pigtail wire

topic posted Tue, May 22, 2007 - 5:14 PM by  seiwu
Working on a project that needs to be done by Thursday (day after tommorow) and I'm short one pigtail wire (plug n play connector - wire side)! There isn't time for coolneon to ship me one before then so I wonder if this is the sort of thing I can find in a radio shack or other electronics store. If so would they know it by the name "pigtail wire" or does it have another more common name?
Thanks for any ideas!
posted by:
seiwu
California
  • Re: pigtail wire

    Tue, May 22, 2007 - 7:06 PM
    oooh....hmmn....I've never seen that connector anywhere else, now...I know it's not an entirely custom piece, but i've also not seen it in an electronics store either. I suppose you could call Cool Neon and ask em where you might find one, but I have a suspicion that even if they give you the part number or something, you're going to have a hard time finding it. If anything, perhaps taking a sample along to the electronics store might do it (I'm nearly positive radio shack wouldn't have it though) if they could identify it.

    Saving all that, your best bet....would probably be to find a place that you can just hardwire the cool neon directly to the connector. So, take the wire from the driver, cut the connector from the driver make sure you have plenty of wire left on the driver to make a solder joint, though if you want to try to reuse the connector, you'll want to leave some wire on that as well, but right now, the more critical thing would be the wire on the driver itself. Then, just solder the cool neon to that loose wire as you would have done to the connector.

    or....if you have other projects, you might consider cannibalizing a connector off of one of those, OR if you know any other artists who work with Cool Neon near you, you could try borrowing a connector from them...they might just have one lying around =)

    good luck!!

    dM
    • Re: pigtail wire

      Tue, May 22, 2007 - 7:56 PM
      Yeah, I have looked for that connector elsewhere (Digi-Key, Mouser, etc) and have never been able to find it. I read somewhere that this is a discontinued Molex part. That's about all I know. Sorry, ain't much, I know. Good luck on your project.
      • Re: pigtail wire

        Tue, May 22, 2007 - 8:48 PM
        hmmm....you might be right.....for some reason "Molex" rings a bell....

        dunno about the discontinued bit though.....

        if you're willing to pay $$$ you could also ask them to overnight you some....yeah I know.....$25 shipping for a .50 part....
    • Re: pigtail wire

      Tue, May 22, 2007 - 11:17 PM
      Thanks for the replies. I'm actually using a "Y" connector so I can feed two colours of el into the one driver. I had one pigtail so my pink is all set up. So if I removed the white plastic socket from one side of the "Y" I could solder my green el in there? I assume there will be two wires in there so one connects to the angle hairs on copper and the other to the once phospher covered wire - am I right?
      I'm a newbie at this but I got my one light going already and have confidence I could pull this off. However I like your next option too - asking other folks who work with coolneon. Hoping this works out so I don't have to decapitate part of my "Y"!

      Thanks again y'all and I suppose for the record, if anybody reading this lives near Grass Valley and has a spare pigtail holler at me.
      • This post was deleted by daMongolian / Greg
      • Re: pigtail wire

        Wed, May 23, 2007 - 1:42 AM
        yeah.....you can certainly cut off one driver side connecter from the "Y" and then solder your cool neon directly to that (do just the same as you would have done to solder it to the wireside connector)

        p.s. the deleted post was my own.... embarrassing typo...moderators prerogative ;+)
        • Re: pigtail wire

          Wed, May 23, 2007 - 9:30 AM
          I'm pretty sure i have an extra or two i can bring to bobolink for ya. Are you going to have soldering stuff there (or are you even going to solder it there)?
          • Re: pigtail wire

            Wed, May 23, 2007 - 10:09 AM
            Yep - I can bring my soldering gun to bobo - I assume I'll be able to find an outlet there somewhere. That'd be great if you could bring one Snowlover. In case it's not obvious I'm looking for the pigtail that solders to the coolneon wire itself - not the one you solder to the driver.
            Thanks man. YAY!
            • Re: pigtail wire

              Wed, May 23, 2007 - 10:24 AM
              ok i'll bring one if i have one at home (pretty sure i do), we'll bee in the wood bee camp somewhere. Bring your soldering iron, hopefully we can find power, if not i have an inverter we might be able to use on my solar panel or truck. Ben wanted to do some projects at bobo also.

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