Hi,

I am planning to make a transformation box, basically a mini Girl to Gorilla Illusionette.

I saw this on a website, and with it was a wiring diagram that I am hoping can be simplified.

The webpage that I have linked below shows 2 illustrations. The top one is the original diagram from the instructional website. It shows two light cans, each connected to a dimmer switch. Each has its own plug. (One circuit is in red and the other in blue).

The lower illustration is a diagram that I made that will hopefully do the same thing... allowing each light can to be operated inderpendantly by its own dimmer switch, but both being powered by a single plug.

I need someone with electrical experience to please look at my wiring design and tell me if it will work. Have I overlooked any shorts, and will each light can dim independantly by operating the dimmer switches?

http://themagiccompany.com/wiring_diagram.html

Thanks!

~michael

Assuming you get the load sides straight is should work out fine, but why don't you use a 12 volt battery and make it more portable an 12vdc alarm battery would make it more flexible and easier to set up and a bit safer since the is no ac voltage present. Pat

Hey Michael,
Yes it will work.

Nick

No shorts detected in your drawing. I concur, it will work. (But please step behind a blast shield before you plug it in for the first time!)

Thanks to you all!

Not a fan of battery power, and for the application (venue), electrical hook-up is no problem. I have done enough basic wiring, and am careful enough to do it correctly and safely. I just wanted to make sure I wasn't overlooking anything on this design.

BTW, this is for inanimate objects. No humans will be in this thing!

Michael...

The wiring will "work" in that it is safe and will not blow up but the hardest part of this illusion is always getting a truly balanced crossfade which is next to impossible using off the shelf consumer dimmers.

Most consumer dimmers are not perfectly linear. They will go up about 1/4 of the way then "pop" on. From there you have a decent control curve but it's at the low end of the arc that it isn't exactly right. Some plans show mounting two home dimmers and putting a rubber band around them in a figure 8 to act as a belt drive but again, they don't really have a symmetrical output.

Handling them individually you can sometimes get decent results with practice. The old dimmers were large autotransformer coils which were much more responsive but just a lot larger! You could gang two together and get a decent cross fade that reacted well.

Depending on how critical your application is, it could be just fine and it could take some R&D to make it deceptive. For one that I needed to be really clean, I got a commercial DMX dimmer pack and mounted it on the unit, then hooked it up to a PC based lighting controller where I could program the curve I wanted including a warmer cue to get the lamps going before the actual crossfade. This way it was entirely automated and gave me the exact dissolve I wanted but at a price.

It's fun to play with so let us know how it goes!

Ray,

Thanks for the tips. This particular application is for a month-long Halloween event that I work each year. After 10 years, I know these crowds pretty well, and pureness of illusion is usually not as important as targeting what brain cells still exist, and delivering something different in a format they understand, and react to. (There is also a beer tent on site...)

Our stage set-up is outdoors under a bridge viaduct next to a historical landmark steel industry blast furnace that gets converted into a haunted trail for the month of October. http://www.frightfurnace.com/main.asp

We do up to a couple thousand people a night on the busier nights. Typically, we can draw up to 300-500 to the stage per show, although nights earlier in the week and earlier in the month are typically slower.

We are located in an area called, The Roadkill Café, which is basically the holding area for those waiting to do the tour.

It is one of the less glamorous environments to work in, but we are paid well, and one phone call is good for a month of work. Also, we have pretty much complete freedom on what we do, within a reasonable budget. We are encouraged to try new things, so as a creative outlet, it is excellent.

The website has not been updated yet regarding our shows, which this year will be a horror/comedy-based Vaudeville show.

The transformation box I needed the wiring diagram for is for a segment in which a skull is reanimated by a steampunk-type mad scientist, and a small animal (note to PETA: not a "real" animal) is accidentally "fried" in the device. If I was spending more than about a hundred bucks to make this, I'd want to put a more serious set of guts in it, but in this case, less than complete accuracy is a forgivable sin!

~michael

Michael...

It sounds like a LOT of fun, and yes, you're perspective and priorities are right on. You need to know where to spend the money.

Good luck and I hope you get pictures of it!

Thanks! Will do!

The biggest problem I see is that you have gone from parallel wiring to series. Which means that both dimmer switches would effect both lights instead of working truly independently.

Or am I just confused?

If you want them on the same plug, the you would tie the hots and groungs to the same terminals of a common plug. how ever, I am pretty sure the reason that this is wired like this is wired like this is because unless they are truly independent circuits, the dimmer switches will find each other.I think what you need to do this right is a couple of rehostats. and dimmmer switches aren't rehostats.

[quote]On 2009-09-09 06:22, Scruffy the Clown wrote:
The biggest problem I see is that you have gone from parallel wiring to series. Which means that both dimmer switches would effect both lights instead of working truly independently.

Or am I just confused?
[/quote




The hot side of the circuit is parallel.The dimmers will work independently.

Nick

I'm in the process of constructing the transformation box this week, so when I get that finished, and advance to the electrical part of this, I'll be sure to let you know!

This sounds like a great time to make a run to B'ham to see you work.

-=tabman

You are welcome here anytime, my friend!

Its been far too long since our last PMZZ meeting and Im almost out of grits.

Wow! I'd forgotten about those grits. They came from a gift shop at Callaway Gardens, and I believe milled somewhere close to there. That's probably as close to you as it is to me, but I'm probably due to go see my dad down there anyway.

Not me. I'd never forget the kindness of a real friend.

-=tab

Likewise. I know who gave me my real kickstart selling what I build!

Update: The box has been built, and base coat of paint is drying. Making some goofy detail parts: knobs, capacitor-looking things, etc. Doing the prep work on the wiring, so when I can start attaching those parts to the box, it should come together quickly. Now that I have a finished dimension, I'll get the glass cut next week.

Thanks again guys, for the wiring input.

As Michael goes to plug in his latest creation the last words we hear are;

"Hey Earl, watch this!"