I have almost completed A shelving unit for the rear of my load bench which will go up 3ft worth. There is a portion which will be over the PACT scale/disp combo as well as my case trimmer unit.
I have found a set of 3 small halogen lights (20w bulbs each) which are very compact and will mount up out of the way underneath the shelf.

My question is, will halogen lights affect the communication between the scale and dispenser? or is that simply a flourescent light symptom??

Thanks

i have not heard of them emitting waves to possibly interfere with the scale but i doo know they get very warm. be aware of that aspect.

quote:

Originally posted by STINGER:
i have not heard of them emitting waves to possibly interfere with the scale but i doo know they get very warm. be aware of that aspect.

I second the heat. Certainly enough to cause a fire.

Thanks for the warning on the heat guys. They will be mounted above the equipment by a good 8" and the package I looked at showed them mounted under wood cabinets. They are enclosed in a decorative housing of course.

Does anyone see any issues with that set-up?

Thanks again

I just started using a digital scale and found that I needed to hold my hand over my mouth (I'm a mouth breather) to avoid corrupting the scales.
Any little movement of wind will do it.

Hey JustC
Flourescent fixtures and other ballast or transformer driven fixtures emit substantial amounts of EMF's. Incandescents, halogens and quartz lamps do not emit those high ranges of frequencies so consequently will not affect your other eloctronic paraphenalia. Depending on the wattage 8 inches may be too close for safety, quick test is to hold the back of your hand 6-8" away for at least a minute, if you can stand that your books and sundry items will survive. Use caution around Halogens and quartz lights as the lamp temperature is very high and if handled with the bare hand will surely burn you severely if done so while it is on or just recently shut off.
Dave "The Electrician" Snellstrom

My solution is to use white led's. Cool, simple,
and I can put them close to combustibles. I have one on my progressive press near the point where I check the powder level in the case. I just run them off a two D-cell pack and with a 270 Ohm resistor. The value of the resistor needed is determined by the forward voltage of the Led and the intended supply voltage. I can direct you to a place on the web that will calculate the resistor size needed for you.

snellstrom, they are actually behind the peice of cover glass and inside the decorative housing. I will run them with my hand near by before I mount them so that I return them if need be. Thanks

Old elk hunter, how much are the LED bulbs and resistor usually?

Another thing that will screw up your loading is a sealing fan but only during the powder measuring phase of the process. I really got frustrated one night when I could not get the scales to work right. I swtiched off the fan and the problem was solved. They are wind sensitive.

Hslogen lights are simply another form of incandescent lighting, basically a hot piece of wire in an inert gas envelope.

What's different is the gas mixture.

The thing that affects electronic devices is electromagnetic fields from devices that your power company (or anyone knowledgable of electrical theory) would describe as "inductive loads", electric motors or anything that's run with a transformer... like flourescent lights.

Halogen and "tungsten" bulbs that run on line voltage are considered "resistive load and don't by themselves don't generate magnetic fields.

AllanD

JustC, unless they are really low power--which can still be fairly bright in halogens--I'll be surprised if they aren't to hot for your hand at 8", I tried one of mine at about a foot and a half, mine are mounted 6-8 feet over my bench top.....and I could take about 45 secs before it got uncomfortable.

I'm still seeking some reasonably bright incandesent that will run off of the tracks I've got mounted, those damn halogen bulbs are pricey!

Good Luck--Don

Fish,..how big were those bulbs? This little 3 peice set I looked at from home depot were 20watt each. Will that be too hot?

I put a set of the under counter lights from Home Depot on my wifes kitchen cabinets, as she insisted it was too dark under them. (3 or 4 light string) The inside bottom of the cupboards were extreamly hot to touch from them within a 1/2 hr after turning them on. This was heat radiating from the fixtures to the mounting surface, not direct heat from the light. I tossed them...

JustC, mine are 35 & 40 watt bulbs in a floodlight type. they screw into a plastic fixture that fits into a track. An electrician friend put them in for me when I was out of town, I would have preferred a standard incandesent on the same kind of pattern, the floods are really more like spots and I could use more light in areas.

I have put the kind you describe in a headboard I made, they have a little touch pad that dims, brightens or turns them off, they are 20 watts, and don't get obnoxiuosly hot, but you don't want to reach up for the control pad and touch one of the lights instead, if they've been on for over 2 or 3 minutes, they'll blister you!

Good Luck--Don

Watch out for cordless and cell phones when using your dispenser. They can emit rf signals that can cause problems, too. The halogens should be pretty benign, though.

Fast Ed

JustC,

LED's vary quite a bit in price depending on where
you buy them and the quantity. White ones are around $2 to $4 each. The resistor is pennies.
The LED's require a current limiting device thus the resistors. If you plug in a LED without a resistor it will fry it. Make sure that the package for the LED states the forward voltage. You need this to calculate the size of the resistor. Most common LED's from Radio Shack that run at around 20 ma will function with a
270 ohm or higher resistor. Also LED's come as
focused or omni-directional. Most that you will buy have a lens built in and are focused, or narrow emission angle. For my use so far I don't care if it is focused or not.

There are websites that have calculators to determine the proper resistor value. I will try to find one and post its URL here.

Enter this into your search engine (Google, etc.) "led resistor calculator" and you will find lots of sites with
calculators.

Start with 3 volts as your power source. Add the right resistor and LED and you are functional. LED's take very little current and will run off two D cells for a long time. Remember that LED's are diodes. If the LED
doesn't light up, reverse the leads. Insulate all the wires. Don't want sparks around powder.