Both stylish AND safe!Originally Posted by Stiffler
Senior Member
Both stylish AND safe!
Junior Member
ok...first you guys are awesome! I don't fully understand all your abbreviations that were thrown around but get the idea.
I am located in Virginia USA (someone asked earlier).
The video of the baby is more what I am looking for I think. How do I find that? or recreate it?
Also, LED tape light was mentioned a couple times as the best idea so far...I am not familiar with that...where do I look for that?
I really like the lumiknight costume one too...that could be applied for other projects for us and good to know...However, for this one, I don't like the beams shooting out...I'd rather have more of a general wash output.
If I can't get fully integrated DMX suit made...I will settle for a suit that can be controlled on and off and offer a chase pattern of sorts that can be manually controlled by a switch by the dancer/performer. Any thoughts on that? (of course RGB options would be even better, and more flexible, but I need to take what I can get) :-)
Junior Member
For LED-lit fibre, try abrading the outside of an unclad fibre gently to impair its total internal reflection just a bit, so you get a fairly even escape of light along a long length. That might be cheap and very effective.[/QUOTE]
Please tell me more! I am not sure what 'abrading the outside of an unclad fibre' really means...How do you do that?
While I have been programming lights for the last 5 years I feel my knowledge is limiting sometimes in the field (LOL)
Senior Member
Something like this stuff:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-MTR-FIBR...item3a8aec472d
For reference, as eBay listings expire fast, it's 0.25mm thick unclad glass optical fibre, 99 pence per 5 metres, in multiples of 5 metres sold in one length on a roll. There may be better deals around, and maybe other thicknesses work better, but like the listing says, you can gently nick the surface with the corner edge of a fine file at several points along the length to make sparkling points of light, but my notion was to draw the fibre through a folded piece of the finest wet/dry emery paper you can get. Draw it very evenly, don't grip the paper's grinding surface hard, just hold it with barely enough tension to cause slight friction, the idea being to make the surface of the fibre very slightly rough so it leaks a glow evenly along its entire length if possible.
Maybe it won't even work, but it would look extremely cool if it did because you'd have bright hair-thin lines of light, and feed a group of ends from an RGB LED source that can have each colour strobed or faded. If it works, LED tape might look very crude in comparison. It may be too expensive, or fragile, but at 99p you can afford to try a sample.There are other thicknesses so you can experiment with those too.
Jr. Woodchuckington Janitor III, Esq.
what about:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Side-glowi...51438843693%26
Something like this stuff:
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/5-MTR-FIBR...item3a8aec472d
For reference, as eBay listings expire fast, it's 0.25mm thick unclad glass optical fibre, 99 pence per 5 metres, in multiples of 5 metres sold in one length on a roll. There may be better deals around, and maybe other thicknesses work better, but like the listing says, you can gently nick the surface with the corner edge of a fine file at several points along the length to make sparkling points of light, but my notion was to draw the fibre through a folded piece of the finest wet/dry emery paper you can get. Draw it very evenly, don't grip the paper's grinding surface hard, just hold it with barely enough tension to cause slight friction, the idea being to make the surface of the fibre very slightly rough so it leaks a glow evenly along its entire length if possible.
Maybe it won't even work, but it would look extremely cool if it did because you'd have bright hair-thin lines of light, and feed a group of ends from an RGB LED source that can have each colour strobed or faded. If it works, LED tape might look very crude in comparison. It may be too expensive, or fragile, but at 99p you can afford to try a sample.
suppose you're thinkin' about a plate o' shrimp. Suddenly someone'll say, like, plate, or shrimp, or plate o' shrimp out of the blue, no explanation. No point in lookin' for one, either. It's all part of a cosmic unconciousness.
Senior Member
Maybe.
http://www.ebay.co.uk/itm/Flexi-Side...21370672487%26
That one, same seller I think, shows a weird angle-of-bend dependency. If the surface of a thinner cable were very lightly abraded, the result could be finer, and a lot less sensitive to bend radius or viewing angle. I'm just speculating though, it might be really tough, and timeconsuming, to do it to a lot of thin cables. On the other hand, it may be possible to dump a load of loose lengths into some acid or caustic etchant designed for glass or plastic (for whatever fibre gets chosen). That might prepare a whole bunch of them very quickly, and the result might be very consistent.
Senior Member
FWIW, I knew someone who worked on tron and they were constantly having issues with the EL tape they used in the costumes. It is actually pretty fragile stuff.
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