Be Excellent To Each Other

A year or so ago I purchased a neon sign for Mrs Chinny for her drinks cabinet. Naturally having done my research I found that most that I saw came from Hong Kong.

No problem, I went to Ebay and purchased one. First unit had a fault so it was sent back to Hong Kong for replacement.

Fast forward to 2009. Today I unplugged the unit from the wall for our house move and the entire PSU ripped in two. Luckily the switch was off or I would have been in for quite a nip. On closer inspection the unit simply isn't fit for purpose. The wires from the socket prongs would be appropriate for about 12v, not 240v. The screws holding the entire thing together penetrated the outer part of the casing by no more than 2mm.

So my first point is that I know we all buy stuff from HK via Deal Extreme etc, and we've all heard the horror stories from Trading Standards (and ignored them) but I do suggest sourcing UK power supplies for these electrical items. The PSU I have next to me is a hazard, pure and simple and could have given someone a nasty belt if the socket had been live when it was unplugged. Let alone the fact that it has wiring not up to the job and no internal fuse.

So stay safe people!

Secondly, this now presents a problem as I now need to source a new PSU but have no idea what the voltage or polarity should be. Does anyone know if you can damage neons with the wrong polarity? There are two capacitors on the output stage of the board marked (16v) so I'm assuming that (if they've followed good practice) it's a standard 12v output.

Well, what do you expect if you go directly importing cheap crap electronics from the far east?
Is it CE marked? Do you believe it?

It doesn't necessarily need an internal fuse though, not on the mains side, and just needs to be below a certain power on the output and not catch fire if you short it. The wires from the prongs will indeed be tiny, but as long as they have some insulation that's OK.

Now, as to replacing it. First of all, you may as well just glue it back together with superglue or araldite.

The neon tube itself should run off thousands of volts, so there will be an inverter circuit hidden in the back of the sign as well. Yes, you'd want to get the polarity right.

A past POTW explained a way of determining the polarity of an unknown DC source without owning a multimeter, but to be honest, as they cost less than a tenner, so just buy one.


[apologies for the tone, it's the one subject I'm allowed to get snooty about]

We all do it on a regular basis on here though. Doesn't make it any better or right.

I have binned it as I'm not happy with the state of the circuitboard, especially the way it is wired to the physical plug prongs. Those wires simply aren't up to the job of carrying 240v

I should have known better and won't be letting it happen again. But I did want to alert people to the problem as so many of us acquire stuff from abroad, be it games consoles PSU's or just general gadgets.

What was the sign?

Sugar Daddys?

Well, technically speaking they probably were. But anyway.



Yes, good warning. With mains stuff it's a bit of a concern, and will probably lead to a clampdown on such imports at some point. Which people really will be complaining about!

Just a cocktail bar sign with a glass and a face. Looks cheap as chips in daylight, but in the dark it looks great.

Well yes, but doesn't mean that it is desirable. We're talking wires more flimsy than the ones that came with my Tandy 100 Electronics Projects thing that I got Christmas 1988. I've been inside many PSU's during my 8 bit antics and even to my untrained eye it was the worst built I'd seen.

What about the sign? Arf, zoinks, etc

There's a fair bit of stuff I wouldn't dare import - I'll just for cheap USB gadgets and the like. I certainly wouldn't want to try something like this.

Wall-warts are something else though - even "good" ones from high quality brands are out-sourced cost-reduced to the zillionth of a cent. On the primary side there's less than a 10th of an amp flowing, so the wires could be nearly invisible and still work.

I've seen a charger which came with a (old) mobile phone which had transformer laminations made from slices of some sort of indian soft drink can, with the printing on them and everything.

DE sinks to whole new level with that one!