Cheap light tubes for cases/mods

[Luke122]

I was cleaning out my build room at work the other day, and found a couple of old scanners, with no usefullness at all. (Already have all the scanners we need here..)

So I got to thinking, "what could I do with these?" and realized that I had no idea what the light source from a scanner looked like. So.....

I pulled one apart, just to check it out. Turns out it's a small, thin plastic tube like a flourescent light, with a small inverter and a 12v input. This thing is cool.. hella bright white light (hey, that rhymes), and the small inverter was easy to mod a molex onto. Added a rocker switch, and bang.. free light tube for my case.. or for whatever.

Now to find a use for the rest of the scanner.. hmmm...

Pics coming up shortly.. trouble uploading..

[tybrenis]

Ahh, yes. I've seen this done a few times, the lights inside of scanners are generally cold cathodes. Back in the caveman days of case modding when cold cathodes weren't readily available, it was common for modders to take apart old scanners and use the lights from them.

For colors they simply wrapped some sort of a colored film around them. There's a few things you can use, the best being gel films used in movie lighting and the most sketchy being tinted gift wrap or similar.

[Redundant]

I pulled one apart, just to check it out. Turns out it's a small, thin plastic tube like a flourescent light, with a small inverter and a 12v input.

Be careful not to break it. It's actually made of thin glass so that's why it's slightly bendable.


Now to find a use for the rest of the scanner.. hmmm...

The stepper motor might come in useful...

[tybrenis]

Depending on the size of the scanner, Redundant is right, the stepper motors can be decent. Also check out laser jet printers for good steppers. (can you tell I'm building a CNC machine???)