Nuts and Volts - September 2014

Securing Wiring, Installing the Top Panel, and Adding a Net

Before we put the top of the enclosure on and install the fans, you might want to tie up any loose cables and secure them. You will need to hook up the fans to the power supply at this point (Figure 18). We used some Molex connectors so we could easily detach the fans if needed. The fans usually will have one red and one black wire. You’ll need to hook one yellow 12V wire from the power supply to the red wire on the fan, and one black wire from the power supply to the black wire on the fan. Place the panel onto the side rails, making sure you have the fans pointed in the right direction. Next, you’ll want to mount the 10 mm LEDs into the panel. Ours fit snuggly, so we didn’t use any glue.

We need to run the GU10 lighting sockets through all four corners of the panel (Figure 19). Take the PVC Els and run the socket through them (Figure 20), then connect one of the GU10 lights to it. Once you connect the light, it will sit in the PVC El and keep the wire from dropping back through the panel (Figure 21). Doing this with four of them was a bit tricky, as we do not want to mount the PVC Els to the panel just yet.

So, now all the wiring should be done; the fans should be hooked up; the 10 mm LEDs should be hooked up; and the harnesses should all be attached. We wanted to test it to make sure everything was done correctly, but before you plug it in be sure you don’t have any wire near any of the fans. Once those start spinning, anything that gets sucked up can damage the fan.

We put a safety net on the bottom of our enclosure because we found out the hard way that a fan spinning at a zillion rotations a second can be stopped by a tiny piece of 5 mm Habotai silk (this is what we used as the cloth for the flame). We were testing the silk in the wind coming from the fans, and decided to stop and then start it flying again from a dead-stop position. We shut it off and the silk flame floated down to the top panel with just a bit of it hanging over the edge. We paused a few seconds and flipped the switch to turn it back on, but the silk got sucked up into the bottom of the enclosure. We heard the sound of plastic ricocheting and quickly shut it down. That silk flame had destroyed the fan; it took the blades right off of it while it was spinning.

So, with this in mind make sure to have something like plastic hardware cloth attached to the bottom (Figure 22). It won’t keep everything out, but it will stop Ruby’s Flame from getting up in the enclosure. We attached the cloth with screws and washers so if it was ever necessary to get inside to tweak something, it would be easy to do so. (Details on the material for the flame and making it are in the extended version of the article at the link.)

FINAL CHECKS

Make sure the switch is in the off position, and hook

78 September 2014

FIGURE 20. Inserting the GU10 socket through the PVC Els.

FIGURE 21. This shows how well the GU10 LED lights fit inside the PVC El. FIGURE 22. Buttoning it all up and installing the plastic hardware cloth.