sitelights
01-29-2004, 12:47 AM
I mentioned this item in an earlier post on the Design forum titled "most unusual job". I have a small brass egg light on my desk in unused condition. I received this from Hadco through my distributor along with a sample BL5016 about two years ago. I did not purchase either fixture so I have no price frame of reference for the egg light or the BL5016 (compared with some other spotlights on the Product Review forum). I never used the BL5016 either.
The EL1-N is solid cast brass; the N stands for natural finish i.e. smooth without being polished or coated. The attached image is somewhat over-scaled for better detail; measured from the base of the NPT threads to the surface the lens it is slightly over 4" long; the egg alone is 2" in diameter, about the size of a "jumbo" chicken egg. To continue with the chicken and egg metaphor, the "wishbone" or "yolk"...sorry, "yoke" cleverly hides a conductor on each side. The arms of the yoke are not hollow; they are cast with grooves which are then covered with a "U" shaped flat stamped strip that snaps into the yoke to cover the wires. This exceeds "clever"; I call it "ingenious". The assembly consists of 4 casts: cap, body and both yokes; 7 machined parts and 2 stamped parts. The slotted screws that join the yoke to the body (via pressed-in threads) are counted as machined parts and appear to be "in-house" items while the two phillips head screws that hold the yoke arms to the NPT base fitting look "off-the-shelf". I count the need for more than one service tool as a design flaw; this item needs three tools: 1/8" slot, 3/8" slot and a #2 phillips. Why?
These are all brass components except the aluminum reflector and the stainless steel set screw. Including the lens, the gasket, the socket and its screws, the reflector, the lamp, 2 butt splces, 4 siliconed openings, 3' of 18/2 and 2 labels there are 30 parts and it takes 20 operations to fully assemble. This is a complex device. In comparison their BL616 spot (of which I have installed thousands) has 16 parts and takes and 8 operations.
The lens is mounted flush with the top surface of the cap and held in place with silicone seal. In a typical Hadco touch, the perimeter of the lens is frosted about 1/8" to hide the silicone seal. There are 4 nibs cast on the face of the cap; my guess is that this protects the lens (set slightly above the face) from being scratched if set down on a hard surface when relamping. The body has internal webs cast into the base onto which the socket is mounted: a heat sink. The cap's gasket-mating surface is machined and my sample had a small crack and a small void in this area. The gasket is foam similar to the seal on an outdoor j-box and is glued to the body.
The EL1-N can be lamped with a 20w T3 or MR-8 and so it is equiped with a reflector with a minutely pebbled reflective surface (needed with the T3 lamp). This reflector is a doll-size bucket with no bottom and 3 tabs at the top that slip under the gasket. When removed to expose the socket and mount (the socket is nothing special: the usual generic, not a purpose-built item) it was noted that in the absence of the reflector an MR-11 could fit and light up but the rim of the lamp came in contact with the foam gasket. Since any observant idiot could lamp this item with a 35w MR-8 or MR-11, I am going to test mine by lamping with a 20w MR-11 to see what happens.
In my post referred to above I briefly described the MR-8 lamp. The utility of an MR-8 is in its size. The relative bulk of the EL1-N cancels any interest I have in using it as a "small" fixture; the cavity size limits it to 20w which is fine with me. However, when you look at the three MR lamp sizes it is apparent that the MR-8 is simply a novelty. All the MR lamps wind up in fixtures of very slightly different dimensions and so the size of the MR-8 offers no useful advantage. In open lamp (cable hung) interior applications this thumb sized MR-8 20w or 35w lamp offers spectacular performance relative to its size. This cannot be claimed in landscape lighting applications where mere diminutive lamp size does not correlate with the size of the lampholder. This is a topic covered in the post "overlamping:underlamping" in the Lamps... forum.
The MR-8 lamp is yet another example of adaptive use in a different format: "It's there, so let's use it" to gain market share in the novelty arena. There is NO place for the MR-8 in the outdoor lighting field: it is expensive for its output, has no life cycle advantage, is limited to a narrow range of beam spreads and provides no opportunity to claim any special applications niche because of its size. Hadco should have first run this idea up the flagpole to see if I'd salute it.
I applaud Hadco's zeal and inventiveness but I am of the opinion that that these qualities were inappropriately applied. Hadco is a very conservative company and developing a product that shares no components or castings within a larger range of luminaires is unprecedented for them. They could have built a much-needed, small, robust 20w T3 lamped wide-beamed floodlight for less money and more market share.
This MR-8 lamp application for outdoor use is contrary to the utility i.e. small size of the lamp. Why bother?
The EL1-N is solid cast brass; the N stands for natural finish i.e. smooth without being polished or coated. The attached image is somewhat over-scaled for better detail; measured from the base of the NPT threads to the surface the lens it is slightly over 4" long; the egg alone is 2" in diameter, about the size of a "jumbo" chicken egg. To continue with the chicken and egg metaphor, the "wishbone" or "yolk"...sorry, "yoke" cleverly hides a conductor on each side. The arms of the yoke are not hollow; they are cast with grooves which are then covered with a "U" shaped flat stamped strip that snaps into the yoke to cover the wires. This exceeds "clever"; I call it "ingenious". The assembly consists of 4 casts: cap, body and both yokes; 7 machined parts and 2 stamped parts. The slotted screws that join the yoke to the body (via pressed-in threads) are counted as machined parts and appear to be "in-house" items while the two phillips head screws that hold the yoke arms to the NPT base fitting look "off-the-shelf". I count the need for more than one service tool as a design flaw; this item needs three tools: 1/8" slot, 3/8" slot and a #2 phillips. Why?
These are all brass components except the aluminum reflector and the stainless steel set screw. Including the lens, the gasket, the socket and its screws, the reflector, the lamp, 2 butt splces, 4 siliconed openings, 3' of 18/2 and 2 labels there are 30 parts and it takes 20 operations to fully assemble. This is a complex device. In comparison their BL616 spot (of which I have installed thousands) has 16 parts and takes and 8 operations.
The lens is mounted flush with the top surface of the cap and held in place with silicone seal. In a typical Hadco touch, the perimeter of the lens is frosted about 1/8" to hide the silicone seal. There are 4 nibs cast on the face of the cap; my guess is that this protects the lens (set slightly above the face) from being scratched if set down on a hard surface when relamping. The body has internal webs cast into the base onto which the socket is mounted: a heat sink. The cap's gasket-mating surface is machined and my sample had a small crack and a small void in this area. The gasket is foam similar to the seal on an outdoor j-box and is glued to the body.
The EL1-N can be lamped with a 20w T3 or MR-8 and so it is equiped with a reflector with a minutely pebbled reflective surface (needed with the T3 lamp). This reflector is a doll-size bucket with no bottom and 3 tabs at the top that slip under the gasket. When removed to expose the socket and mount (the socket is nothing special: the usual generic, not a purpose-built item) it was noted that in the absence of the reflector an MR-11 could fit and light up but the rim of the lamp came in contact with the foam gasket. Since any observant idiot could lamp this item with a 35w MR-8 or MR-11, I am going to test mine by lamping with a 20w MR-11 to see what happens.
In my post referred to above I briefly described the MR-8 lamp. The utility of an MR-8 is in its size. The relative bulk of the EL1-N cancels any interest I have in using it as a "small" fixture; the cavity size limits it to 20w which is fine with me. However, when you look at the three MR lamp sizes it is apparent that the MR-8 is simply a novelty. All the MR lamps wind up in fixtures of very slightly different dimensions and so the size of the MR-8 offers no useful advantage. In open lamp (cable hung) interior applications this thumb sized MR-8 20w or 35w lamp offers spectacular performance relative to its size. This cannot be claimed in landscape lighting applications where mere diminutive lamp size does not correlate with the size of the lampholder. This is a topic covered in the post "overlamping:underlamping" in the Lamps... forum.
The MR-8 lamp is yet another example of adaptive use in a different format: "It's there, so let's use it" to gain market share in the novelty arena. There is NO place for the MR-8 in the outdoor lighting field: it is expensive for its output, has no life cycle advantage, is limited to a narrow range of beam spreads and provides no opportunity to claim any special applications niche because of its size. Hadco should have first run this idea up the flagpole to see if I'd salute it.
I applaud Hadco's zeal and inventiveness but I am of the opinion that that these qualities were inappropriately applied. Hadco is a very conservative company and developing a product that shares no components or castings within a larger range of luminaires is unprecedented for them. They could have built a much-needed, small, robust 20w T3 lamped wide-beamed floodlight for less money and more market share.
This MR-8 lamp application for outdoor use is contrary to the utility i.e. small size of the lamp. Why bother?