SUPERSOFTSTART ballast

Nucon GbR has developed a new control to run up short arc HID lamps with minimum current. Severale special HID bulbs are coming up slowly with internal gas pressure and lamp voltage when they are cold. To avoid burn off of the bulb electrodes those bulbs must not be overpowered and the lamp current should not exceed certain limits. Automotive ballasts burn off shortly bulb electrodes especially from UV bulbs Reducing the lifetime to about 50 cold starts only!
For the UV application the inverter section of our ballast was further developed and the power control section optimised..

Lamp run up current of a Philips DUV35. After ignition there is lamp run up phase of about 30 seconds. The RMS run up current of the bulb is about 0.8 amps and goes slowly down to approx 0.47 amps. During the first seconds of operation the bulb is powered just with 25Watts. Then thereafter the lamp power comes up to nominal 35Watts. Quite in the contrary to this automotive D2S bulbs are powered up with 75Watts and a 2.6 ampere RMS bulb current.

The Brightstar 35W reflector bulb on the left requires also a soft start like the DUV bulbs to avoid fast burn off of the lamp electrodes. Automotive ballasts with 75W run up power will soon burn off those bulbs within 50-100 cold starts. The new Supersoftstart-ballast can further dimm down from 35W down to approx. 20W - like you can see in the following Quicktime movie link an impressive change of light intensity: Dimm35to20reflectormovie