TL;DR: I finished the EL headbands I’ve been working on :D.
I finished up the electroluminescent headbands I described in my post a few weeks ago here. Since my prototype was close to the final product, completing the production was fast after I received the custom fabric components.
As in the prototype, EL wire was passed through the printed channels and
connected to a DC to AC inverter for power. I found nifty coin battery sized
inverters, which fit directly on the bands without too much interference. The
most time consuming portion of the build was attachment of the plastic to the
fabric, since I’m bad at hand sewing.
Here’s the build gallery:
The pass thru holes and cutouts to accommodate change of direction loops worked very well... I'm glad I prototyped first
Here's the back again, but lit up this time.
I'm not sure why I took that last photo, since I ended up covering the loops up with tape anyway to keep them from poking the wearer in the forehead.
Not bad looking, if I do say so myself.
Attaching the plastic to the fabric was the most time consuming part for me... mostly because I am not incredibly proficient at sewing.
I attached a coin battery operated inverter to this headband via binder clip. It's small, lightweight, and provides power without interference 😀
It fits!
Glamour shot #1 on the infinity coffee table...
Glamour shot with 3 completed headbands
Strung
Lit
LIT!
3x headbands: strung, to lit, to LIT.
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Here’s a bonus gif, with a little preview of a flag project I’ve been working on as well…
TL;DR: My friends asked me to make custom light up costume headbands for
them in the style of Naruto… so I did. I 3D printed channels through which I
fed electroluminescent wire to make logos of their favorite DJ’s. While the
project is simple in concept, I needed to dust off a bunch of tools I hadn’t
utilized in a while to complete it. While I’m not quite finished with these, I’m
too excited about how the project is looking NOT to share.
In the anime Naruto, the characters wear headbands to protect their
foreheads while they fight. My friends wanted ones that light up for their
costumes, and asked if I could help. If you want to skip over a lot of unnecessary
detail, just go to the gallery at the bottom where I put the build photos 😛
El wire is a fantastic way to add lighting effects to projects since it is
very bendable, easy to install, and does not require any programming at all
(just add power!). Before this project, I hadn’t played with electroluminescent
(el) wire for years, so I was excited to jump back in. The technology has
become a lot more common and widely available than I remember—there’re tons of
vendors for wire and the requisite DC to AC inverters. Unfortunately, the
inverters still make an annoying high pitched buzz whenever they’re on.
In terms of the mechanical design, the headband was very simple. I created a
base in Fusion 360 CAD to reuse in each version with a different logo. The
majority of my time has actually been spent optimizing the image preparation
pipeline. To go from a 2D-logo to a cut channel, the process I went through was
as follows:
Prepare an outline image in Gimp (a free Photoshop competitor). The easiest way I found to do this was by using the fuzzy select tool to select the outline of the image I wanted to convert, then using the stroke selection tool.
Using stroke was key to getting a nice solid outline to begin my vector image with
After saving the image as a bitmap in Gimp, I imported the file in Inkscape (similar to Adobe Illustrator) and stroked the bitmap to a path. I resized the vector image to fit my headband base, and manually edited the nodes until all parts of the path were approximately 2.5mm in width to fit my el wire.
I ended up doing quite a bit of manual manipulation to change the logo shape such that the 2.5mm channels would fit and still look somewhat like what I started with. Simple automatic offsetting didn’t work well at all.
Initially, I was exporting vector images as 2D
CAD-friendly DXF files. However, I made the groundbreaking discovery that
Fusion 360 actually lets you directly import and use SVG files. Using the
vector files (svg) directly is a lot more computationally friendly and MUCH
easier to work with. For example, the dxf version of the Illenium logo had
upwards of 670 line elements, whereas the svg file had two curves.
I can’t believe it took me so long to realize I could use SVG’s directly in Fusion 360… this was a gamechanger for my speed of productivity.
Within Fusion 360, I directly extruded the imported drawing.
Next, I did a few manipulations with the combine and move bodies menu to create
a “positive” model of the channel I wanted to CUT from the headband.
It’s a bit difficult to see, but I moved the positive cut out forward so it only intersects the model for the last 2.5mm of its extruded depth.
One of the limitations of working with el wire is that there is a minimum bend radius before you can actually break the wire and cause shorts. Unfortunately, since I was making headbands most of the detailed bends weren’t physically possible to make in a single piece. To maintain sharp edges required for the logo designs, I created pass through holes. This allows me to bend the wire in an unsightly loop where it can’t be seen in the final product. Positive models of the pass through holes were created by extruding cylinders from behind the headband up to the channel model.
Thru holes were simple extruded cylinders
Lastly, I created some “channels” on the back of the
headbands to accommodate the loops. In an early prototype, I created actual
channels out of spline sketches, but that proved to be a lot of work for no
reason. Now, I’ve simply created large inset areas that can fit the el wire
loops. It’s much less effort to achieve the same result. The positives for this
were extruded initially as separate bodies to the channels so I could shift
them backward about 0.8mm before joining to the rest of the positive channel
model.
I cut the positive channel model away from the base headband shape
A simple combine, export as STL, and slicing in Cura
resulted in a pretty decent print, if I do say so myself ;).
Here’s my first prototype blinking 😀
The first prototype I printed was in black PLA before I received this gorgeous silk silver shiny PLA made by Hatchbox on Amazon. I quickly realized that I didn’t have a great way of making the fabric for the bands since I don’t have any sewing skills. I am incredibly lucky to have super talented parents (check out my dad’s website here… he’s much more artistically talented than I am: www.bounsaypipathsouk.com) who are always willing to help. I Facetime called them to explain what I was making and mailed them my first sample. A few days later, I received some photos of my prototype solidly attached to a custom headband they made, and should receive them next week :D.
My parents were able to deliver!!
While there are still a few improvements left for me to make before I deliver
my final product, I’m pretty stoked at how well the project has turned out so
far, and just couldn’t wait to share.
As promised, here’s a gallery of the build:
My first prototype printed in black PLA strung and lit up before I shipped it to my parents to use as a template
I was pleasantly surprised at how shiny this silk silver PLA turned out. I'm also thankful I was able to print this without needing to dig support material out of the channels.
Backside of model fresh off the printer
The backside after stringing... my cutout areas need to be a bit bigger
Progression from fresh off the printer, to strung, to lit!
