Any Cold Cathode Kits Powered by AC Adapters?

A

aldamon

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My company needs to light up the water baths on 5 or 6 pieces of equipment at a future trade show. I thought cold cathode lighting would be sweet solution, especially if we go with UV reactive dye on a couple of the water baths. Our equipment does not have molex connectors, so are there any cold cathode kits out there that are powered by an AC adapter without modification? I'm thinking a dual inverter with two tubes and an AC power cable for each unit.
 
....I'll bet you could run 'em off "wall warts"; small DC supplies.

Good Luck - B.B.S.
 
Originally posted by xonik
Last time I checked, cold cathodes used high voltage AC, thus requiring an inverter board to change DC to AC. So you would need a step-up transformer or piezo. A quick Google search yielded one possible source:

http://www.ccfl-inverter.com/html_en/ccfl_inverter_dn25.htm
Click to expand...
Yes, but the CC kits I've seen come with the inverter....you just need to provide +12. Depending on the current requirements, you could run them from a wall wart very easily. For a static display, it's probably not a bad way to go, IMHO.....

B.B.S.
 
I've seen them go either way. I see bare tubes almost as often as tube/inverter kits. I prefer the more direct route, AC step-up. For one thing, the thread starter doesn't seem to have a readily available DC source around for his uses. And, of course, the engineer in me couldn't possibly recommend a superfluous AC-DC-AC conversion and the resultant power loss from the rectifier stage by going with the wall wart.
 
hrmm...would a regular blacklight work.

I used to have one years ago I got from spencers for like 20 bucks.

well I still do, but its broken.
 
man just buy a 12v DC adapter from ratshack and slice the end. Hell i have adapters sitting all over my office from old electronics.
 
Originally posted by Ruckus
man just buy a 12v DC adapter from ratshack and slice the end. Hell i have adapters sitting all over my office from old electronics.
Click to expand...

Thanks for the help everyone. Today, I'm going to pick up a kit at Target or CompUSA and play around. I remembered that we have a computer graveyard back in IT, so there could be six old computers with power supplies I could use to experiment or even at the show. If that fails, I can try the "wall wart" idea.
 
get an AT PSU, they work good cuz u dont need a mobo and switch to turn on, plus like 4 cathodes can go into it
 
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