The Ultimate Beginners Guide to Soldering Cool Neon Wire

A one-page illustration of how to solder Cool Neon (pdf).

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Cool Neon electroluminescent fiber consists of a center wire coated with powdery white phosphor, flanked by two fine radial wires that are common, all surrounded by an external vinyl coating (unless you’re working with Angel Hair wire, which has no vinyl coating).  The vinyl coating is colored, unless you’re working with White or Aqua wire. 

• Soldering a connector or lead wire onto Cool Neon

• Connecting a 9-Volt Battery Cap onto a Driver

• Soldering lead wire to the FLAT Lamp

To solder a connector or lead wire onto your Cool Neon wire:

 1. Using wire strippers, remove about a half-inch of the vinyl coating off the end of your piece of Cool Neon fiber.  Check to make sure you have not removed the two fine, radial wires.  (If you have removed one or both wires, carefully repeat this step.)  Remove the half-inch of vinyl coating from the end of the wire.

2. Find the radial wires (they are very thin and silver) and pull them back towards the vinyl coating.  Wrap about 1/2 inch of copper foil tape around that same vinyl coating so that the edge of the copper foil tape is in line with the end of the vinyl coating.  The smoother the copper foil wrap, the better your solder joint will be.

 3. Fold the radial wires onto the copper tape and solder them to it. This just takes a tiny bit of solder.

 4. Scrape the phosphor (that’s the powdery white coating) off of the center wire, exposing the metal.  For this you can use wire strippers, tweezers, or a razor blade (carefully!). 

    5. Take the pigtail end of your lead wire or connector and cut one side of the pigtail so that it’s shorter than the other side.  Strip both sides of the pigtail so that a quarter inch of wire is exposed. Tin both ends of the pigtail with a little solder.  (By “tin” we mean, apply the wire to the soldering iron, and apply the solder until the solder liquefies and lightly coats the wire.)

 6. Slip a piece of heat-shrink tubing over your Cool Neon wire before you solder anything onto it.

 7. Solder the longer pigtail end to the copper foil tape. 

 8. Solder the shorter end to the center wire. 

 9. Slide the heat-shrink tubing over the Cool Neon to cover your connection.

 10. Heat up the heat-shrink tubing using a heat gun or other heat source, being sure not to melt anything other than the heat-shrink tubing.

 If you have questions, don’t hesitate to call us at ANY time! 510.547.5878

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 To Connect a 9-Volt Battery Cap onto a Driver:

 1. Start by slipping a 1-inch piece of 3/16^ths heat-shrink tubing over both the black and the red wires coming out of the 9-volt battery cap.  Next, slip a half-inch piece of 3/32^nd heat-shrink tubing over each of the two wires, one for the red wire and one for the black.

 2. Tin the metal end of each of the wires coming out of the 9-volt battery cap.  (By “tin” we mean, apply the wire to the soldering iron, and apply the solder until the solder liquefies and lightly coats the wire.)

 3. Your driver will have a pair of wires coming out of it, one black, and one red.  These are the wires you’ll be dealing with.  As above, tin the metal end of each wire with some solder. 

 4. Solder the red wire from the 9-volt battery cap onto the red wire coming out of your driver.  Solder the black wire from the 9-volt battery cap onto the black wire you’ve tinned on the driver.

 5. Now, push both the half-inch pieces of heat-shrink tubing over the solder joints, (the tubing should completely obscure the solder joints) and heat up the heat-shrink tubing using a heat gun or other heat source, being sure not to melt anything other than the heat-shrink tubing. 

 6. Pull the one-inch piece of heat-shrink tubing that’s on both the red and black wires over both solder connections.  Apply heat, as in 5 above, melting the heat-shrink tubing.  Ta da!

  If you have questions, don’t hesitate to call us at ANY time! 510.547.5878

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Soldering lead wire to the FLAT Lamp

 1. The FLAT Lamp has two crimped-on leads at one end which are easy to solder to.  You can solder the leads of a driver or, as always, the leads of a connector onto the FLAT Lamp's leads.  The only important consideration is that the crimps easily melt through the plastic, so you must use a heat-sink over the crimped part of the tabs while soldering the ends (this can simply be a pair of pliers gripping the crimped parts).

 2. There is no need to pre-tin the leads from the FLAT Lamp; they will solder quite easily to your tinned lead wires.  Solder the leads of your driver or connector onto the crimped leads of the FLAT Lamp, one to one.

3. After the two pins are soldered, the entire end should be protected from movement, because it is quite fragile.  We often coat the whole area with hot melt glue, being cautious again not to melt the plastic where the pins are crimped.

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