What do you make of this?


Skipjacks

Skipjacks

Member
So I got these little lights from China. There are two tiny wires coming off the lamp post but they are clearly touching.

Are they shielded or something? Am I missing something?

The wires are hair thin. It came with resistors.

I dont want to wires these wrong, but I am confused at how two bare looking wires can touch like this.
 

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That's the same principle of the motor winding in the loco motor. They have a varnish type coating to insulate the wire so it can be wound tight on the armatures of the motor. If you need to solder the wires, you need to scrape the vanish off with a sharp knife.
 
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It's also the type of wire used for winding coils, armatures and field windings in electric motors. MRC use it on the ditch light LED's that are part of their drop-in sound decoder for Atlas's NRE Genset.

The coating is very thin, so handle with care.
 
Thank you all for your help on this! I have 10 of these lights. I didnt want to ruin 4 of them figuring out how to wire them
 
unkaboose said:
i would recommend putting heat shrink on the remaining wire to insulate it from wear and rubbing
Click to expand...

Another brilliant idea!

Can I get heat shrink that small at home depot, do you think? Or am I going to have to go to a specialty electrical store?
 
If it's anything like here, then go straight to the specialty store (but keep your fingers crossed there too)
 
I've used miles of that wire, and that coating is pretty tough. I've pulled it through many small holes drilled through brass and have never had anything short out from scraping off the coating.

The simplest way to remove the coating is to first stick the tip of the wire into some solder flux. Then apply a large blob of solder onto the tip of your iron and feed the end of the wire through the blob of molten solder. It will burn off the coating and tin the wire at the same time.

Easy Peasy ....

Mark.
 
Toot had it right! For the smaller, (smallest), shrink tubing it will be best that you go to a specialty electronics store. RS has gotten to the point that when you go into it for something, unless it has to do with cell-phones, they never have it. Some LHS sell a pack of various sizes of the tubing, but there's not enough of the smallest tubing to do the number of light sets you have. IMHO, RS seems to be on the brink of bankruptcy and I'll be very surprised if they're still around in a year or two.
 
The smallest heat shrink tubing I've ever found has an inside diameter of 0.046" and shrinks to 0.023". Most enamelled wire is anywhere from 32 to 38 gauge. 36 gauge wire is 0.005" in diameter. Even the smallest shrink tubing (if you can find it) will still be twice as big shrunk than the two wires together.

If you are really that concerned with damaging them (no need really) then coat them with some Plasti-Dip or silicone.

I use that enamelled wire for wiring LEDs inside of engines that have the shells removed numerous times without failure. That wire is a lot tougher than you give it credit for ....

Mark.
 
The insulation on magnet wire is surprisingly tough. I've used it to wind my own miniature brushless motors for lightweight R/C planes.

outrunner_with_labels.jpg


- Jeff
 
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