Be careful with hot leads

Astrazoic · Post by **Astrazoic** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 4:13 pm

Be careful where hot leads touch. One of the leads to a CCFL used to light an engine for my 1/350 Refit touched that of an LED used in a strobe circuit. It didn't take much to fry the entire strobe circuit, and since the circuit board is buttoned up in the model, there is nothing I can do.

Needless to say, this pissed me off. I really wasn't aware of this potential mishap, so I provide an example here for others who may not be aware of how easy it is to ruin a piece of work in the blink of an eye...

tetsujin · Post by **tetsujin** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 5:02 pm

Dang, sorry to hear about it...

Yeah, short circuits break things. :) Anything touching anything that's not supposed to is a potential danger, though usually circuits are tolerant enough to deal with a certain level of mishap... The CCFL has a rather higher voltage, though, so it's not too surprising that it fried your strobe circuit - which, I'm guessing, is some kind of logic-level circuit...

Did the CCFL and its wiring survive? What kind of strobe circuit were you using? Where was it located?

Astrazoic · Post by **Astrazoic** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 6:30 pm

Nope - CCFLs are good. The circuit board is located in the primary hull, all buttoned up. The LEDs for the strobe work, but the circuit apparently doesn't. So, I routed fiber optics to light sources in the model so at least a steady light will be apparent at the strobe locations.

It sucks, because the strobes were set to flash just right and looked great. Oh well, lesson learned.

Madman Lighting · Post by **Madman Lighting** » Tue Dec 22, 2009 7:08 pm

Ouch. Man, sorry to hear.

My usual rule of thumb for any kind of electronics is to keep it unpowered (OFF) and even unplugged until I'm sure its ready to run or I'm doing a quick test.

If it makes you feel any better, my DS9 is missing all its orange docking lights for a similar reason. O well.

tetsujin · Post by **tetsujin** » Wed Dec 30, 2009 12:39 pm

What kind of blinker driver were you using? I'm trying to think how I would solve this problem, short of tearing the model apart...