I'm thinking of buying 3 lumatek 600w ballasts to replace 2 (I like to keep a spare and would like to build a separate grow room for my vegetables next year.) how much cooler are they? Is it just the ballasts that are cooler or are the bulbs running cooler?

Greens sell another type in 1000w form are they actually any good anyone used them?

Thanks

i got the 600w bal lamp, and the ballast is only lukewarm... good job really as its attached to the reflector! not sure but i think the bulb runs marginally cooler because more enegy is converted into light instead of heat.

be careful with radio inteference
its the cable not the ballast
the cable from the shade to ballast needs to be thick enough to smother the signal (thats as sciency as i can make it im afraid)

the only advantage i can see is the lower temperature, very handy when trying to lower temps
yes you get more lumens but you pay for them, nothing for free, if a bulb is kicking out 105000 lumens form the stuff ive read (i know) you will be using 700 watts ish

Luckily my friend still has a scanner from tandy should be easy to detect any interference as long as it's no more than 10M will be fine.

They don't flicker as much (Due to be turned on an off a lot more times a second) which will in itself delivers considerably more light. I found my ballast in a skip (Well was tipped off) but god knows how old they are. I'm pretty certain a digi is going to be considerably brighter than what I'm using.

Ordered the lumatek 600w, if I like it I might order the lightwave one next.

I'll do a run with old ballast and no fan and the new one and no fan and see how the temps rise in 30 minutes, that'll give me an idea.

I have 3 lumateks and a NextGen. All are brilliant. No radio interference. That's old news.

The NextGen can handle from 90V to 260V (great with generators) and has two tiny fans. Very quiet! My 3 lumateks are sitting together on a shelf and have a tiny fan on them just to keep air around them moving. Heat IS the number one destroyer of ballasts.

Click here to read a stuck topic on digital ballasts. It's nice if we can keep most posts on e-ballasts there as it helps others to learn.

i havent tried the lumatek ballasts
the lightwave digi ballasts do create radio inteference, ring up growth technology, they admit to it, but it is the cable running from the ballast to the shade that causes the problem, the frequencies of the bulb and ballast are different, the bulb technology is the lagging element i think

can you guys promise me as much as you dare that a lumatek ballast will not have any radio interference? sorry to sound like i dont believe you guys but we have been on this search for a while and all the promises made by the companys making them have not stood up

how do lumatek solve the problem of the frequency travelling along the cable from ballast to shade?

cheers fellas


can someone who knows about computers move this too merge with other thread, if that is possible?

The lumatecs I own do not interfere with anything in my house either. Def worth the money.

hil..

just got a new lumitek 400w digi ballast. & i think it may not be running right though..

when i got it i put an old growlux in it till i could get a new one. it was running pretty cool with the old lamp in. but when i went to buy a new bulb all they has was a sunmaster. [anyone heard of these?] so i put it in & didnt think anymore of it. a couple of days later i touched the ballast n it was frackin hot!!. so as i was worried about fire, i got in touch with the ballast supplier. they said that they have had overheating problems with lumiteks & sunmaster bulbs.
ive since got a new growlux & its now running quite warm-its not as cool as it was originally with the old growlux in, but its alot cooler than with the sunmaster in.. i fear i may have damaged the ballast in some way is this possible?

anyone else heard of this problem with these sunmaster lamps & lumiteks?

hope someone can shed some light-but not from a sunmaster ..

peace all

.

"i got in touch with the ballast supplier. they said that they have had overheating problems with lumiteks & sunmaster bulbs"


Crock of shit i reckon there telling you , i only run sunmaster bulbs these days in mine and apart from sunmaster metal halides not lasting long the hps bulbs are totally fine and i have my super lume switch on.

Have just got a 600watt and ran it the other day with a 600 hps and a 600 watt 7200k metal halide conversion bulb ( wow there huge compared to a 400watt mh bulb) and both ran totally fine and the ballast was warm to the touch but no more than that.

Well bought one got it running, can honestly say it's no brighter than the old battered magnetic one bet the power usage is better though. The flickers gone as well, connected to a cool tube with 0 interference, the test I suppose when I connect it to the parabolic shade I bought.

The ballast runs a lot cooler than the last one the bulbs seem to run exactly the same temp.

I bought the purple 600w lumatek, using an MH at the moment only a month or so old I notice the lamp starts a lot dimmer but gets brighter a lot quicker than the magnetic one.

Not convinced this is going to rock my world but not unhappy either.

I thought it would do pretty much exactly what it did and not what lumatek printed all over the box, 27% more light my arse.

I bought it as my ballast need upgrading so I bought this a tester, is it worth the extra cash, probably but it is double the price so it's not as clear cut as lumtek would like you to believe.

I bought a 250w lumatec recently, not too bothered whether it is any more efficient all i know is it has a good warranty and doesnt add unwanted heat to my small space during the warmer months. I will keep my compact ballast as a back up or maybe for a winter grow.

This what Lumatek said in the paperwork that came with my 600w HPS ballast.

" Lumatek ballasts are now internally RF shielded and can be used with a standard ( brand name ) All-System Cord
set or lamp cord. Our ballasts produce the least amount of EMI (electro-magnetic interference) of any
electronic ballast "

I personally have had no problems with mine.

Hope that helps,
Kapusta