Greetings! After the first attempt or two kind of fizzled, and things got busy, they have now chillaxed some, and I decided to venture into CCFL land again. I decided that the clear tube covering the real tube was whack, and started carefully hacksawing it off. It was while doing this that I realised the end caps simply pop off with barely a twist. Motherf*cker! If I had known it was that easy I would have done it ages ago. I had tried and they seemed stuck solid on the 30cm tube at least.
Some attention still must be paid. Here is a pictorial of removing the inner tube without breaking anything important. I used vice grips to shatter the plastic. It's quite low risk if you take care.
Here is a comparison, it's definitely a little (tiny bit) brighter. It rests closer to the plastic in that first one so it's sort of deceiving.
I found that the tip is the hottest, right where the black bit is:
Anyway, I've got two of these guys hanging in an 11 litre white plastic mop bucket. I don't have the correct tool to test the exact wattage, but the closest I can come is 2.64 watts. Well, the photos shown are two bulbs hooked up to one inverter (external ballast) so the bulbs are actually dimmer than they will be when I hook each bulb up to it's own inverter. Kind of like overdriving a traditional fluoro. Anyway, it will use somewhere around 2.64w when it's in overdriven mode, is what I mean to say.
The tape I used gave out instantly so the whole thing has fallen apart, lol. I will be re-taping it soon, and then I can take temps etc. I only want to do this as an experiment to see if clones will take in there, but screw it, if I'm feeling lucky I will veg in there and even flower if it came to that. All in the name of science!
I'm using the angle design for intake and it has one of these as a fan - with speed control and thermal sensor which I may utilize.
I have 6 x 1 litre square plastic milk containers which I'll cut down, in two rows of three, so there is a bulb next to or between each plant. Hopefully the excess lumens don't bleach the plants I gotta go harvest my plant right now but that's what's up. Thoughts? Will I break 1gpw? You may scoff but that's only 2.64 grams lol Don't forget these are still bright enough to damage your vision temporarily.
(23w cfl, 55w PLLs, 30cm white CCFL...I use the 10cm Bitspower orange, approx same brightness.)