Maintaining Your Tanning Beds: Cleaning Tips

1. Every four to six weeks, you should open up the ballast tray.  This is where all of the electrical components are held.  Vacuum any dust or dirt that has accumulated. Dirt can sometimes cause electrical fires, so this is definitely a must.

2. The tanning lamps also accumulate dust and the dust clings to the lamp itself. This thin layer of dust will prevent some of the ultraviolet light being produced by the lamp from penetrating through, hindering the results of the tanning session. Keeping the lamps and reflectors under the lamps clean will give you the best tanning results.

3. Tanning Beds with Facial bulbs: When cleaning the tanning lamps, you also should clean the blue filter glass that covers up the facial bulb. If you wipe down the facial bulb as well, you need to be real careful not to touch it with your bare hands. The oils in your hand will cause the lamp to burn up when it is turned on again. If you accidentally touch the facial bulb, just wipe it down with an alcohol swab.

4. Starters: A starter is what ignites the tanning lamp. These starters should be replaced every other lamp change. If you have tanning beds in a tanning salon, you should be replacing these regularly. If you have a tanning bed in your home and haven’t changed lamps yet, you may want to replace these starters at the same time you replace the tanning lamps.

5. Acrylics: When cleaning your tanning lamps and you have these acrylic shields off, you should wipe them down on both sides. Just a little layer of dust will prevent some of the ultraviolet light from passing through, affecting the results of your tanning session.

Ordering Replacement Tanning Lamps

Tanning lamps come in different sizes and two different styles. Following are the most popular lamp sizes:
F59 – typically 80 watt lamps
F71 – typically 100 watt and 160 watt lamps
F72 – typically 100 watt lamps
F73 – typically 100 watt and 160 watt lamps

These lamp lengths are usually printed right on the lamp and looks something like this: “F71-T12-100W BP.”

Reflector type lamps will contain an “R” like the following:
“FR71-T12-100W.”

The two different types of lamp ends are Bi-Pin (marked as “BP” as shown in the first example) and RDC.

The Bi-Pin lamps have two pins on either side and are installed by sliding these pins into the lamp holders and then twisting the lamp once or twice.

RDC lamps have a black cap at the end. These lamps are installed by pushing the lamp into one “spring loaded” lamp holder and setting the other side right in. There is no twisting the lamps with RDC’s.

When replacing your tanning lamps, it is very important to know the size (F59,F71,F72,F73, etc) and the style (RDC or Bi-pin) of your lamp. If this information is not available either on the lamp itself or on the tanning bed (lamp information can usually be found on a sticker on the canopy of the bed), then you will need to have the make, model and year of the tanning bed when calling your distributor.

Buck Boosters: What Are They?

Buck Boosters are transformers that increase or decrease your incoming voltage. Most tanning beds require voltage to be 220 and 240 volts. Some actually require 220 Volts only, some require between 220 and 230 volts, etc.

If your incoming voltage into the building is 208 Volts and your tanning bed requires 220 Volts, then you would need a Buck Booster to “Boost” that voltage to the required voltage needed for that tanning bed.

Buck Boosters can either “Buck” or “Boost” voltage from your incoming voltage by 12, 24, 16, or 32 volts.

You can find Buck Boosters that are already pre-wired with cords where all you have to do is just plug in one side of the Buck Booster into the outlet your electrician provided and plug the other into the cord going to the tanning bed. Other Buck Booster come where your electrician would have to do the wiring, hard wiring, of the buck booster going to the tanning bed and into the wall.

If the voltage going to your tanning bed isn’t what was recommended by the manufacturer, then you may end up having problems such as tanning lamps not tanning as well as they should, tanning bed getting too hot because internal cooling fans aren’t running correctly, etc.

Always make sure that your electrician understands your tanning beds power requirements.

Identifying Tanning Bed Acrylics

There are four different types of acrylics: Curved, 2 Bend, Contoured and 4 Bend. When replacing your tanning acrylic you will need to know what type of acrylic it is and it’s measurements.

The best way to measure an acrylic is to take the acrylic completely out of the tanning bed and stand it up. Using a tape measure, measure the width from the backside of the acrylic and then measure the length. These measurements need to be exact. Next you need to make note of the location of any notches, holes or taping.

It is best to get these measurements even if you have the model and make of the tanning bed but not the year. A lot of tanning bed acrylics varied in size from year to year for the same make and model. Having these measurements

Once you have this information, you will also need to make note of the model, model and year of the tanning bed before calling your distributor to place your order.

Acrylic FAQ
A lot of people ask when acrylics should be replaced. You should replace an acrylic when it has about 2000-3000 hours on it. Even if it is not cracked or broken, you should still replace it. If you were to look very closely at it, you would realize that there are a lot of stress cracks once they get past 2000 hours. These stress cracks will absorb sweat, tanning lotion, dirt, etc and your acrylic will not transmit as much UV as before. Therefore, you will not get the best possible tan even if you have brand new tanning lamps in your tanning bed.