Connect a light with 12 volt halogen and no inverter/transformer

Hello
My wife bought a lamp which has 16 strengths and uses 12-volt halogen bulbs. I did not notice that there was no built-in transformer until, after connecting the lamp, I switched on the light after connecting, put the first halogen in the lamp, and turned it on. I blew up the bulb. I went to a supply store and they gave me a transformer, connected it between the lamp and the ceiling wires and again put 1 halogen bulb in the lamp which blew up too. I have no idea what the problem is. Is there anybody who could give me a hint?

There was a normal lamp connected before and that one worked fine.

 

It should work. Black and White wires go to power and blue go to the fixture, yes? Do you have a Multimeter? I would measure the output from the transformer and check that it is 12V or something close to it.

 

Hi,

thanks for your answer. I thought so too that this should work and bought a Multimeter but I am not really sure how to use it. In the position on the pic I tried to measure it and I think ( it was changing the whole time as it was hard to keep the 2 points connected with the wires) it was far from 12 volt. But as this is a new device I thought maybe I am doing something wrong.
AS you can guess from my writing, I am not a very good handyman but to me, this can be too difficult. (I thought)

 

BTW, can I stick the black/white wires in a socket and measure the volt then? That would be easier than trying the measure when the transformer is connected to the wire in the ceiling.

 

If you get fingerprints on the glass of the bulb, it can cause it to break. Use a paper towel to handle the bulb.

 

Thanks, I did it the second time, still, the bulb blew up

 

If you tried to measure voltage with the switch in the position shown, you probably blew the fuse in the meter...

To measure 12vdc, you'd want the pointer on the meter at about 10-o'clock, pointing to the '20' in the section with the V and a straight line over it. That stands for volts-dc, and the 20 = the maximum it could read on that scale.

To measure the input to the transformer (which would be your nominal 120-vac), you'd go to the position where the V has a wavy line over it, and select the 200-volt maximum scale.

If you don't know what you're doing, it will be very easy to be trying to apply 120-vac to the bulbs, and yes, they will blow up.

You can hurt yourself when playing with electricity.

If you want to test it, given your apparent skill and knowledge level, you might want to buy a repair plug, attach that to the input wires, and then plug it in. The black wire would go to the smaller plug blade, and the white wire would go to the larger one.

The better choice would be to solicit help from a friend or a pro that understands this.

 

240vac to 24vac transformer will give you 12vac on 120 vac. Have you measured your line voltage and secondary to see how close to 12vac?

 

The statement 16 "strengths" must have been a auto correction on a iPhone or iPad. This is a strange light fixture and I think the 16 lights strings need to be connected in series. That would put about 7.5 volts ac on each halogen. A halogen gives off a very white light and a little more half voltage the fixture would still give off a good amount of light times 16 lamps. Also the heat is crazy high for halogen lamps. The picture does show a typical 12v or 24v connector used for LED's tape lighting.

Was there any installation sheet with this fixture?
With the lamps in series a transformer is not needed. The transformer you purchased may not be large enough to handle the load if all the lamps were connected in parallel.