Cold Cathode Questions

[Barakka]

Got a few questions before I install some

1) Anything to watch when choosing where and how to mount them ?
2) Can I re-wire one ? I have a Vantec fan and light controller with the inverter built in and two sockets for tubes. It came with two blues but I want to swap one for a black light tube I have, but the black light is hard wired into its inverter. Can I just splice, solder and shrink wrap the wires, or could there be issues with differing loads etc. ?

TIA

Barakka

[benr22_uk]

1) no not really, I have one at the top and one at the bottom in my case but experiment ... on on each side looks good to. Use the supplied sticky velco pads, or double sided tap.

2) if you use a blue cc with a black (uv) light at the same time it doesn't really work ... the black light kind of cancels out the other light ... to be honest I'd leave it with the invertor it came with ... if its hard wired, its hard wired for a reason.

[Allen]

AFAIK the wires used on cold cathode tubes are special wires and therefore can't be replaced. I'm not sure if there would be any point replacing a black one with a blue one though...

If you have a window, don't place the cathodes in view, place them either right above or below the edge of the window. That way they will light up the case and you'll be able to see in without getting blinded!

[Barakka]

Hmmm... it might help if I explain more what i've got planned for the case...

For the front end there will be (obviously) all the cables, 3xUV sensitive IDE cables, plus all the wiring which will be covered with stretchy UV braiding. So I wanted the black light tube accross the bottom of the case.

But the back end of the case will not have any UV sensitive stuff (or minimal) and no LED fans etc, so I was going to put the blue tube vertically on the back panel. This (I hoped) would provide some accent to that side of the case.

Now the fan controller can control up to 2 cathodes, and I liked the idea of being able to turn them both off when I like. As i'm not going to be using the second blue tube (it was actually broken in transit anyway) I thought of splicing the wires from the black tube onto the wires of the dud blue tube to get the connector. This way the wire used will be from/for cathode tubes so shouldn't be an issue, but the wire on the black tube looks thicker than the stuff on the blue tube.... ?