Most tanning bed manufactures are very strict when it comes to the voltage they are required to run on, Tan America's beds for the most part have 220 volt VHO ballast for the linear lamps, and lamp life is very critical with customers as voltage can shorten the lamp life or change output, which this can be very dangerous and can cause people to be burned or not receive a good tan, its not like our lamps we use as the lamps don't fail to light but the UV output decays very fast when the ballast is operated at the wrong voltage, while these commercial beds do come with a multi voltage tap system in many of them that have a transformer built in, but some don't, so I try to tell my customers it is wise to make sure you order the correct voltage beds for the power system you have as for me to address the system with a buck boost will be much more expensive after the fact.
I believe many manufactures are moving to a special electronic ballast ballast system that will automatically adjust the input voltage to maintain a constant output over a large range of voltages so the lamp output will not will not change and the beds can be operated from 208 thru 277 with problems, but since I have not wired any in a while not sure they made this change, with the dangers in mind I think UL should require this as part of its listing for tanning beds?
I had one salon that not only had a 800 amp 120/240 volt single phase service but also had three 120/208 services in some areas (strip mall where he owned 4 units)
After messing up twice because he could not remember what he had in which area, he now calls me before he orders a bed, of course this only worked until get got a brain storm to move beds around and tried to move a 100 amp 3-phase stand up bed into an area with only 120/240 single phase, and a few other moves he tried, this stand up bed (Matrix's) was a 240 volt 3-phase bed and required three 4kw buck boost 16/32 volt to boost the 208 up to 240 so we had to run a 125 amp feeder all the way to this bed using 1/0 copper to keep the VD down to 2%, left the BB transformers at the panel where they we mounted them the first time.
I got so many call back on tanning beds I learned to not like wiring them, even though most of the calls were billable but the owners would argue every time as the manufactures would always try to place the blame on us for lamp failure or other failures such as the cheap molex plugs used in these bed, or the IEC contactors and many other wiring problems with them.
It got so bad that I had to put a to the point disclaimer in my contract as to what my services covered including that I would not be responsible to variances in the utility supplied voltage if it should change that would cause any abnormal behavior in the equipment I was wiring, also I added that any changes required to facilitate any beds ordered for the wrong voltage would be an extra to be billed on the time and material bases.
Just a heads up for anyone who gets into wiring tanning salons
