Colorful lanterns are actually not used for lighting, but a very common decorative light source, commonly used in architectural decoration, especially in cultural places, commercial decoration and advertising. Colorful lanterns are a kind of glow discharge light source, mainly composed of lamps, electrodes and lead wires.
The tube of colorful lanterns is a sealed glass tube, the diameter is generally 5~45mm, but the commonly used tube diameter is 6~20mm. The glass tube can be colorless or colored, and the inner wall can be painted Apply phosphor.
After the tube is evacuated, it is usually filled with one or more neon, argon, helium and other inert gases, and it can also be filled with a small amount of mercury. According to the color of the tube glass, the nature of the phosphor and the gas filled, a variety of colorful lanterns with different light colors can be obtained. Both ends of the colorful lanterns glass tube will be equipped with copper electrodes, and the surface has been chemically treated to prevent corrosion.
The wire leading from the electrode and connected to the power source is called the lead-in wire, and it is required to have the same thermal shrinkage performance as glass. In order to prevent the glass from splitting, it is usually made of nickel alloy. When a high voltage of 10 to 15 kV is applied to both ends of the colorful lanterns through a transformer, the gas in the tube is excited by ionization, causing the gas in the tube to conduct and emit a colorful glow.
Colorful lanterns generally use transformers, that is, transformers with high magnetic flux leakage, which have high open circuit voltage to ensure the conduction of colorful lanterns. Once turned on, the voltage will drop due to the existence of magnetic leakage, which will limit the lamp current. Even if the secondary circuit is short-circuited, the short-circuit current is only about 15%~25% higher than the normal operating current due to increased magnetic leakage. When the secondary open-circuit voltage of the transformer is higher than 7500V, the secondary winding usually has a center tap , And ground, which can reduce the voltage of the transformer secondary in the working state to ground, thus reducing the risk.