So far managed to avoid blowing up the house but...

[BobG1]

Hi,

Does anyone know how, or if, these illuminated letters can be rewired to have a single flex and plug so they can be plugged into a domestic socket?

At the moment they have twin flexes, each one containing red, brown and an uncased earth wire (though the earth is unused when the wires go into the small, visible junction part..).

Many thanks,

(click to enlarge images)

 

[RF Lighting]

By the look of them, there's no way they ever should / could be plugged straight into a domestic socket.

Where did you get them from?

Was there some sort of transformer with them?

 

[BobG1]

There was no transformer with them when i got them as they had already been taken down from their original site. But I guess they would have originally been in an industrial/shop setting with each letter linked to the same system - there are 5 letters.

In this letter the wiring splits into two to light each stem of the letter, which is why I suppose there is two sets of wires.

Would each letter then need a transformer to work domestically?

 

[RF Lighting]

You should be able to run them all off one single transformer.

What type of transformer remains to be seen just yet.

Can you remove one of the little bulbs from the fitting, and if you look really closely, there should be things like the voltage and the wattage of the bulb stamped into the metal end cap(s) of the bulb. Can you tell us what it says?

 

[SimonH2]

What you have there are low voltage* festoon lamps. There will have been a power supply/transformer of some sort powering them. The voltage and current/power ratings for the supply will be determined by the voltage and power rating of the lamps, and of course, the total count of lamps.
So, just supposing the lamps were 12V 5W. There are 9 of them on that letter, meaning the total power is 45W - or 3.75A at 12V. To feed this letter alone would require a power supply capable of delivering 12V at 3.75A or 45W.
You need to take some of the lamps out and look at their ratings. Check several as there's no guarantee that they are all the same.

The two cables are not there to feed each side, more likely this letter was in the middle and the supplies were daisy chained along the word. So power was fed in somewhere along the word, and the cable was looped along to each letter until it reached the end.
Voltage drop is important in these low voltage installations, and feeding the word from one end is the worst way to do it. But my guess is that it was fed that way


* Being pedantic, the technically correct term is Extra Low Voltage, while "mains" is Low Voltage

 

[BobG1]

Hi, thanks for that. The bulbs are 24v 10w.

I didn't want to relink all the letters together and light them; I wanted to see if each letter could be rewired so they could be lit individually, and hung on a wall individually.

It sounds as if that would be a difficult proposition then?!

 

[Aragorn84]

yes each letter can be powered individually

you'd need a power supply for each letter which will output 24v, and supply about 4 amps (perhaps more if other letters have more lamps)