goose neck lights

[Mecrr22]

I am adding some goose neck lights to some structures.  These are the one with nano LEDs in HO scale that have the tiny tiny magnet wire attached .  Was looking for any tips on the best way to attach them to the bus power in the building that powers the other LED*s,  that wispy magnet wire is making me nuts  thanks

[ReadingBob]

    

Working with that wire drives me nuts too.  Whenever possible I try to run my bus 'wires' using copper tape and then solder the magnet wire to the copper tape.  That's what I did here for on a build of Bar Mills Sokol's.



Relatively speaking, however, that structure had a nice roomy interior to work with.  I ran the tape around the inside of the walls.  The three lights over the Sokol's sign are goosenecks with magnet wire soldered in series with one another and then to the bus.
 


The Bar Mills Dock House at Cundy Harbor wasn't quite as roomy inside so I made card, with interior light that had the copper tape on the top that I could insert in the building.  I soldered the leads for the goose neck the tape, mounted the card in place and shoved all the excess magnet wire underneath the (removable) roof when I put it in place.



I make my leads six inches long with may be a little too long but better to have them too long than too short.   

[Mecrr22]

thanks Bob will have to give the copper tape a try

[oldiron]

The heat from soldering doesn't make the glue let go? There do you get this tape? Bob

[ReadingBob]

I purchased the copper tape from Microlumina.  My experience with it, so far, is that the heat doesn't seem to affect how it sticks to the board (my boards are photo mounting boards from an art supply store) but one thing I have to be careful of is any tension that the wires I'm soldering to it might place on it.  The heavier the wire the more likely it is put tension on the tape and pull it free.  The magnet wire is no problem in that regard.     For the heavier wire, like the wire leading into the structure, I found that if I wrap the tape around the end of the board, drill a hole thru the board and then feed the wire thru from the back side and solder it on the front that seems to solve the problem.  Just soldering it to the surface will risk having it pull the tape free unless the wire is secured in some other fashion so it doesn't put tension on the tape.

One thing to be careful of with the copper tape - there's a LOT of it neatly wrapped on the spool.  It can turn into a tangled mess in a hurry if you're not careful.     I haven't done it (yet) but I've read other reviews of the tape that mention this.  I try to keep mine flat on the workbench and use blue painters tape to hold down the loose end.

This one is an example of where most of the wires come up thru the bottom of the card and are soldered to the top.



On this the picture below you can see the spool of tape at the bottom of the picture laying flat on my workbench.  This also shows that a little piece of electrical tape can be used as insulation to allow the tape to cross over itself without shorting out the works.



I did a separate thread on how I lit up Sokol's.  The copper tape was a life saver there.  I have 40 LED's in that structure and bunch of current limiters.  Without the tape it would have be a birds nest of wire.   

Hope this is helpful!

   

[engine909]

Well, I am impressed. Lighting and LP make a built come alive.
ed

[Slim Jerkins]

Hey Bob,


Nice work and illustration. As you can see I'm in catch-up mode.


One thing about the black board is that it's pretty soft stuff. It's kind of fuzzier than the white board so the tape doesn't grab as well as it does on the white board.


Back to catching up...


-slim