Difference between revisions of "Philips Master TL-D Super 80"

The advent of high efficiency tri-band or tri-phosphorous lamps was the most important landmark. Successful development of flourescent powders that had peak UV to visible light conversion at blue, red, and green colours with peaks near the ideal wavelengths made it possible to release lamps with specific colour appearances. This high energy in light conversion was complemented by changes in the lamps gas's fill from argon to Krypton, reducing thermal losses with a slight increase in operating voltage and starting voltage. This was the market releases of the the highly successful T8 lamp, or TL-D lamp that dominated since the early 90s. Of course, up until this time there were improvements in cathodes design and electron emmissive coatings as well as other performance enhancing solutions but the release of the TL-D lamp was the most important moment.

Production of specialist lamps started in the 1950s with coloured lamps but also expanded to include De Luxe and specific lamps that would cater for many purposes. De Luxe lamps were an improvement of standard lamps in terms of colour reproction but was less efficient and had shorter service life due to coatings that were less stable in time than standard lamps. The advent of the tri-band TL-D flourescent lamp opened up the possibility of using part of its development to release new De Luxe lamps by combining such phosphorus coatings with previously developed ones. The result was a more stable, higher efficiency De Luxe lamp. Graphica lamps were a slight adaptation of previously developed phosphorus to TL-D lamps and their gas's fill and some experimentation in improving other aspects of operation to achieve better performance.

Philips flourescent lamps had very good manufacturing tolerances and the lamp's construction along with flourescent powder quality made reliable, predictable operation entirely ensured. Other world manufacturers were capable of similar performance. However, some slight differences were noticeable. For instance, Philips had slightly less powerful red phosporus than Osram, which means that entirely equivalent lamps from both manufacturers had slightly different colour appearance. On the other side, Chinese branded lamps were much inferior in terms of flourescent powder quality and colour reproduction as well as efficiency and service life.