I hope this is the right forum. Anyway, I have a bunch of adaptors that drop the voltage from 120 to anything from 1.5 to 12 volts AC. Can these be used for lighting safely? I am a little leary about cutting off the connector and separating the wires and running a bus wire that could be dangerous. Any experience out there? Thanks.
I have used a 12V power source like you are describing. For best results, use one that has at least 1 amp of resistance.
I am not sure about the 1.5 volt.
They are commonly refereed to as “wall warts” and guys use them extensively in model railroading for excatly the things you mentioned I would recommend you plug them in to a good UL approved power strip with a circuit breaker on it. This way any fears you have can be put to rest.
Yes, definitely use them for lighting. I would be cautious about using one with a 1.5 volt output for powering 1.5 volt micro lamps. The output under light load may be more than 1.5 volts and could burn out the lamps. Also I wouldn’t draw more than about 80% of their rated current capacity from them. Add up the current of the lamps you want to attach and keep it to no more than about 80% of the current printed on the adapter. As someone else pointed out, it’s a good idea to plug them into a power bar. They don’t have on/off switches. No problem with cutting off the connector and running the wires to multiple lights. Incandescent lights don’t care if they get AC or DC or the polarity of the DC so you don’t even need to worry about which wire is positive and which is negative. Just don’t parallel the outputs of two adapters to get more current. That would be dangerous and would damage the adapters.
One more item - most are protected against shorts with a non-replaceable fusible link inside. So if you accidently short the output when it’s plugged in, it will probably render the supply unusable. The good news is nothing will fry.
–Randy
I used top use wall warts to provide power for structures and such. Now I use an old AT type computer power supply and it pulls all the structure lights connected to it without a problem. By doing that I went from a bunch of wall warts to one power source. And it has a resettable internal circuit breaker that trips the instant there’s even a small short. I have a couple more in the closet as spares but so far the one I’ve been using for at least 10 years is doing fine.
Not all “wall-warts” are created equal. The kind you buy at Radio shack for general use may work just fine. Some are designed for a specific application and will only function at the rated values when that specific load is placed on them. Use a meter to verify the output voltage before blowing up your bulbs !
Mark.