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.
FIGURE 19. This is a shot from
under the top panel showing
the GU10 LED light sockets in
the corners and how the wires
are run.
FIGURE 18. This
photo shows how
we added Molex
connectors to the
wires coming from
the fans to be able
to easily connect
and disconnect
them.