Why do some lamps and other fixtures require two turns to turn on and off?
In: 1260
They’re 3-way switches, but you apparently did not put a 3-way bulb in the lamp… using a 3-way bulb would allow the lamp to have 3 brightness settings. If you use a standard bulb, it’s two turns on, two turns off instead of low, medium, high, off.
Because the lamp was designed with multi setting lights in mind. If you have a light that can be dim, then you’d use the first turn to turn it on, and only a second if you want full brightness. But for lights that don’t support it, the first setting isn’t enough power to turn it on.
These are three-way dimmable light fixtures. Three way bulbs work by having multiple points of contact, each lighting up a separate filament inside the bulb. This allows you to get three levels of brightness out of one bulb.
https://images.app.goo.gl/4LSTMz8izJcs2z147
What’s happening is that people are installing regular bulbs into fixtures designed for three-way bulbs. This means when you flip the switch once, it tries to turn on one of the two filaments in the bulb, which the bulb doesn’t have, so nothing happens. On the second switch, what should be the second filament gets powered, but on this bulb it’s just the only filament, so the light turns on. A third switch should power both filaments at the same time, for full brightness, but on single filament bulbs there won’t be a difference.
The practical effect is that the bulb is dark, dark, light, light. If you put in a three-way bulb as the fixture was designed, you would get dark, dim, light, bright.
Seeing alot about 3 way bulbs but some basic lamps do these to preload the switch…
Switching stuff on and off can create very small arcs when you do. This can create a layer on the switch contacts making it harder for the switch to work correctly or can just damage the contacts all together.. so most modern switches are designed to do the act as quickly as possible to have the shortest arcs. This gives you better life span on the switch.. what you could be experiencing is a switch loading to activate very quickly..
Technology connections did a video on switches and if remember correctly he talked about the kind of switches i believe you are talking about
turns??? never seen a lamp have a switch you turn, is this a US thing?
What is this weird rotary switch technology you speak about? Never heard of these in EU, we have dimmable bulbs that have like hundreds of light levels
could be the wrong bulb, or intentional switch design.
the mechanical/physical contacts need a safe open position(enough space to not allow arcs(typically up to 600v) for safety reasons. and/or
if a three or 4 way design is re-used as a toggle the unused states can be used as arc free zones.
Because 3-clicks would just be silly now wouldn’t it?
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