[sdiy] EL Film from guy on Ebay ( Success! )

[Amos]

I think I was the guy who mentioned 90VAC... mainly because that's about
what the inverter in the Moog Voyager puts out @ maximum. However I know
that you can plug EL wire directly into a US wall socket (110/120VAC @60Hz)
-- it will be very bright... basically EL stuff runs on AC with a brightness
proportional to voltage and a half-life (loss of brightness over time)
inversely proportional to the voltage used. That is, the brighter you run it
the quicker it will decay, losing brightness over time. I have some vague
memory of a half-life of 10,000 hours at full brightness? But I have nothing
to back that up. I do know that if you run at half brightness it doubles the
half-life... so it's a pretty direct relationship. I reckon it's safe to
experiment, within reason. If I understand correctly it's a coating of
phosphor on a conductive film, so... not much to break!

I also remember that the AC is pulsed at ~300 Hz, and is nonsinusoidal (for
efficiency, IIRC)
here is a datasheet for a small EL driver IC with some useful info about
typical voltage and frequency...

http://www.rogerscorporation.com/durel/pdf/LIT-I9034A07.pdf


oh and pardon me, it's a coating of phosphor on an insulative film,
according to the informative article below... makes more sense now's I think
about it...

http://www.edn.com/article/CA56670.html

Google is my friend, I tell you... :-)

-Amos

On 10/7/05, Tom Arnold <xyzzy at sysabend.org> wrote:
>
> On Fri, Oct 07, 2005 at 07:37:22AM -0700, Thomas Hudson wrote:
> > I'm curious as to the specs on the inverters they use. Have you
> > measured the output of the inverter? I think I saw somewhere that the
> > EL needs 70VAC,
>
> Specs are very light on this stuff. I havent yet measured one of the
> supplied inverters but I've seen mention of 90vac.
>
> Seems the inverter in my TG77 is toast. I also tested the old EL sheet
> from
> the 77 and yeah, its way way dim but I get no high pitch whine from the
> TG77
> inverter and of course no light. I play some more tonight and I'll post
> results.
>
> --
> -----------------------------------------------------------------
> - Tom Arnold - Free Synth DIY webspace http://www.sdiy.org
> - SynthGeek -
> - BBD Fanatic - "...is it a virus, a drug, or a religion?"
> - echo evho wjxo - Juanita Shrugs. "What's the difference?"
> --------------------
>
>
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