GALAXY, part 6

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Time to start getting concrete: how feasible was it to make these rings of light out of electroluminescent (EL) wire?

First step was to get my hands on EL wire. A short trip to Google gave me coolneon.com, and I knew I was in the right place because these people are burners too! Practically their entire website is geared to lighting up hippies on the Playa.

Given that I know nothing about EL wire and can barely solder, I ordered their starter kit: samples of all the thicknesses of wire, some battery packs (aka ‘drivers’), and a soldering iron with solder and other goodies.

It came with step by step instructions, as well as URLs for videos at the website. Piece o’ cake.

GALAXY-soldering-1.jpeg

I only burned myself once, and not badly. I immediately ordered a hands-free soldering station, though. Especially when you’re soldering the lead onto the EL wire, you really need 3–4 hands.

Essentially you strip one end of the EL wire and solder the ends to the ends of a lead, which will then snap onto the driver. Seal it up with shrink-wrap tubing — which you remembered to slip onto the wire before you soldered it — and you’re done.

The drivers all did different things in terms of blinking, shimmering, etc.; the main difference is the length of EL wire they can handle.

Here’s my first EL thingie:

GALAXY-soldering-2.jpeg

Ooh, and also aah!
Now I had questions:

  • What size/thickness of EL would serve my purposes? I was thinking that the thickest wire would be sturdy enough to be a self-supporting ring. ($1.40/foot)

  • Is the smallest, cheapest driver sufficient to my needs?

  • Could we somehow run them with solar powered batteries so that I wasn’t having to go around and turn on 180 of these things? (Or worse, get up at sunrise to turn them off?)

  • To create a ring, it’s going to be necessary to attach the two ends of the wire together. Is this doable with hot glue, i.e., something clear or translucent so that the light is uninterrupted?

I decided to call coolneon.com to find out.