Glowing Wire

I was talking to a machinest today who told me about a kewl product he saw at The Burning Man. He said it is called electroluminescent wire and it takes a lot of volts but no amps to run. He said a 9v runs it for a long long time. So we got to talking and thought it might make a kewl feature on a custom flashlight instead of say... tritium. One can get pretty creative with the stuff.

Anyone heard of it or thought of using it this way? Is it practical?

Here's a link - CoolNeon
Here's another link - Glow Wire

Our lcoal computer stores sell Electroluminescent modding kits for computer cases. They have the stuff in glow wire form as well as a flat tape with an adhesive back.

I've seen it used in theatre as an outline for a costume. Tricky to keep it working on a moving actor but a really cool effect.

I bought some from pep boys for my wheelchair. It came with a cig plug to power it and a 6 foot length. It was brighter than I expected, but 6 ft wasnt enough for what I wanted to do, which was outline my wheelchair frame. The rep told me online at the website for the wire I could get it up to 100 ft in length, but it werent cheap.

Called EL wire. Just do a web search. Lots of sites. Ranges from angel hair to about 1/4" cable. Voltage is what activates it rather than amperage so small batteries can run fairly large amounts of the stuff. Isn't too expensive - depends on your intended usage.

I was thinking of putting it in my upcoming Orange QuadStar, underneath the reflectors, on top of the heat sink. It would always be glowing orange that way. Gotta tell ModaMag ;p

I always dig the glowing wire costumes I see when I'm out partying. People put together some cool 5h!t.

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CromagNet said:
I was thinking of putting it in my upcoming Orange QuadStar, underneath the reflectors, on top of the heat sink. It would always be glowing orange that way. Gotta tell ModaMag ;p

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Ummm... Not easily. There is some circuitry involved which pumps up the voltage from several volts (battery) to I believe several thousand volts at very low amperage. You'd need to replicate this circuitry. You can't just run it direct off the batts.

Hmmm. I heard that people power these off 9v batteries in their baseball caps etc. The Quadamire a Quadstar run by 4 LiON batts will pump out a lot more than that. :fingersCrosed:

The 9v runs a step up transformer that creates kiliVolts and the right frequency to make them light. They don't run DD off of a 9v. It is very high frequency. You can actually change the color (aqua,green,blue) by changing the frequency. Those aftermarket car gauges do just that.

Still it would be cool to see this in a flashlight.

Hey! Thanks for reminding me. I just ordered some online. Not sure if I should buy the inverter or ModaMag will help make something to transform it properly within the Maglight???

the wire and EL sheets useually operate around 170-250vAC at about 400hz. Just be careful not to overpower the wire. I had a kit that had 5feet and a 12booster (for car), I shortened the wire to about 18", and with the booster it came with, It FRIED the wire. It was sparking internally, got REALLY hot, then died.
It dosen't take much current to light these things up, if the length is 6-8", the drive circuit can be REALLY small. I had a watch that had the indiglo stuff, when the watch part died, I was able to light a small piese of 'wire' from the watches EL driver.
Jeff

the first time I ever saw this stuff was maybe 5 or 6 years ago at a release party for Apple's OSX at a club in San Francisco. There were a bunch of computer geeks standing around just examining the costumes that some of the other club goers were wearing /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif (One thing about Apple's computer conventions and parties is that there are usually at least a few pretty women there too /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/wink.gif ) I was amazed as I had never even heard of such a thing before!

It's quite fun to play with and quite flexible and such. Easy to sew onto a costume or glue to a frame or something. Make your own tron costume /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif But it doesn't last forever, the harder you drive it the faster it will degrade. I'm sure you could build an ultra efficient driver for a small amount of it for say a single ring around a flashlight for not too much money. It would have to be something akin to the drivers in a Kill. In fact It wouldn't have to be very bright and you wouldn't be running much. But it would still kill your batteries eventually. Maybe run them down in a week, or much more time if it just flashed. we already have flashlights that pulse the LED or run it at a very low power. Something that flashed an EL ring wouldn't use that much more power than something like that...

But then it starts to look like a lightsaber /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/grin.gif

Thanks a lot for the info. /ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif

We have a forum right here called:

Electroluminescent/Headlamps/Hybrids

It includes EL wire and stuff.