We’ve all seen them for sale in novelty shops and such, and they do look way cool. I just bought one on Monday, and got to wondering “Do these things burn out?”
Wiki and Google have been no help, and I’ve never known anyone who’s owned one before or I’d ask them.
Barring a leak (and it doesn’t take much of one) the plasma globe itself will probably outlast it’s power supply. The power supply operates at high voltage and is subject to the same sort of failures suffered by ignition coils,* florescent lamp ballasts, CRT circuits, and other high voltage circuits. These usually take the form of an insulation defect eventually causing a failure, rather than a wear-out process, so have a wide distribution and are difficult to assign a MTBF figure for.
*Hobbiest plans for “homemade” plasma globes often use an ignition coil in the power supply circuit.
Thanks, that’s answers my question almost entirely. I assumed they’d last a LONG time, but my GF told me to turn it off the other night so i wouldn’t burn out the “bulb”.
I knew that didn’t sound right, so I figured SDMB could answer it, so that’s make me 2x as right, lol. 