Christie CXL20 (I think I will get 30% - 50% over guarentee.) Guarentee is about 2,400 hours

Many factors affect lamp life: brand of lamp, lamphouse design, cooling, current ripple, proper lamp rotation, integrity of connections, etc. Change lamps when ignition becomes unreliable, flicker becomes noticable, there is significant lamp blackening, or proper screen luminance and uniformity cannot be maintained (Standard SMPTE 196 has an aim of 16 footlamberts). Inspect the electrodes and seals for signs of excess electrode heating, impending seal failure, or vitrification (crystallization) of the quartz.

I have seen some lamps get huge hours. I personally changed on that had done ~7500hours. One lamp i know of was installed in 1985 and removed when the theatre renovated late 1996, accumulating some 17,000 hours. On the other hand, I have recently seen lamps fail completly (bang!) after only a few hundred hours.

A good idea is to keep a log of the hours that the lamps in your lamphouses do. If you consistently see that a lamp in cinema 3 (for example) is only doing 1200 hours, and all others are doing 2400 hours, then maybe there is some investigating that needs to be done.

Mr. Pytlak, I love the articles you write for Kodak Cinema Notes. I use them for training new operators (as well as educating myself).

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On your CXL-30SC...what type of rectifier are you using? By any chance is it either an IREM or Kneisley? In any case, please list the model.

Steve

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Thank you.

I miss my days in the booth, but enjoy Kodak's support in helping theatres "Do Film Right". If I stray from offering practical and realistic advice, or make a misstatement, please let me know. Sometimes the view from "the film factory" may not mesh with what works best in the theatre. I'm willing to listen and learn too.

That one paragraph puts you a cut above your peers, and earns you the respect of all the people in the trenches. I offer a heartfelt "Thank-you, sir."

I'd be surprised if it's the Switcher that's causing the slow or no strike problem in the Strong system. Is the open circuit voltage getting to 120V or higher? If so, the Switcher is doing its job.

If the lamp does not even get pulsed by the igniter and the open circuit voltage is correct, then it's the circuit that fires the igniter that's at fault.

It sounds like you have the AC Igniter in these systems and the firing board is separate from the igniter itself. Check connections and the firing relay in the socket -- those will corrode over time and might cause the problem you describe.

If it's the DC Igniter, the circuit board in the igniter can pretty easily be replaced or upgraded. There's a Service Bulletin on our website on that:
http://www.strong-cinema.com/SB-0019.pdf

Pat

I use 2k horizontal lamps in all 5 projectors here. After a fair bit of trial and error getting the running current, ventilation and rotation intervals right, we seem to be getting 3,000 good hours out of each one. That means anode pitting, envelope blackening and a flicker start to directly affect the picture quality after 3,000 hours.

That's 2x warranty, which is pretty much what I'd expect - I've heard it said that manufacturers generally guarantee something for about half the use they realistically expect it to get - they don't want to be constantly paying out under warranties, so they build in that safeguard.