My Sleigh

[Habbosrus]

Making a platform for it to sit on might not be very easy as I mount this on the roof of my house which is difficult in itself let alone trying to get a platform on the roof also, however I may be able to do something with that. Was going to make some presents to sit in the back, or a big santa sack, not sure how to make a sack though lol

Here's an idea for your Santa sack and presents. You can make the sack and presents in one piece. This is an idea I had that's just on the back burner until I'm back on my feet. I plan to make at least a couple of Santa sacks with presents protruding out the top. These are some presents I made earlier in the year that look like 3 presents side by side. I borrowed the idea from from Talk2coxie's presents and just adapted it. The presents look good and they're quite robust.
http://auschristmaslighting.com/forums/index.php/topic,7547.0.html

 

[Kitman]

Well I managed to run a test on my painted side and I must admit I don't mind the look of it to be honest, now to do some more painting in a different colour and see how it looks but so far so good.


See for yourself.

 

[Kitman]

Well I threw down some green Metalcast onto the Sleigh and took off a little of the tape where the swirl is and I think it's coming up pretty good, definitely adds some colour to an otherwise all white sleigh and makes it closer to what I actually ordered.


Now to mask up the rest of it and fully paint the whole thing some nice new shiny colours.

 

[Kitman]

Well now I have finished painting almost all of the Sleigh and went to fire it up to see how it all looks and wouldn't you know it's now dead, No lights on at all checked all connectors all seem fine and have power going to them but nothing totally dead what a sad state this is.


Not sure if this is normal but the power cord that connects to the sleigh has 240v dc coming out of it, that seems like a lot of volts to be powering up the LED's and would have to have some pretty good resistors to drop that down to a usable voltage for every LED.


Anyone have any idea what I can try and where I can start looking to find out what is wrong with it?

 

[Fing]

Hi Kitman,


sounds like you have an air gap in there some where. Just guessing, but I'd say your LEDs are connected in series, if one goes open they all go out. Much like the old xmas tree lights...


As you've been painting and such, look to see that you haven't damaged any of the wiring.. other wise you will have to break into the LED circuit and test until you find the culprit(s)


First give it a really good visual inspection, this might show up a broken wire or a burnt LED (perhaps)


Then check the plug


cheers
Fing

 

[i13]

Oh no!

This slay must be cursed. Considering that it was bought from overseas, it didn't need to pass safety standards so I suspect it just uses a bridge rectifier and possibly a capacitor to convert the 240V AC to a rough 240V DC which could well spike much higher than 240V at 100 times per second. The fact that it all went out at once supports this even further because if Fing is right and the LEDs are wired in series, they will share the dangerously high voltage and it will light up as you saw. It wouldn't need a big resistor to do that and a resistor wouldn't make it safer. Similarly, this is the same reason that no-one recommends buying eBay lights.

I wouldn't be repairing those lights because they're electrically unsafe; I'd get in there regardless of whether it is difficult and hack them up to work at a safer voltage or just replace them with coloured ones anyway because that's what you originally wanted.

Oh well; at least you haven't been electrocuted so it could have been much worse.

 

[David_AVD]

Sounds like you have lights that run directly from the mains. Not something I'd want to use in my display.

 

[Kitman]

Yes I am guessing that inside the tiny little hard plastic that is part of the mains power cable is a few bridge rectifiers to simply convert the Voltage from AC to DC to drive the lights. I am thinking possibly I got some paint into one of the Lights, maybe it wicked down the wire and got into the light and has caused a short or something else, looks like I wasted all that money on paint and all that time painting it only to destroy it and have to re wire anyway.


Also i13 this wasn't purchased from an unknown ebay seller it was actually purchased through Alibaba from a company much like Ray and Ben so would have thought they wouldn't sell stuff that is manufactured to this poor quality when they sell around the world like they do but I guess it's buyer beware any time you buy from overseas, don't really have time to re wire the whole thing before xmas this year so have to try fixing it and then re wire it next year.


I guess you live and learn I did contact the seller and they asked for my purchase order number so maybe they might be of some assistance with this? Fingers crossed.

 

[i13]

I was just giving the eBay light sets as an example of the same problem that's already mentioned on this forum; I had no idea who you bought it through.

The problem is that those LEDs won't have much current through them if you touch the bare wires when it is powered. This means they won't drop the voltage so you're exposing yourself to the full mains voltage if you touch the wires when the lights are plugged in. It would be dangerous regardless of whether the lights are working or not. For this reason it is unsafe to try to repair.

 

[David_AVD]

Ray Wu and plenty of other sellers on AliExpress (and Alibaba) sell those dodgy (and illegal over here) mains voltage lights.

 

[Kitman]

If it had have kept working I would have never realised that it was running on main's voltage and would have happily put it on my tile roof (Little bit of Insulation there) every year until I decided to change the lights over.


Unfortunately I need to try and get something working with this else No Sleigh means No reindeer means half of my display is not up, I would only have my Mega tree and Icicle lights and Merry Xmas sign, I might as well not have anything, The Sleigh and Reindeer is my signature items.