Olympus BH-2 - Wrong bulbs?

[SonoranDesertRat]

My two BH-2 scopes arrived yesterday and I played with them a little bit in the evening. One thing I noticed after maybe an hour or so is that the scope base was getting quite hot. I decided to pull the bulb housing and noticed that the bulbs on both scopes were stamped 6v 30w.

I'm pretty sure these scopes are supposed to have 20 watt bulbs not 30 right?

I assume I need to swap these out for the correct wattage? Out of curiosity what would the negative implications be of running the 30w versions? Is the heat from the base attributable to this?

Also worth noting that the scope with the single binocular head is blindingly bright at full brightness but the one with the dual viewing head attachment was tolerable. I'm guessing this is because the same amount of light gets split more ways with the dual viewing head so overall lighting power per eyepiece is diminished?

[josmann]

I also recently picked up two BH2s and the bases of both get quite warm - especially at full brightness. Bulb is also blindingly bright through the binocs. Dual viewing will cut the brightness in half so your guess is right.

I don't know enough about the drive electronics to say whether or not a 30W rated bulb is detrimental to run, but it's probably not a bad idea to run what's specified. Both of mine are 20W.

[deBult]

20 watt specified, 30 watt at full power is over-stressing the electronics.

Yes, using the bino divides the light energy over 2 “outlets” (eyepieces), plus some extra loss due to the reflective prisms in the head.

[Hobbyst46]

I have personally witnessed that a 50W bulb, instead of the original 20W, deformed and melted plastic parts in the base of my stereo microscope within an hour.

[SonoranDesertRat]

Yikes! I'm definitely going to get some of the correct bulbs