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Dangers of using a dinged Metal Halide bulb

drug_mentor

drug_mentor

Bluelight Crew
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Jul 12, 2006
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Hey guys,

I am currently setting up a small indoor grow for personal use. Last night I was stuffing around in the room I have my grow tent in, stupidly I had briefly placed my 400W metal halide bulb (still in the box) on the floor next to some beer bottles. As I was walking by it I accidentally kicked the box and it moved and hit into the beer bottles. I was only walking at a standard pace and did not kick it particularly hard.

I have since pulled out the bulb and examined it, I can observe no damage to the bulb whatsoever. It is worth noting however, I have limited experience/exposure to indoor growing and am not overly familiar with how a metal halide bulb should look. It seems obvious there are no cracks or breaks, but since metal halide bulbs have an internal arc tube there is a possibility this is off kilter, or damaged in some other way that I don't notice.

My question essentially, is would this bulb be safe to use? I cannot immediately afford to replace it and am hoping that it should be fine, given I cannot observe any damage.

I should probably add, there is some slight yellow dis colouration in the centre of the glass component of the internal arc, when I look at photos of MH bulbs this part does seem to be clear, although I am not entirely sure how a bump could cause dis colouration of the lamp but not crack it or anything.

If anyone with experience or knowledge on this matter could chime in I would greatly appreciate it! :D
 
MH (and HPS) bulbs will definitely change color after being used for a couple hundred hours or sometimes even less, all my bulbs are yellowing.

I would run the lamp while you're at home for a few hours, if it doesn't pop and sizzle as it heats up, you should be fine.
 
The thing is this is a brand new bulb, not all of the glass part of the arc tube is yellow but like half of it is.

I don't really want to fire it up without being pretty sure it wont explode, my tent (and the rest of my equipment) is brand new and it would be pretty costly to fuck it all up with broken glass and toxic vapour.
 
If it lights up normal, which it should, You should be all good IMO. I would be shocked if it exploded.
 
I really doubt it will explode, that doesn't happen very often at all.

Brand new bulbs will looks like that too, its no biggie. Especially if its a cheaper bulb, it can have a yellow tint out of the factory.
 
Thanks for the responses guys, guess I will just fire it up in the next few days and see how I go, for whatever reason I was under the impression exploding bulbs was a real risk with these things if you used a damaged one.

It is a cheap bulb as I sorta broke the bank on my setup and figured I gotta replace the bulbs pretty often any way and can always upgrade then.
 
It's probably fine. They are fragile but can take a fair amount of knocking about before they stop working.

You say you knocked it and you don't think you hit it that hard - well, it's almost certainly fine in that case. I obviously wouldn't recommend doing this but I've dropped mine from a fair height and they've been fine.

If when you turn it on it seems to appear to function okay over a decent period of time then it's probably okay. So I really wouldn't worry too much.
 
Doubt anyone is particularly interested but figured I may as well update the thread and say that the metal halide is working fine.

Cheers for your opinions/advice. :)
 
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