EL Wire

[tossedman]

Has anyone looked into EL Wire? Looks interesting. Could be useful for lighting station platforms and the like me thinks.

 

Cheers eh,

 

Todd

[cteno4]

Todd

 

Been meaning to grab a bit to play with. It has some limitations. its been discussed some in this thread

 

http://www.jnsforum.com/community/topic/721-akihabara-station/

 

Jeff

Edited September 4, 2013 by cteno4

[KenS]

Don did a bit with EL Tape for platform lighting, and was planning to give EL wire a try, but never posted more on it.  He's been a bit distracted of late, but perhaps we can get him to give an update.

 

I bought some to play with, but it's one of my "get to it someday" projects that's still on the shelf.

 

The one potential problem I've seen is that I don't think you can get the "white" wire in the smallest size, because it's really colored wire wrapped in a jacket to color it white, and that makes it larger. The smallest I could find when I looked was 2.4 mm (about a scale foot, or 30cm, in diameter).  The smallest size (1.2 mm, or 180 scale mm) would be just about right for a light fixture you could see, but the larger ones are somewhat out of scale.

 

You also need to be sure to get the new white (pink when unlit) as the original "white" comes off very blue, as Don noted in the post linked above.

[cteno4]

The wires also dont like really hard, right angle bends as well from what i have read. 

 

i remember the same thing when i was looking to order some last year about making sure of the diameter you are actually getting, as getting the really thin stuff was tougher from ebay sellers and making sure it was thin.

 

these guys had some good stuff

 

http://learn.adafruit.com/el-wire/overview

 

http://www.elwirepros.com/

 

http://www.elwire.com/faq/driverconnect.htm

 

like ken i kind of put it on my play with it later pile due to some of the limitations and complexities of using it at 1/150. also started wondering about using leds and some colored translucent plastics that might be simpler (leds are simple and more controllable!)

 

but el does give that great neon glow and i thought it would be a really fun detail somewhere around some dance club door or windows or the like. impractical for doing with carnival rides and such. seemed like maybe too much work for platform lights.

 

cheers

 

jeff