Hi all (first post and all that!) I see that most places sell inverters which are impedance matched to the length/area of EL string / flatlight that they are intended to power. Seeing as I already have an inverter knocking about, how do I calculate what I need to do to it to power my EL string? The inverter is a Pacel P4SE12, if that makes any difference..... Any help gratefully received!
welcome to the boards and i guess iw would have to be modified but i dont know a lot about invertors just wanted to do the whole welcome bit b4 ne one else for once
Welcome to the boards, m8! The soda is in the fridge next to the server watercooler (Always wanted to say that ) I think that the neon string inverters run at 400 MHz, corrcect me if I'm wrong. I'm not sure about the voltage, however... Signing out...
The worst outcome here is that overdriving an EL element will shorten its life. EL will never burn out (unless you really exceed the dielectric strength of the phosphor), but it will go to half its original brightness over time, and running it brighter (driving more current into it) will speed that up some. I've heard of inverters that failed to start when there was too small a load attached, but inverter designs do differ, and this may not be a problem for you. Your inverter is rated to drive 100 cm^2 area, that's a fair size. I wouldn't be too comfortable using it to drive less than 40% of that or so. Again, it won't cause a catastrophic failure, it will just shorten the life of your lamp.
It's based on capacitance and resonance matching in the transformer's core. Try to get as close as possible to the area listed, but not over.
Aah, looks as though I can take the easy way out, then - about 50cm^2 of flatlight and a couple of metres of string! Many thanks to all.
