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Mounting Ballasts to wood
Jim,
Regarding your questions about mounting ballasts on wood:
Regardless of whether it is a fire hazard or not, if your ballasts are
running hot they will give you longer life if you provide some method to
dissipate the heat. What I did on my hood was to take a sheet of .062"
aluminum that was about 4 inches larger on all sides than the area I
needed to mount the ballasts. I cut the extra 4" every .5" or so, kind
of like this:
___________________
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_________| | | | | | | | |___________
|_________ ___________|
|_________ ___________|
|_________ ___________|
|_________ ___________|
|_________ ___________|
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|__|__|__|__|__|__|__|__
Then I bent each strip 90 degrees at its base, then grabbed the end with
pliers and twisted it about 90 degrees. I cut off some of the strips to
allow wires in and out, mounted the ballasts to the heatsink, and the
heatsink to back of the hood, and voila! Cool running ballasts, even
fairly cool with the old, non-electronic type.| You can improve this a
bit more by applying heatsink grease to the back of the ballasts. This
helps transfer heat to the sink.
Steve