1985 Volume 69 Issue 6 Pages 286-290
Pulse starting of metal halide lamps requires the voltage between 1.0 to 1.5 kV.
The starting voltage greatly depends on whether lamp starting is accompanied by the discharge between the main and the auxiliary electrodes or not.
It is well known that, when a glow-starter is used as an ignitor and a current limiting resistance is in the range of 100 to 500 ohms, the pulse voltage lowers according as the resistance increases, while the pulse repetition rate slightly increases.
However, in our experiments, when the current limiting resistance further increased and rose above 1.0 k ohms, the pulse repetition rate steeply increased, and reached about 500 times of the case of 300 ohms. Then, the breakdown voltage between the main and the auxiliary electrodes lowered.
Therfore, it was proved that the starting characteristics of the lamps could be improved considerably although the pulse voltage lowered to the 600 to 700V level.
