Coleman 111-055 Deuterium Arc Lamp Power Supply

[adkeric]

Group.

I'm wondering if anyone has experience or advice in using a tubed Coleman 111-055 Deuterium arc lamp power supply.

There was a post quite some time ago about it, but not exactly what I needed.

http://www.dutchforce.com/~eforum/index.ph...00&#entry263200

I am a biologist, not an EE, but here's my situation:

I need to light a deuterium lamp so that I can use its UV output to measure reflectance of objects in the UV with my spectrometer. [very interesting application btw - examining UV vision in animals] So I have the Coleman power supply and a deuterium lamp. What I don't have is any idea how to connect it or operate it!!

Besides the AC input, the power supply has a wire bundle that comes out the front has a connector with 8 pins - 4 horizontal to the long axis and the other 4 perpendicular. Obviously, I can cut into the bundle and identify the wire colors and the connector itself is not important.

I assume that three of these (the deuterium lamp has three wires on it) go to the lamp. And, perhaps the others control the coleman to provide a start charge and then maintain the arc of light after started? There are wiring diagrams on the post I pasted in above, but I am not fluent enough to translate that to confidently hook it all up.

If anyone has any experience or information about how - given I have the coleman, and a deuterium lamp - to wire it and get it to work I would be very grateful for their input.

Thank you.

Eric

[CWB]

an interesting use/research project indeed .

about the first thing to do is find a schematic for the coleman unit .
without having one for "hands on" evaluation i would not guess at which lead does what in the bundle .

figuring out which lead is which on the replacement deuterium lamp is fairly straight forward ... as long as the voltage and current requirements are close to the original lamp the unit was designed to work with .

post the model number of the coleman unit and lamp you have (as well as any other information/numbers that may be useful) .
i will try to find a schematic from my end ... maybe you can search and provide some pictures of what you have in front of you .
perhaps a couple of the other guys here would search as well .
production and model changes are not uncommon ... it is best to confirm exactly what is what with the unit you have .
letting the magic smoke out of the components is to be avoided .

i wonder if the tubes (not the lamp) are still good ?

uv response in animals ...
i know that many birds have a skewed "color" response in comparison to humans .
for some reason parrots come to mind right away .

sorting out electronic stuff is not unlike identifying diatoms .

[adkeric]

CWB - the tubed power supply is a Coleman Model 111-055. There are pictures of it, and a schematic of some of it are in the old post found here:

http://www.dutchforce.com/~eforum/index.ph...00&#entry263200

Those pictures and drawings are fairly complete and the pictures of the power supply are identical to what I have.

The old tubes seem to work - when powered on it does make a happy humming noise - I'm not sure though if everything should be powered at all times. I think the way these work (and I could be wrong) is that there is an ignition charge to start the arc (perhaps up to 30 sec. in some units). Then once the arc is started a different circuit would provide the maintenance power to maintain the arc. If that's true then I imagine that two of the "input" wires would complete the circuit for the ignition charge, and perhaps two would complete the circuit for power to everything and the maintenance charge. What I am saying here is that I imagine the 8-wire connector on the front of it went to a switch that controlled it. I likely need to recreate that switch. Those are my novice guesses.



More info than you ever wanted re: UV vision. Mammals have actually lost the ability to see color and UV via a mutation. Humans and primates did regain the ability to see color but not UV.
Most birds, reptiles, amphibians, some fish, many insects etc. retain the ability to see UV with a peak in one of their four visual pigments around 370nm (they are tetrachromatic). Interestingly, there is evidence that birds in the group that contains pigeons and some butterflies are likely pentachromatic.

In any case, to an ecologist this means we (humans) are blind to a portion of what is going on in the vision and perception of the environmnet in most vertebrrates (with respect to UV). This is important for understanding things like warning coloration of toxic animals (is it prominent in the UV?) , or to understand the foraging of birds (do they target food items that are reflective in the UV?) for example. Many berries that have a waxy coating are very reflective in the UV.

The list goes on and on but the point is - we are missing about 1/4th of what is going on with "color" in most animals. I am exploring how this oft overlooked trait may be important.

[CWB]

i'll do some digging and see what i can come up with .

yeah , there is a lot going on that we don't get information on .
butterflies, moths and their ilk look much different in the uv spectra .
pit vipers are on the other end of the scale (pun intended) .

[CWB]

i have done some checking ... no luck on finding a schematic for the unit , so far .
the partial schematic you referenced is (i believe) not even close to what is needed .

heh ... i did find a power supply unit for sale on ebay ... 65 bucks ... no lamp ...
but , it does show a cinch/jones connector on the end of the cable and mentions a perkins/elmer lamp .

what is the make and model of the lamp you have ?
i am going to hazard that there were a few different lamp configurations available that could be "swapped out" to provide different spectra and intensities .
the original lamp unit(s) that plugged onto the end may have had a resistor or two in it/them to set the current and voltage levels needed to run a specific model number of lamp .
not all of those lamps ran the same parameters .
i have seen this method used in other types of equipment .

this leads back to the importance of having both the manual and schematic .

if i had the unit and lamp in front of me it would be more conducive to figuring out what was what .