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Fellas, I am scratch building a large ALCOA heavy press plant. I need it lit up well as the inside will be detailed and visible. I bought bayonet base LED bulbs and soccets from Town&Country (love these guys!) It's going to be a lot of work to tie them together in the normal parallel circuit, and I don't want a spaghetti factory of wires showing. Is it possible to daisy chain them in series I would say 10 and 10? I don't want them to run dim. Thanks in advance. Nick

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Last edited by rockstars1989
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Fellas, I am scratch building a large ALCOA heavy press plant. I need it lit up well as the inside will be detailed and visible. I bought bayonet base LED bulbs and soccets from Town&Country (love these guys!) It's going to be a lot of work to tie them together in the normal parallel circuit, and I don't want a spaghetti factory of wires showing. Is it possible to daisy chain them in series I would say 10 and 10? I don't want them to run dim. Thanks in advance. Nick

Go on Amazon and get this :https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B08CBZVVMD/ref=ppx_yo_dt_b_search_asin_title?ie=UTF8&psc=1

you can cut the strip at the solder joints and connect jumper wires, I use this system all the time in ship building  and for buildings

Warm White LED Strip Light, Dimmable 12 Volt LED Light Strip Warm White, 3000K Super Bright LED Tape Lighting

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  • AE8C6D50-9E68-4886-A160-61603B9093A3: Here is a model using the LED strips
Last edited by ThatGuy

I used LED strips in my roundhouse for lighting and they work well and provide plenty of light for interior viewing (it has a clear lexan roof).

One "trick" I used was to glue the LED strips into some Plastruct channels I bought and mount the channels upside down on the ceiling of the structure and run the wires out the channel ends and down the walls. I pre-painted the channels the same color as the ceiling so they blend in and you never see the LED strips - only the light shining down. 

.... I bought bayonet base LED bulbs and soccets from Town&Country (love these guys!)

Which exact LED bulb did you get from T&C?  I was hunting around their site and couldn't match your photo to a specific item.

Edit. Never mind; I think I found it:

tc led box

That is I was looking for specs on your LED bulb.  Jumping ahead a bit, it appears your bulb has a single LED in it.   An LED of this type operates around 3V DC.  So if powered by 18V AC, the typical LED circuit design is terribly inefficient in how it lowers the 18V AC to 3V DC...say, less than 20%.  So 80% of the power going in is wasted as heat to warm up your plant!  And you have 10 x 10 or 100 bulbs (?).

The proposed 12V DC LED strips are much more efficient - around 75%.  Much less power wasted!  Yes, maybe you have Watts to burn (literally) but it just doesn't seem right if using LED technology....in my opinion of course.

Separately, while the LED strip shown earlier is powered by a wall-wart with a dimmer control (nice touch), if your wiring is such that only 18V AC (or whatever) goes to the plant, you can get inexpensive AC-to-DC converter modules to convert 18V AC to 12V DC.

ac dc converter amazon

These modules also have an adjustment control so you can dim the strip.  You can buy 12V DC LED strips by themselves (without wall-wart and dimming controller) if you want to power the plant with 18V AC or existing Accessory AC from a train transformer.

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Last edited by stan2004

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