Playing With Voltage 2: Electric Boogaloo

Zensouken

Hey SRK, I've been trying to figure out this wiring dilemma which has been sitting before me for way too long. I consider myself capable and experienced with electricity and wiring but I'm genuinely stumped on this one.  I have a pair of cold-cathode light bulbs I'm going to use in my custom arcade cabinet, they both have their own CCFL (cold-cathode fluorescent lamp) inverter. Now we're talking 12v current here (input listed on the CCFL inverter) but the output section makes no sense to me; it reads "500L~650L".  I honestly have no idea what the "L" stands for and I'm confused as to what to wire these babies up to? I'm thinking about this power supply but I'm not certain how to go about wiring it up since I would have 2 of the CCFL's and at least 2-4 fans going to the power supply. Otherwise I figured I would just wire the CCFL inverters to AC adapters but I'm not certain which amperage is correct considering that odd "L" designation.  Here is some info about this particular CCFL inverter. Pretty much all of the info I could find about it. :(

Any suggestions on how to get two of these CCFL inverters wired up (plus some insight on some good 12v fans) would be really appreciated. Trying to get this figured out has put a hamper upon my construction process.

Thanks, SRK. - Z 

Skrawney

Sorry if this is incorrect but this is the only thing that comes to mind when talking about light bulbs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminosity

Icy Black Deep

See if you can find a model number on the thing, but from your link (bottom of the page) the answer may be: "Lamp."

I'm not entirely sure what the rest of your question is; it sounds like the inverters came with the lamps, so you should just wire up the lamps to the outputs of the inverters and you're done.  Unless you're considering wiring something else up to the output of the inverter, which would not be a good plan.
If you're asking about physical wiring, just wire up the inverters in parallel with anything and everything else that requires 12 Volts.
If you're asking about the current draw of the lamps, then I don't really know but the 10 Amps the 12-volt supply you linked is a lot and I'd expect it to be plenty.

Zensouken

Skrawney said:

Sorry if this is incorrect but this is the only thing that comes to mind when talking about light bulbs, http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Luminosity

Icy Black Deep said:

See if you can find a model number on the thing, but from your link (bottom of the page) the answer may be: "Lamp."

I'm not entirely sure what the rest of your question is; it sounds like the inverters came with the lamps, so you should just wire up the lamps to the outputs of the inverters and you're done.  Unless you're considering wiring something else up to the output of the inverter, which would not be a good plan.
If you're asking about physical wiring, just wire up the inverters in parallel with anything and everything else that requires 12 Volts.
If you're asking about the current draw of the lamps, then I don't really know but the 10 Amps the 12-volt supply you linked is a lot and I'd expect it to be plenty.

According to both of your posts, I'm inclined to more readily believe that this "L" may stand for light, lumens, lamps, etc. I suppose it's a scale of how much brightness is outputted based on 12v input. And yes, I should have included a picture of the lamps, they have their own connectors to the other side to the inverters. I just needed to figure out wiring the input but this info you've provided makes sense.  I'll go on and purchase that power supply and try not to explode the place. 

Now to get some fans and get this ish off the ground.

Zensouken

Hmm, I guess I have another question regarding the power supply. This power supply I linked to earlier provides 12v at 10 Amps and then this one provides 12v at 2 Amps. I'm wondering if it's safer to get the one with less amps or does it really matter in this case?  Thanks again for your suggestions. 

Icy Black Deep

Zensouken said:

I'm wondering if it's safer to get the one with less amps or does it really matter in this case?

Well, that all depends.  Since you don't know the total current draw you'll need, it's safer to err on the side of caution and get a larger supply.
As far as physical safety, both supplies say they feature "overload protection" so they should (I'm assuming) shut off if you accidentally short-circuit something.  But there will be some delay there, so the bigger supply will run more current through whatever it is for that brief time and is therefore more likely to light it on fire.  It's really unlikely, but I have had a POS breadboard catch on fire using an unfused 20-Amp supply before.

Also, those are both linear power supplies; you may want to have a look at some switching power supplies.  They're generally lighter, cheaper, more efficient, and have a wider range of input voltages.  About the only downside is that they have a little more noise on the output, but I doubt that matters for your application.

Zensouken

Icy Black Deep said:

Zensouken said:

I'm wondering if it's safer to get the one with less amps or does it really matter in this case?

Well, that all depends.  Since you don't know the total current draw you'll need, it's safer to err on the side of caution and get a larger supply.
As far as physical safety, both supplies say they feature "overload protection" so they should (I'm assuming) shut off if you accidentally short-circuit something.  But there will be some delay there, so the bigger supply will run more current through whatever it is for that brief time and is therefore more likely to light it on fire.  It's really unlikely, but I have had a POS breadboard catch on fire using an unfused 20-Amp supply before.

Also, those are both linear power supplies; you may want to have a look at some switching power supplies.  They're generally lighter, cheaper, more efficient, and have a wider range of input voltages.  About the only downside is that they have a little more noise on the output, but I doubt that matters for your application.

I'm not gonna lie, I swear I thought this one was a switching power supply.  Could you suggest one? Either from that site or one that you may know of? 

Icy Black Deep

Zensouken said:

I'm not gonna lie, I swear I thought this one was a switching power supply.  Could you suggest one? Either from that site or one that you may know of? 

It doesn't specifically say, but the "Dual AC input 115vac/230vac, selectable by jumper" part leads me to believe it's linear.  Switching power supplies (at least modern ones) generally take a wide range of input voltages and don't need to be configured, but linear supplies need to physically reconfigure whether the two segments of the input side of the transformer are in parallel or series.

DigiKey is usually my go-to electronics parts site, but they have way too many options to make it easy to look for something like this.
Newark is making it easier, see how this looks to you (and change the search parameters as appropriate).  Mauser is also good.  Unless you're not in the US, then I don't know what the heck web site you'd use.

Zensouken

Let there be light! Only problem I really had during the wiring-up process was failing at securing the molex connectors but I'm pretty sure the gauge of wire was just too narrow to properly touch the contacts. Thanks for your help, I've got this sucker working and nothing exploded.