Diode Lighting Of Scroll Saw Creations.

[Erewhon]

G'day All,
I have seen some wonderful scroll saw creations that have been turned into Night Lights and Wall Hangings and can not seem to find anything on the internet about how these creations are lit up. I take it that rather than use an ordinary house hold light fixture these scroll saw works of art must use things like Diodes that don't create a great amount of heat. While I have a very long way to go in creating such a creation I'd like to learn how these creations are lit up. Hopefully some of you may have created such a wall hanging or night light and would like to share with me what knowledge you have.

Hooroo
Erewhon.

[Jim-78028]

Just for semantics sake, diodes have many uses in electronics, a light emitting diode (LED) is a sub set of diodes.

Google for LED night lights and you will see various styles that you can incorporate into a project. 

LED's work on DC voltage, so any household LED light has to have a power supply that steps down and rectifies the ac supply. Building your own will be more expensive than adapting the project to accept a pre-made device like a night light

[Erewhon]

G'day Jim,
I'm not too bright when it comes to power that drives these diode lights as I don't fully understand the power systems. I know that the power we have in our home is 240 volt DC and I think these diodes run on what is call 12 volt AC like a cars power system.
How where I live out in the bush the wife and I have two pumps setup that pump water from our outside water tank into the house. These pumps are generally used as bilge pumps in caravans and boats. To run these pumps on 12 AC we had to buy a 15amp 13.8VDC Regulated Power Supply - I understand that this thing reduces the power from our 240 volt down to 12 volt so we can run these pumps.

Now these scroll saw creations I have been looking at must be using small diodes to light them up and I don't think that one would need to go out and buy a big Regulated Power Supply. I was thinking that I have some 12 volt battery powered radios in the house and in order to run them they come with a little box thing that plugs into the wall and then into the radio so it will work. So to my way of thinking these scroll saw creations have to be lit up with diodes and possibly have a little box affair like my 12 volt radio.

I could have me DC and AC all mixed up - but I'm just fascinated by these creations and how its all done. Like I say I got no idea about power other than what I've tried to explain above.

Hooroo
Erewhon.

 

[spirithorse]

Greetings,
I think you may be trying to think this through too thoroughly.
If I am imagining the type of projects that I think you are talking
about, a simple small strand of tiny Christmas lights is placed behind
the project and sometimes in a type of shadow box.
Some strands are battery operated such as this link.
http://www.walmart.com/c/kp/battery-operated-string-lights
Good luck and God Bless! Spirithorse

[Erewhon]

G'day Spirithorse;
Thanks so much for that link now I have some idea as to what could be used to light up these scroll saw creations. Like the idea of battery run lights and to be totally honest I never knew such coloured battery operated lights existed . Like I said, I had no idea as to what systems people used so just had to post and see if someone could tell me. How all I have to do is to see what is available down here in Australia. Again thanks for the link.

Erewhon.

[Jim-78028]

erewhon

The step down transformer you mentioned for the bilge pumps is the same thing I was talking about in my last sentence about stepping down ac to dc for the LED.

LED lights that come from the factory already assembled and ready to plug in, have that step down transformer built in, or it is a black box on the power cord in some cases.  The DC operating voltage that the LED needs is a function of it composition.  Some work on 12vdc, others on 5vdc, to the user it is immaterial if you can plug it in and it works.

The suggestion to use Christmas lights is a good one.  The only caveat I would propose is to insure that if one bulb goes bad, the whole string does not go out.  sometimes they do that for economy sake (takes less wiring) but sometimes is a load feature where you must have all lights burning or the string would burn up (wiring gets hotter and hotter).  As a result the string can not be modified or shortened.

[Erewhon]

Thanks Jim-78028,
I've learned much from these post and thanks again for what you have told me.
Not been good last few days here sorry for not getting back sooner.

Erewhon

[Igglepud]

I had the same question for backlighting some of my projects. Our tech guy at work said that the important thing is to make sure the LED has an appropriate resistor. You can solder these yourself or order them with resistors already attached. Then hook your wiring up to the resistor and plug it in.

[herrwood]

Here is a link to all maybe more then you want to know about the basics of LED's.
At the link just scroll down

    http://www.talkingelectronics.com/projects/30%20LED%20Projects/30%20LED%20Projects.pdf

[Erewhon]

Thanks Herrwood,
Totally amazing - is truly gunna be something to just to get a little knowledge from. 
Thanks so much for the link to the pdf file - from a simple question about Diodes is totally
amazing as to what its all about, I just didn't realise how far my original post would take me.
Again thanks for that link and when I get time and a clear head to have a good read I'll
see what I can learn.

Erewhon.

[herrwood]

Glad to help