I really screwed up bad.

Jeff Millard

Jeff Millard

New member
I made 7 Pixel props from 3" PVC. They're about 3' long and have a candy canes design painted on them. I wrapped 39 node ribbons around them and put a 6" ball on the top with 3 nodes inside to light them. I used a dense PVC foam pad to make three inserts that grip a 1" PVC pipe for a stand. I ran wire to the top because the ribbon was 5v and the nodes in the Ball are 12V. There's a buck step in the bottom. A single 4 wire waterproof connector gets 12V in and data in/out. After building and wiring them up, I tested them and they all worked. So I heated up the hot glue gun, to seal up the wiring and make it weatherproof. After some other builds, I took it all outside to get a full test. The very first one I hooked up wouldn't pass data to the nodes in the ball. (even though it did when it was connected to the controller with a short connector) All the rest worked fine. I connected a pigtail to the connector in the top, and all of them have 12V there all the way down the 35' cable. This one pole has 10.3V. If I don't connect it close to the controller it won't even light all the nodes in the ribbon.

So I decided to try and rip all the wiring out and start from scratch. But that stuff is hard as a rock. I dug at it fur a bit with a really sharp curved chisel. Then I had a great idea. Heat it up with a heat shrink gun on low........... Now the pipe is completely deformed. It was made from the thin wall PVC so it just collapsed. It didn't take very much heat at all.

I have no idea what I did wrong, but something is shorted. I used decent heat shrink on all the wiring then sealed it all in the glue. I must have something crossed. Really wish I had done the full test before I tried to seal them. I keep telling myself the hot glue melted some wire insulation and shorted something, but who knows. I just hope I can find the same color paint to make the replacement.

So be careful if you get the hot gun near thin wall. It turns to jelly in no time at all.

Jeff
 
I know that I’ve used hot glue before and it melted the coating on wire and wires ended up Touching and shorting so maybe ? Just guessing but I was using industrial glue gun on high setting .


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wilmar said:
I know that I’ve used hot glue before and it melted the coating on wire and wires ended up Touching and shorting so maybe ?
Click to expand...

Yep, I'm guessing that's a quite probably. As I've been gouging away, I see I've bared some wire in a couple places. When I was doing this, I tried to lay the wires flat so they wouldn't get snagged in the future. I probably added some hot glue to a place where two wires crossed, and pressing on them to hold them flat caused the wire to melt through the insulation. Live and learn.

Found a spare piece of pipe. Just have to paint it to get back on track. The others are all working good (I typed that last sentence while violently knocking on wood... with my forehead)

Yep Martin. This is a craft gun from Michaels or AC Moore.

Jeff
 
Jeff Millard said:
I made 7 Pixel props from 3" PVC. They're about 3' long and have a candy canes design painted on them. I wrapped 39 node ribbons around them and put a 6" ball on the top with 3 nodes inside to light them. I used a dense PVC foam pad to make three inserts that grip a 1" PVC pipe for a stand. I ran wire to the top because the ribbon was 5v and the nodes in the Ball are 12V. There's a buck step in the bottom. A single 4 wire waterproof connector gets 12V in and data in/out. After building and wiring them up, I tested them and they all worked. So I heated up the hot glue gun, to seal up the wiring and make it weatherproof. After some other builds, I took it all outside to get a full test. The very first one I hooked up wouldn't pass data to the nodes in the ball. (even though it did when it was connected to the controller with a short connector) All the rest worked fine. I connected a pigtail to the connector in the top, and all of them have 12V there all the way down the 35' cable. This one pole has 10.3V. If I don't connect it close to the controller it won't even light all the nodes in the ribbon.

So I decided to try and rip all the wiring out and start from scratch. But that stuff is hard as a rock. I dug at it fur a bit with a really sharp curved chisel. Then I had a great idea. Heat it up with a heat shrink gun on low........... Now the pipe is completely deformed. It was made from the thin wall PVC so it just collapsed. It didn't take very much heat at all.

I have no idea what I did wrong, but something is shorted. I used decent heat shrink on all the wiring then sealed it all in the glue. I must have something crossed. Really wish I had done the full test before I tried to seal them. I keep telling myself the hot glue melted some wire insulation and shorted something, but who knows. I just hope I can find the same color paint to make the replacement.

So be careful if you get the hot gun near thin wall. It turns to jelly in no time at all.

Jeff
Click to expand...

Got any pics of these props curious to see one ?


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Those do look pretty nice.

Please let us know your experiences using strip on them. I could guess they may not be a problem since they are "anchored" to the PVC, but then again...
 
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