Reviews
Part of Diorama lighting how it works: lumens, lux and color temperature
Diorama lighting supplies: how batteries, drivers, plastics and power strips should be kept
Storage notes for diorama lighting supplies: LED tape shelf life, battery and driver care, aging plastics, and the power strip rule for a hobby bench.
What to take away
- Adhesive-backed LED strip is a consumable with a shelf life. The tape fails long before the diodes do.
- Plastics in your lighting box age at different rates, and the older kinds shrink and go brittle.
- Batteries stored in a device leak. Batteries stored loose short against each other.
- The bench power strip is not the place to daisy-chain another power strip.
Sort the box by what fails
Lighting supplies are four different storage problems in one drawer:
Four Lighting Storage Problems
Emitters & strip
- Failure mode
- Sharp folds
- Cause
- Physical damage
- Storage action
- Avoid folding
Adhesive backing
- Failure mode
- Dries out
- Cause
- Warm room, age
- Storage action
- Keep cool
Wire & insulation
- Failure mode
- Stiffens, cracks
- Cause
- Age and heat
- Storage action
- Coil loosely
Batteries & drivers
- Failure mode
- Can cause harm
- Cause
- Terminals touching
- Storage action
- Separate, remove
Keeping them separate makes each one's failure mode obvious rather than surprising.
Plastics age at different rates
The clear, translucent parts of a lighting kit are plastic, and plastics have very different lifespans. The University of Illinois preservation program's page on plastic transparencies sets out the contrast.
Plastic Transparencies Compared
Polyester (Mylar)
- Stability
- More stable
- Lifespan
- Over 500 years
- Risk
- Low
- Storage
- Ventilated, cool
Acetate
- Stability
- Shrinks easily
- Lifespan
- Bubbles, channels
- Risk
- Vinegar syndrome
- Storage
- Ventilated, cool
Polyester, sold as Mylar and standard from the 1970s, is generally more stable than acetate; stored in appropriate conditions it may last over 500 years. Early acetates shrink easily and may bubble or channel between layers from uneven warping.
It also describes an effect worth knowing about. Acetate suffering from vinegar syndrome can infect other acetate-based material stored nearby, particularly in a poorly ventilated space, and deterioration is hastened by high relative humidity.
Your window glazing, diffusers and light-pipe offcuts are not archival film. The same rules still apply: keep the box ventilated rather than sealed tight, keep it cool, and do not assume a clear sheet that looked fine three years ago still is.
Batteries and drivers
Take batteries out of anything you are not currently using, and store them so terminals cannot touch each other or loose metal. Coin cells especially should stay in their original packaging until the moment they go in, which also keeps them out of reach.
Drivers and plug-in supplies want a dry shelf, not a sealed bag, and they want their leads coiled loosely rather than wrapped tight around the body.
The power strip rule
The bench end of this is where people get careless. OSHA's interpretation letter on relocatable power taps records that the UL directory requires listed power taps to be connected directly to a permanently installed branch circuit receptacle. They are not to be series-connected to other power taps, or connected to extension cords.
Power strips are designed for several low-powered loads such as computers, peripherals and audio or video components, not high-power loads that exceed their ampere rating. A flexible power cord is not to be routed through walls, windows, ceilings or floors.
A hobby bench collects these quietly: one strip for the lamp, another plugged into it for the soldering iron and the charger. Run one strip from one outlet, and keep the total modest. The gear that ends up on that bench is discussed in judging lighting gear, and the general storage rules for everything else are in storing miniature supplies.
