but not as much as you
would think considering the brightness of the light.

The stuff I got from ZX Mods has an Acrylic tube protecting the
CCFL from and bumps and banging...it also protects any
cabling and wandering fingers from the heat. Which, IMHO, isn't
too terribly bad.

I've used CCFLs from about 4 different dealers, and they are
all basically the same. Same heat, same light, etc. What
seperates them is the quality of the kit they provide, and
the quality of customer service.

I sell the cold cathodes, I am sorry you went to zx mods.....lol anyways yes they should get a bit hot, nothing extreme like what you said though...do you let the thing run 24/7 it should get warm, but the name "cold" cathodes is due to the technology no tthe actaully meaning of it being cold.....hey if you are in need i do all cathodes and leds and el wire....

mail me at: emp.destinee@lvcm.com

heh, you are over here now? Well, I am sure you will get quite a bit of coustomers here also.

Guys, he is a great guy to work with, and ships fast.

Just in case anyone is interested, I did some research on cold cathodes before I bought one.

Cold cathodes are basically the same thing as flourescent tubes. The only difference between CCFL's and flourescent tubes is that CCFL's don't have a heating element to help the gas ionize. Both these lights send high-frequency voltage through a low pressure gas to make light energy, and a thin coating on the inside of the tube wall converts the UV light into visible light.

CCFL's still get warm because they emit more light at a certain temperature (about 110F I think). If the lights stayed colder, they would be dimmer and less efficient. The main benefit of CCFL's is that they last longer. The heating element in normal flourescent lights is very fragile, and there is a sacrificial element that actually is consumed over a normal product lifetime. In CCFL's, it should last nearly forever. In practice, CCFL's last something like 30,000 hours (about 3.5 years). But, CCFL's are not as energy efficient as normal flourescents, and they are more expensive.

I was under the impression that CC's did NOT have the phosphorecent layer inside the tube, but contained a gas the glowed in the desired color directly when its electrons are excited. Is this wrong?

As far as I know, CCFL's still require a phospor layer. I haven't broken mine apart to find out, but that's what the manufacturer web page said. :D

I found this informative site :

http://www.pcconsultant.com/ccfl-info.htm

Good spot, iceheart. That was one of the sites I found when I first googled to find out how they work. There are some other sites with more esoteric information, like the mfg pages talking about optimum temperature, or the reasons why CCFL's have a longer life-span. However, those who are interested are definitely encouraged to google around.

BTW, interesting that this site says the MTBF is 15,000 hours. Some other manufacturers rate their CCFL's for 30,000 hours.

That is the exact cold cathode I have though.