DIY Cold Cathode Lamp

Step 8 And we're done

Now that we're this far it's just about done actually. Plug your cathode into the inverter and screw the top portion of the lap into the base. Plug in your PSU and watch it light up.

The light isn't bright enough to function as a normal lamp but it's pretty perfect as a bedside lamp or for decoration. I think it's a pretty cool use of old computer parts. Lol the PSU I used is a 120w PSU from an ancient eMachine computer, so don't be afraid to tear apart some ancient computers for this mod.

Now I admit I'm a bit tired so I feel like I probably missed some spots of this but I know I wrote enough for you to figure out the parts I missed but if you guys have any questions just let me know, I'd love a good discussion.

Comments

[digitizelife]

Oh man... this just gave me a great idea! Change the cathode to a UV cathode, swap out the CD's for hard drive platters, wire them up to a transformer, and you have yourself a DIY bug zapper! For the circuit, every other HD platter should be + and - so if something comes between any two plates, the circuit can arc through the object to complete the circuit. Two sets of coils, one heavy gauge surrounding a light gauge, with an AC pulse on the large coil, should induce a very high amp pulse into the smaller coil which is wired to the platters. If the platters come close enough, or something is placed in between them, an arc will occur. Someone more qualified with electronics could verifiy this and/or suggest an alternative

[Xellers]

Unfortunately that wont work for a few reasons: 1) UV light doesn't attract the types of bugs you want to zap (a mosquito will fly right by UV light without landing) 2) Bug zappers have two grids and the bug comes between them and completes the circuit. If you were to make each of the platters charged positively or negatively, then you would need some very high voltage. Unfortunately, you would have to worry about corona leakage, and the wires leading to each platter would have to have about 2 inches of insulation on them because high voltage jumps right through normal insulated wire. 3) Other than that (solvable problems), it would cost less to go out and buy a conventional bug zapper than to make one from this lamp.

[iBurn]

Sombody better post an instructable on that...

[hailtothkngbby]

Awesome Instructable! Great idea!