Star Ceiling Vexation

A

Allan

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Last night I finally completed the fibre optic star ceiling for my daughter's bedroom. I pushed firbe optic strands through suspended ceiling tiles and gathered them at a central location to house a light source. Then I needed to fab said light source. I found a 12V gear reduced motor at Princess Auto and made up a sheetmetal "box" to house the motor, lights, plexi disc and electrical cord connectors to hold the fibres. After much cogitating and avoiding snapping too many strands I finally got it working like a charm. There was great rejoicing.

Today my daughter came to see it and when I went to show it off the lights were already on but they were not changing colour. ARRGGHH! The light switch had been left on all day and the motor died. ARRGGHH! It was a major pain to route the box around the strands and the strands around the box. Now the (bad word) motor is siezed. It will be a supreme pain to repair it. Moving the strands around is sure to break more of them. She still seemed happy with the result so I may just button it up and call it done. This has been vexing my spirit for about a year now. Did I mention, ARRGGHHH!? The vexation continues because it will forever bug me if doesn't work right.

Al
 
It seems a lot better than just sticking plastic glow stars to the ceiling. Most stars aren't noticeably colored anyway. Don't sweat it if she's happy. Motor would likely have been left on all night and died anyway.
 
Hi, George.
I was going to just leave them white but the my daughter wanted them to change colour. But I wet to show it to a friend yesterday and turned the colour wheel a bit to show him the colour change and low and behold it started up again. I wonder if the cheap toy train transformer might have overloaded itself form the 3oz-in it was turning? At any rate, she's happy so I will just button it up and be done. My plan was to exchange the light switch for a timer so it will only stay on for 30 min or so and then she doesn't have to get out of bed to turn it off.
Al
 
Allan said:
Hi, George.
I was going to just leave them white but the my daughter wanted them to change colour. But I wet to show it to a friend yesterday and turned the colour wheel a bit to show him the colour change and low and behold it started up again. I wonder if the cheap toy train transformer might have overloaded itself form the 3oz-in it was turning? At any rate, she's happy so I will just button it up and be done. My plan was to exchange the light switch for a timer so it will only stay on for 30 min or so and then she doesn't have to get out of bed to turn it off.
Al
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Alan,

I used to design toy train transformers for one of the major manufacturers. The low-end units use an adjustable series power resistor to control speed. They generally use a thermal circuit breaker that detects both heat and current. The worst case scenario is leaving the power setting somewhere around 50% to 75% of full; this creates a lot of internal heat and can trip this breaker even though the current is way below maximum. Most of the breakers are automatic reset types, so it will turn itself back on when it cools down. Bottom line is you'd be better off with a fixed-voltage power supply of the correct voltage/current rating, and I'll bet your motor will run just great! You're a great dad (and granddad, I gather) to put all this effort in to make the kids happy!
 
A more permanent solution would be to do away with the mechanical parts and use RGB LED's to power it. Low power consumption and long life, totally silent.
 
Problem is that I am a Latter Day Luddite and don't care for electronics. They are a pain in my humble opinion. Finding components is difficult and seems to get more so with time. Nobody makes nuthin' anymore. Even Rado Shack or its successor has nothing. Used to be able to get lots of parts from them. Even radio tubes until I was bout 14 or so. I also have no knowledge of designing the circuits and making boards etc. If you have a ready made circuit that uses comon components, I'll give it a look. Until then it looks not bad. I'll get into the city and snag another drive if they still have them. Thanks for the ideas, though.

Clevinski, I am running it very slow so that the clour change is slow. It is basically as slow as it will go. Which isn't saying much with these lousy toy transformers. This one is a plastic case Lionel. Strangely it looks the cheapest but ran the slowest. No wonder so many kids got bored with model railroading: poor transformers and brass rail and one truck drive and one truck pick up.

Al
 
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