I have MANY twin 6 foot fluorescent fittings in my workshop (72 I think) and changing the starters is a pain - they don't stick out enough to grip, and you have to reach round the tubes to get at them. Not easy 12 foot up. (yes I'd like to change them for LEDs but the capital cost is huge)
There MUST be a tool to engage with the two dimples that they all have on the exposed end - but I've never been able to source one commercially - so today I printed one on my Cetus 3D printer. Oh boy why didn't I do it years ago - SO much easier :)
Exactly my thoughts the other day where one of my (only) two fittings in the kitchen seems to have it's starter socket recessed more than the other, even requiring me to open the fitting up to retrieve a lost starter on one occasion. ;-(
Did you design this tool yourself Andrew? A thin walled tube with a couple of lugs up inside a bit to give you some turning purchase?
I drew it up in Fusion 360 and printed it on my Cetus 3D printer - it's a simple tube with two ridges on the inside. The dimples are only 2mm wide so difficult to do with wood and screws, but dead easy with a 3D printer :) . I suppose without the 3D printer I could have milled one out, but not an easy operation.
72? Aaaeeiii! And I'm wincing at the cost of replacing the 8(?) fittings in my barn/workshop with LEDs.
I am very pleased with the two I put up in the garage. But the damn things were £48 each. If I were to buy more, I think I'd try and source them from somewhere cheaper than Screwfix.
Probably cos 3D printing was not available cost effectively? On the other hand, if you used solid state starters they hardly ever die unless something really bad happens to the mains supply or fitting! Brian
Might it have been better, to stop the two ribs a bit further back from the tube end, to allow the tube to go on further - to make it a more positive grip on the starter?
Potentially but it's more accurate to say that a zip file is simply a container file that can hold any type of file (compressed or not) which could just as easily be malware as not. They've certainly been used for such nefarious a purpose in times past as well as providing a convenient way of sending a group of jpg picture files as just a single attachment to an email.
A zip file could be likened to the container for Schroedinger?s cat that's been alluded to in recent posts elsewhere in this group. Until you open it, the contents of an anonymous zip file are both bonumware and malware simultaneously. :-)
An excellent idea for the next batch, I'd have thought. :-)
Also, btw, looking at the last 3 posts, ignoring the one by 'efrench', I see that PK misunderstood RussellT's post about replacing the plug in starter switches with electronic plug in starter switches (less than a couple of quid each from etailers (local electrical factors live in blissful ignorance of these gadgets, preferring instead to keep dealing in the ancient neon heated bi-metal starter at just pennies less than the modern and bloody effective electronic starter switches - mini-rant over), perhaps thinking the 'electronic' reference was to the modern HF ballasts which can cost anywhere from 11 quid a pop to somewhere around the 25 quid mark and higher! As a consequence, he talked about an 'upgrading exercise' involving 2000lm LED tubes, presumably to replace the brighter 1200mm (4ft) 2500 to 3000 lm T12 40W tubes which, including ballast losses, take some 52W per single tube fitting (the 30W savings figure makes no sense otherwise).
It rather looks like PK bought into the LED tube fraud a little prematurely since it looks like he's using 90LPW LED tubes rather than going for 125LPW LEDs which have been available for more than 12 months now (if not in tube form, certainly in GLS lamp form).
Even if you can bulk buy electronic starters for just a quid each, at 70 quid's worth to save having to replace the odd bi-metal strip starter out of a fleet of 70 once or twice a year, Andrew's 3D printer starter switch extraction tool is still the optimum solution imo. Any bigger an investment in upgrading such a large fleet of fluorescent lights (electronic starters, LED 'tubes' or electronic HF ballasts) must surely be a folly when cheap cost effective LED panel luminaires are only a few years away as a modern replacement.
I'd say .stl is a fairly common output file format if people wanted to submit finished things for others to print (or possibly convert and print) but I've only really experienced my own printer and Sketchup etc.
Lots of stuff for 3D printing seems to come zipped (Thingiverse etc) as many 3D printed jobs are made of several parts and may also include notes and the source / design files.
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