USING COPPER TAPE FOR LIGHT POWER STRIPS

TIME SAVER - EASY TO INSTALL - EASY MAINTENANCE

Wiring lights on your layout can be tedious and sometimes overwhelming even for the best hobbyists, especially if you’re trying to string a few together. If you don’t have soldering skills, twisting wires together and taping over the connections is the easy way, but over time these will come apart or get snagged and lead to dead lights or electrical shorts. Trying to solder wires together can be even more tedious, and trying to do this under your layout table and secure them can be cumbersome and downright difficult. But there is a better way!

 >SELF-ADHESIVE COPPER TAPE:

Copper tape is often used for power on routed wood slot car tracks, so why not use it to power lights? Copper tape is the perfect way to wire a series of lights without messy wiring and crawling under your layout. 2 copper tape strips can be run ON TOP of your layout along a path where lights will be used, using each for positive + and negative – leads from your transformer. You can then mount your lights and solder the wires to the copper tape strips. Once you are done wiring, the neat thing is copper tape can be painted over or even have landscaping material applied to hide it, along with the wires. In some case you can run the wires right from the light to the tape. In other cases, you run the light wires through a hole drilled in the table where the light will be placed, and then run the wires back up through another hole next to the tape to be soldered. In any case, the copper tape and wires can be hidden by paint or landscape material. Here are some examples below from my track:

Light power strip on top of the layout and covered with ground foam:

Light power strips on top of the layout for streetlights. Tape was painted to look like a sidewalk:

Light power strips underneath a building base for streetlights:

INSTRUCTIONS:

1. Plan your path where your lights will be and where your power source will connect.

2. Make sure your surface area is clean so the self-adhesive tape will adhere properly (If you are planning to add more lights in the future you can run all your tape strips now and add lights as you go)

3. Apply the self-adhesive copper tape to your surface and smooth out any wrinkles to avoid catching something on it and tearing it. Use one strip for the Positive lead and the other for Negative. Make sure you mark one with a small dab of red paint or permanent marker for Positive +.

4. Next, attach your lights to your layout, near the copper tape strips. Sometimes you can have the copper strips on each side of the light (like shown in the photos).

5. Next, apply small blobs of solder to the copper tape for each wire lead. (see Soldering Tips blog for help) TIP: Don't hold the solder iron on the tape as it can cause the adhesive to pull up and also cause the tape to curl.

6. Next, tin your light wire ends to prep for soldering. After tinning, hold your wires on the solder blobs on the tape and heat enough to melt the solder and join the wire to the tape. Do this quickly so you don’t introduce too much heat onto the tape.

7. Move along to the rest of your light using the previous steps.

8. Once you have all your light soldered up, connect your power source to the tape leads, paying attention to polarity. Solder the power source leads the same way as your light wires.

9. Next, power up your transformer and check that all your lights are working. Once everything is working you can conceal the tape and solder joints with paint or landscaping material.

Good luck on your next lighting project!