3D Printed Shoulder Armour EL Wire Integration

I 3D printed a shoulder armor and integrated EL wire in it . You can use this technique for characters in comic con costume builds .

EL wire is the best in class for a uniform glow , unlike led,s which have bright spots and often require diffuser to have a uniform glow. EL wire can be used for a variety of purposes and especially for Comic Con events for different character illlumination . This instructable will help you integrate EL Wire in almost any of your builds .

So go ahead and place an order for EL wire that usually comes with a power source inverter which runs on 2 double AA batteries .

You can order one from Amazon- https://www.amazon.com/Lychee-Neon-Light-Wire-Batt...

Get the following hardware as well-

Copper wire (Any guage , buy one that is thinnest) - https://www.amazon.com/BNTECHGO-AWG-Magnet-Wire-Tr...

Wire cutter- https://www.amazon.com/KAHIOE-Cutter-Internal-Cutt...

Exacto Knife- https://www.amazon.com/BBTO-Stainless-Cutting-Scra...

Lighter (That has flame , not arc one)

Heat Shrink Tube

Solder Iron

Solder wire

This is the most important part of the build .

I used 5m EL wire .

Measure the length that you want to cut out from the El wire .

Using a wire cutter cut off the desired length and keep around 3 cms extra since we will need to strip it for connection.

There are 5 cores in this wire.

The outer most is a colored plastic wrap in my case green color .This outer most is the thickest layer and you need to cut this off carefully for the extra 3cms we had .

Once you strip the outer Green layer plastic you will encounter a second layer of clear plastic wrap .

This laser houses 2 ultra thin wire that are conductive and is shown in the photo above .

You need to go ahead and strip this clear coating so the 2 conductive wire with the phosphor coating is exposed . Extra care needs to be taken to strip this layer as , even if 1 of the thin wire brakes you will have to redo the previous steps again .

Considering you were extra cautious and have managed to follow along , you will find white colored ciddle core along with the 2 ultra thin wires , go ahead and just tuck the thin wires aside so we can work on the middle core .

Using an exacto knife go ahead and scrape out the phosphor coating on the middle core as much as 1 cm . Once scraped you will find another conductive wire inside this .

Phew ! I can tell you , this had been a challenge for me as well getting all the above right .

Lets Move to the next step ->>>>

The reason to choose enamled copper wire over normal wires is that you can easily work with them and they hide very easily into whatever you are building . The only drawback is it needs to be processed in order to be used . So if you are not that keen in making your builds that clean you can totally skip this one and use normal single strand wires/breadboard cables .

Assuming that you are a perfectionist and like to make clean builds , get your hands on such copper wire , measure the length you want from where the EL wire will be mounted to the EL inverter and cut two wires .

Now we will need a lighter to burn of the enamel on the outer perimeter on both wires at both the sides . Burn it about 1cm (Children take due precaution and use adult help and adults be safe while handling flames :p) .

One the enamel is burnt you can take fine grit sand paper and rub the ends . Using multimeter to check continuity . If the multimeter beeps we are good to go .

Moving on to the next step->>>

Heat up your solder gun .

Now we will ready the wires .

Grab the copper wires , put some solder on the solder gun once heated , dip the ends of copper wire in flux , and apply the solder on the copper wires .

Now repeat the same process on the El wire , intertwine the two thin wires together and apply solder to them .

Then apply solder to the middle conductive core as well .

Post the above steps take one of the copper wire and intertwine it with the two thin cable that we earlier soldered and again solder it .

Then take the second copper wire and solder to the center core .

After this put the open end of the copper wire into the Inverter output . (Polarity does not matter since its AC curent) and check whether the El wire glows . If it glows we have done all the steps right , you can then slide on a heat shrink tube on the soldered joints and seal it off .

Note - Dont touch exposed ends of the wire when powered you will feel a tingling !

Once our El wire is ready , we can mount it onto any surface using super glue .

Hack- Super glue takes some time to harden up , sprinkle some baking soda on the surface after applying the glue it will cure fast and harden like a rock .

In my case as you can see in the photo , I 3D printed a Shoulder Armour that had many grooves and measuring the grooves I cut the EL wire to length and routed the fine copper wires such that it could not be seen . Also I spray painted the 3Dprinted part once everything was complete to hide the golden color of the copper wire and give it a better look .

You can now integrate EL wire into any of your projects using the above steps .

If you have any concerns you can contact me .

I also design 3D printed parts , if you want one designed you can contact me .

And yes that's me in the picture : )