Any tips on shortening the length of lights?

[digitalfreeloaders]

When building my singing faces I shortened the lights to fit the pattern and had some of the lights dimmer than others, and the shortest strand of lights burned out after a few minutes? Any suggestions on how to do this without having these issues?

Thanks

Jim

[EARLE W. TALLEY]

We need to know what type of lights LED or INCAN.

[Guest Don Gillespie]

Jim I know its a waste but I use the whole string( I am using LED rope light) so what I do with the left overs is once I attach my backer board the left over lights are hidden behind the board, that way the lights work to thier full potential and I do not have to worry about any light failure

[james campbell]

i agree with don,on incandecent lights if you shorten them then you will overload the other lights unless you lower the power coming into them. so it's better to to just hide or cover the remaining bulbs

[George Simmons]

Sounds like the OP tried using LEDs - incans with lights removed would get brighter, not dimmer, before burning out.

[Guest wbottomley]

When building my singing faces I shortened the lights to fit the pattern and had some of the lights dimmer than others, and the shortest strand of lights burned out after a few minutes? Any suggestions on how to do this without having these issues?

Thanks

Jim

Yep. Here.

[digitalfreeloaders]

Yep. Here.

Thanks for the help, I'm sorry for the delayed response I checked the post a few times today but was seeing 0 views so I did not see the info until now. All good info and I will definitely go with the full length minis and cover the left overs as suggested. even though it does seem a waste but at least it ill guarantee that they work! The dimming came into the picture when I added a few extras to the end to lengthen and the short strand as suggested got really bright and then burned out. On our second try for a short strand we used a dimmer switch to lower voltage. I have 3 more to build so this info will help. Thanks again everyone!

[RaceMedic]

Make sure the lights you are using also are dimmable !

[Max-Paul]

Digitalfreeloader,

This is not some form of vodo magic. If you can add or mulitply or in some cases divide you are half way there. Ok, so sounds like your using ican lamps. Ok, so we are playing with 120 volts. depending on the size of the strings you are modifying, will determine how many lamps in that part of the string. This can get really deep real fast. So, just a simple example. Lets say you have a string with 35 lamps. Each lamp will drop: 120 / 35 = about 3.4 volts each. Now, you want to cut off 15 to make it a 20 count string. You will have to relamp it so each bulb is 6 volts each. This is a simple case, but if you found that it would take a combo of bulb voltages to come up with 120 volts, then do that. As long as all of the bulbs are of the same wattage, then the brightness should be the same. This is not rocket science, but does take some math and an under standing of things like Watts law, Ohms law and Kirchhoff's law. Kirchhoff said that all voltage drops MUST equal the applied voltage applied across the circuit.