Electroluminescent (EL) wire is exactly what it sounds like – wire that glows when you put power to it. Fortunately, it’s also very easy to work with, and could probably help with those high-tech costumes out there.
I purchased my EL wire and most of the other parts for this from CooLight, an online store which sells EL wire, kits, inverters, and other parts that you might find handy.
Step 1: Setup
For a basic, portable EL wire setup, you’ll need the following:
- Inverter (I used this one for this example).
- Battery (9v to go with my inverter)
- Battery tab (9v, again, can be purchased from most electronics stores or from CooLight)
- 5mm Blue-Green EL wire (12′)
Step 2: Stripping
Personally, I like the auto-adjusting wire stripper I bought from Radio Shack – it makes it very easy to strip the outer casing from the wire..
.. as well as the inner casing, to get at the core wire and outer wires
It’s hard to see from these pictures, but EL wire has four parts – Outer casing (thick plastic), inner casing (plastic, covers wires), a pair of outer wires (very thin), and an inner, core wire (thicker, coated by phosphorescent paper).
When stripping the inner casing, be careful not to tear off the outer wires – they are extremely thin, and easy to break. Experiment on spare wire before working on your actual project.
Step 3: Soldering
Soldering the wires is very straightforward – hook the inputs for your inverter to the battery tab, then one output hooks to the core of the EL wire, while the other output should be soldered to both outer wires. Since they are so small, you might want to experiment here a few times, too.
Step 4: .. Done
And yes, that’s it. Plug your battery in, and see the wire light up nicely. One great feature about EL wire is that you can trim it down – just cut off as much as you want from the free end, like here where I trimmed off about half the wire:
Notice that the shorter wire is also brighter, since the same current is still flowing through half the previous length.
Unfortunately, EL wire doesn’t show up that well in bright rooms where people use flashes on their cameras:
Still, in person, even in brightly lit rooms, the wire is obviously glowing, and it looks really great in the dark.
#1 by Evan Chow on October 4, 2011 - 10:38 pm
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im thinking of making a sword out of resin would you think i could some how place the EL wire within the resin ….. and if i could would it glow through
#2 by Makoto on October 5, 2011 - 8:47 am
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I’ve done that before, and it works well. Here’s the approach I took:
I picked up a clear acrylic rod, about 1/8″ thick, cut to the length of my blade, and hot glued multiple passes of the EL wire lengthwise along the rod. White rod would likely also work, depending on your needs.
Next, I set up my sword blade mold, which you’ve got plenty of options for, depending on the shape you need. I set it up so I could pour the resin into the base of the blade, where it would connect to the hilt of the sword.
I lightly tinted the resin with a tiny bit of resin tint, so it would hold some color even when the EL wire was turned off. While the resin was sill liquid in the mold, I inserted the EL wire rod into it, supporting the end out of the liquid so I could later form the hilt of the sword (with battery and inverter) around it.
If you want to have a removable blade, you can send power to the EL wire through a stereo jack, which you can embed into the blade and hilt separately, but this will weaken it a bit.
#3 by Evan Chow on October 11, 2011 - 8:25 pm
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thanks so much this actually was so helpful cause i wasnt sure if it would work but it reassuring to kno some has done it
#4 by Makoto on October 11, 2011 - 8:48 pm
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Glad I could help! Tried sending you an email response, but it bounced, apparently someone is using the same email server I am for spamming.
Post pictures when you get it working!