Starter for 40 Watt Fluorescent Tube Light

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Fluorescent starters or glow starters are used to help fluorescent tubes and lamps ignite in the initial starting stage of their operation.

Simply put, fluorescent starters are a timed switch. The switch opens and closes until the fluorescent tube ‘strikes’ and lights-up. If the fluorescent tube does not light, the switch repeats it’s open/close cycle and the fluorescent tubes attempts to ignite again.

Read on if you would like to know more about this process…

When power is first applied to a fluorescent fitting, the current creates two electrodes inside the fluorescent starter to heat and glow. This causes one of the electrodes in the fluorescent starter to bend towards and make contact with the other electrode. This closes the switch and the current now passes through the fluorescent starter and on to the rest of the fitting. This means that the circuit across the fluorescent tube and the ballast in the fitting will effectively be switched “in series” to the supply voltage.

The current that is now flowing into the fluorescent tube causes filaments at each end of the fluorescent tube to heat up and begin to emit electrons into the gas that exists inside the fluorescent tube by a process known as thermionic emission.

Inside the fluorescent starter, the touching electrodes short out the voltage sustaining them and they begin to cool down and bend away from each other. This then opens the switch within a second or two.

The current through the filaments in the fluorescent tube and the ballast is then interrupted, and with the circuit no longer in series, the full voltage is applied to the fluorescent tube filaments and this generates an inductive kick which provides the high voltage required to start the fluorescent tube.

If the filaments were not hot enough during the initial cycle, then the fluorescent tube does not light, and the cycle repeats with the starter heating up and closing the circuit again.

Several cycles are usually needed to ignite the fluorescent tube and this causes flickering and clicking during the starting stage.

Once the fluorescent tube strikes, the starter switch does not close again because the voltage across the lit fluorescent tube is insufficient to re-start the heating up process of the electrodes in the fluorescent starter.