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Don't touch the glass portion of a halogen bulb.
For the most part, halogen bulbs operate in much the same way as a standard light bulb does. The biggest issue to deal with is to avoid touching the actual glass capsule portion of the bulb. Human hands leave oils on the glass, which heat up when the bulb is turned on. This heating causes the glass to become fragile and to break, thus ruining the bulb. Some halogen bulbs are constructed as a “bulb-within-a-bulb”, such as the A-line, tubular, midbreak, and BT15 models. You can touch the glass portion of these bulbs, because the actual light producing bulb is safely inside this thick outer shell.
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Be careful of the heat that halogen bulbs can release.
Halogen bulbs burn hotter than normal ones, so if you are using the maximum watt bulb for your fixture, and the fixture has a very close fabric shade, for instance, the extra heat may actually damage the fabric or melt plastic. Use caution when using a high wattage light bulb in these cases. In general, halogen bulbs are about 10% hotter than normal bulbs, which in some cases is just enough to cause damage.
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