About the track light uses of four-wire guides

In some shops, museums, and exhibition halls, the guide rail is a very common device because of its convenient installation and flexible adjustment. However, there are many types of guide rails and usage. If you use the right ones, not only save money, but also save a lot of worry.

▲ This is a photo taken on the street. You can see that there are a lot of lights on a guide rail. The guide rail is a single circuit. The lights are fully turned on and the lights are turned off.

For this single-circuit rail, if you want to turn on some of the lights in a certain period of time, you may have to install several rows of such rails.

In fact, the rails are not just a single loop. The guide rail can be divided into two lines, three lines, four lines, and even six line guides. Today, let’s talk about the structure and usage of four-wire rails.

The most common four-wire rails are the three-circuit rail system and the one-circuit DALI dimming system.

Four-wire three-circuit guide rails, as the name implies, have four copper cores on one rail (zero line sharing, fire line independent), forming three independent circuits.

▲ It can be seen that there are four copper cores inside. Three of them are fire lines and one is zero line. We can control the lights of different circuits on the rail by controlling whether the three live wires are energized.

For this kind of four-wire three-circuit guide rails with different lamps on different tracks on the same rail, how is it installed and implemented? Next, we will explain the wiring method of the four-wire three-circuit rail .

▲This is the junction box of the four-wire three-circuit rail. The four contacts on the binding post correspond to the four copper wires on the rail.

▲The left side is the classic rail joint of the ace rail, and the right side is the amp rail mini series rail joint.

For four-wire three-circuit rails, it is necessary to match the four-wire three-circuit rail joints . There are two rail joints on the ACE rail for reference. One is a classic rail joint with many imitations on the market; the other is a mini rail joint, which can be selected by rotating the corresponding number on the knob.

▲The selection of the gear position of the ace rail mini series.

Let’s take a video to see how the two track joints achieve gear shifting:

We installed these rail joints on the four-wire three-circuit rail to form a simple power supply shunt control system.

▲Power supply shunt control system.

Through the above explanation, we have learned how the four-circuit rail of the three-circuit is wired. However, although this is convenient, a rail can be divided into three-way control, but many people are not satisfied with this, such as the following photo:

▲This is a photo taken in the ERCO showroom with more than 20 lights on a rail on the ceiling.

Of course, the location of the above picture is only used to display various lighting effects. However, in this case, it is far from enough to divide the three roads. We need to introduce intelligent control that can precisely control each lamp and even dim it. This involves another four-wire rail—four-wire single-loop (DALI dimming) rail .

You may have doubts, isn’t a single loop a two-line line? A zero line of a fire line constitutes a loop, and what about four lines? In fact, except for the live and neutral lines, the remaining two lines are used as signal lines. Next we will explain how the four-wire single-loop guide is implemented.

The wiring method of the four-wire single-circuit guide rail is divided into four-wire single-circuit DALI wiring mode and 0~10V wiring mode. Below we mainly talk about the wiring method of the four-wire single-loop DALI .

Compared with the four-wire three-loop, the four-wire single-loop DALI does not have so many hot wires. The left part is the power supply of L and N, and the right part is connected to two DALI control signal lines, and the other parts are the same.

Compared with the four-wire single-circuit DALI rail joint and the four-wire three-circuit rail joint, the only difference is that the L, N, and ground wires are the three shrapnel on the joint edge, and the D1 and D2 signal wires are connected to the middle terminal, and the signal line It is irrelevant. But when doing 0~10V, D1 and D2 involve positive and negative.

▲The internal structure of the four-wire single-circuit DALI rail joint.

In fact, the rail joint is the lamp factory. When the lamp is produced, the two wires of L, N and ground and DALI are connected. The electrician only needs to install the joint on the track.

Is it amazing for this four-wire single-loop DALI track? One rail has four wires, two fires and two signals. If so, no matter how many lights are installed on the whole rail, you want to control which one to control, and no longer need to worry about the wiring of the signal cable. So, what if the application site that has already installed the four-wire three-circuit rail system wants to change to intelligent dimming? You only need to use the four-wire one-loop DALI rail system accessories unique to the ace rail to easily get it, no longer have to worry about replacing the entire rail system.

The application of track lights is not limited to commercial lighting, because it is flexible and versatile, even for home lighting. There are many types of guide rails. Today, two guide rails are introduced, and there is always one for you.

Finally, I would like to thank the “Xu Gong 365” column title sponsor: Op Lighting .