Let's nerd out about Blacklights

[melodiousdirge]

That's HUGE!

Now if you had a couple of those, a mirror, & a lens, you could make a UV spotlight & give the man a nice tan.

Actually, that light scares me a little.

I think american DJ or chauvet actually make a "blacklight cannon" that uses this bulb, but because UV light doesn't really refract or reflect very efficiently, I'm not sure how well it works.

I do have a 2000mw violet laser that creates a visible spot on things at vast distances, but obviously for safety reasons (it will also set things on fire up close) that's not part of my playa plan. "Luminous Devices" makes some incredible UV LEDs that I think would scare me more than this giant thing. The biggest one they make is a 20 watt chip that's only 4.5x3.5mm or so. Unfortunately they are quite expensive, but if one were to build a strip array out of a bunch of them, I think you could get close to the "suntan the man" range of output :p.

[CyanEssence]

That blacklight is certainly impressive. I'd like to see that in action.

I made two prototype glow canvases. They work well with blacklight, as expected. With a red laser, they only work after the black light has been on them, and it is not all that impressive. No lasers this year anyway...

My second prototype involved making a stencil, and painting over it. The idea was to put a layer of UV paint, add the stencil, and do several layers of glow paint. What I hoped would happen is that this would cause glowing everywhere but where the stencil had been (after it was removed), and there would be a nice image that was UV-reactive. Unfortunately, when I pulled off the stencil, all the glow paint came off. I am going to try removing the stencil before the glow paint drys, and try using non-paper stencils.

I still need to figure out what I can use for the stencil. I need something that is durable like plastic, but flexible enough to be folded, and it also needs to be easily cut with scissors.

[melodiousdirge]

Got the 18w floods installed on my trailer. They still produce a bit of blue light due to the conformal coating, but I'm shrugging this off as a whatever at this point. This way I'll be able to navigate around inside my dome a little better with the blacklights on, due to the visible light present.

[melodiousdirge]

Aright, well if a pair of 18W LED blacklights aren't impressive enough, I got my eyeball irradiating 400w fixture most of the way together last night:



It still needs a screen or something to keep fingers from accidentally finding the bulb, as it gets seriously hot. I tried to take a photo of how it throws light around my garage, but my garage is long and narrow, and a complete fucking disastermess right now, so all you really get is a purple blur with some random fluorescing things. I plan to take this beast over to a friends house who has a few fluorescent tubes installed in his party room, along with quite a bit of glowing decor, just to get a good compare against T8 tubes.

[Token]

Smashing Good! Very cool recycle. Love it.

[CyanEssence]

This may be old news to you, but I came across this video, and thought of your project, specifically at 0:38 (only visible for about 2 seconds, so watch closely). Pretty amazing set up that they have. I am assuming it is blacklight.

[media]

[melodiousdirge]

Pretty amazing set up that they have. I am assuming it is blacklight.

Dooooooooope! Looks like a lot of blacklight and a LOT of uv reactive paint.

[Jovankat]

I plan to take this beast over to a friends house who has a few fluorescent tubes installed in his party room, along with quite a bit of glowing decor, just to get a good compare against T8 tubes.

I'm looking forward to hearing your comparison of these two options because I'm thinking either a bunch of tubes or one, maybe two of the readymade fixtures for those 400W bulbs. Thanks for doing my research for me

[melodiousdirge]

I plan to take this beast over to a friends house who has a few fluorescent tubes installed in his party room, along with quite a bit of glowing decor, just to get a good compare against T8 tubes.

I'm looking forward to hearing your comparison of these two options because I'm thinking either a bunch of tubes or one, maybe two of the readymade fixtures for those 400W bulbs. Thanks for doing my research for me

I'll certainly keep you posted. I'll be honest and say the primary reason I did the 400w fixture was purely shits and giggles. I don't expect to get much use out of it. It kind of depends on your application though; lots of T8s would allow you to illuminate everything from multiple angles, and spread them around for even lighting, while the monster 400w bulb is kind of a point source and may leave you with some shaded areas. FWIW you can buy 6-8 48" T8 fixtures with tubes for the same price as one of the 400w fixtures. You'd have slightly less wattage, but having so many lamps would allow you to put lamps where you want them, giving you better control over where the light falls. If I was setting up a haunted house or party space, I think I'd go with the T8s. If I was lighting up a dance floor from above, and I was working with 20' ceilings, then I might go with the 400w jobs.

[caffeineslinger]

Pretty amazing set up that they have. I am assuming it is blacklight.

Dooooooooope! Looks like a lot of blacklight and a LOT of uv reactive paint.

That was cool. It was hand cranked to create the movement. One of my favorites Ive seen out there.
The creator was standing near us when we found it. I wish I got his name.

[festguru]

As a blacklight junkie, it seems I can never get the fix that I want. I've been so annoyed by going to Neon or Glow parties, only to be disappointed because they have 2 blacklights and consider that a freaking blacklight party.

I appreciate the info you posted and can't wait to try some of these out in my own experiments. Neon is everywhere now and goes hand in hand with black lights. My contribution to this conversation is this:

When you go shopping for anything for a festival be sure to take a blacklight flashlight with you. Few things are as disappointing as finding that the neon clothing that you purchased looks neon but doesn't fluoresce properly. Hit it for a second with the black light flashlight and you'll know instantly whether it will suit your needs.

Also don't forget glow-in-the-dark stuff can work well under black lights. You can use these to add accents or accessorize.

[melodiousdirge]

Thanks for the reply. Agreed on the flashlight thing - I've been surprised by a couple of things that looked like they ought to fluoresce properly but oddly don't.

In other news I got my hands on some riboflavin and that stuff is a POTENT UV reactive agent. One tablet dissolved in a glass of water looks utterly disgusting under normal light - like a mid-burn urine sample. It glows strongly yellow under blacklight though, and if you dilute that sample about 50/1 or 100/1 it still glows brightly under UV. I haven't tested out the taste threshold for it yet, but it's in a lot of energy drinks, so it can't be that offensive. Would be cool to add to a large punch bowl at a blacklight party.

[melodiousdirge]

Finally took delivery of 365nm LEDs, and I have to say I completely agree with most of what I've read, in that when I first put power to them, I was quite disappointed with the light output... UNTIL I brought some UV reactive substances into the frame. See the 395nm lights put out enough visible purple light that they look like they're putting out more light on normal, neutral surfaces, but the 365 nm leds bring out MORE fluorescence, while showing LESS visible light on neutral surfaces. So really depending what kind of effect you're going for, the 365nm leds will be much better in most applications, as they really bring out the 'disembodied glow' effect - you can't tell there is a light shining on the object, it just looks like it's glowing.

I got these 3w, 365nm guys off ebay for about $2 apiece, already mounted to heat sinks. At 3.8v/700mA the little star heat sink gets very warm to the touch, probably enough to burn sensitive skin - I'm hoping not hot enough to melt the nylon umbrella I'm hoping to mount them to.

Pics!:
Individual LEDs are quite small:


This doesn't do the light output justice - for reference this tonic water barely lights up at all next to my fluorescent tube lights. Out of frame in this picture the shelf about 5' above the LED has all the textbooks on it brightly glowing, along with the white paint on the ceiling. This little 3W LED puts out at least as much UV light as my 21 Watt CFL screw-in bulbs.

[mattcamp]

So my 385nm, 3w emitters finally arrived the other day. I mentioned earlier that one project I wanted to do in this vein was to take some obnoxiously bright 18w LED flood lights from ebay ($20-$30 for a pair) and remove the white emitters, replace with 3w, 385nm emitters (about $1.20 per emitter). Last night I finished swapping out the LEDs, and I have to say I'm very impressed with the initial performance.

I picked up a couple of these lights with the intention of doing this but I can't seem to figure out how to open them up!

The one I have appears to be one sealed metal rear housing with a plastic lens on the front, but not amount of prying around the edge of the lens will move it. There are no screws or anything at all that I can find!

Did you have this sort of problem?

[melodiousdirge]

So my 385nm, 3w emitters finally arrived the other day. I mentioned earlier that one project I wanted to do in this vein was to take some obnoxiously bright 18w LED flood lights from ebay ($20-$30 for a pair) and remove the white emitters, replace with 3w, 385nm emitters (about $1.20 per emitter). Last night I finished swapping out the LEDs, and I have to say I'm very impressed with the initial performance.

I picked up a couple of these lights with the intention of doing this but I can't seem to figure out how to open them up!

The one I have appears to be one sealed metal rear housing with a plastic lens on the front, but not amount of prying around the edge of the lens will move it. There are no screws or anything at all that I can find!

Did you have this sort of problem?

I did actually, and I wound up breaking the lens on one of them before I figured out how to get it out... the lens snaps into the one piece rear housing with a little tab on one of the long sides; unfortunately the circuit board underneath that holds all the LEDs is embedded in a potting compound (basically a two part plastic mix that gets poured over the electronics and then hardens to protect the circuits from dirt/water). Now, the thing is, they pour the potting compound in there, and install the front lens before its cured, so the lens is essentially glued in. Shitty deal right? The trick I found is that the potting compound is actually designed to be removed if necessary; if you put the lamp in a vise and heat the outsides of the aluminum case all the way around with a heat gun (careful not to melt the lens), eventually the compound loses cohesion and you can carefully pry out the lens with a small screwdriver, working your way around bit by bit. You'll then have a second hurdle of getting the potting goo off the circuit board so you can get at the solder contacts - I just did the same thing, heating the plastic up directly with a heat gun and scraping it off with a screwdriver. If you heat it up enough, it comes off relatively easily; I was able to get enough of it off without damaging the circuit board. I only took one photo during this process unfortunately - after the new emitters were installed, but you can kind of see the clear plastic crud scraped off around each emitter.

[melodiousdirge]

FWIW I also needed to do some heating/scraping to get the residual goop out of the slot the lens snaps into before I could get it back together. I then used clear silicone to stick the lens back in so it didn't become a brick of playa.

[mattcamp]

Thanks! I'll bust out the heat gun later and have a go.

Kinda glad I only bought one to test with currently... I see a few slightly different models on ebay for only a few dollars more that appear to have visible screws... might be worth the extra if they're easily disassembled.

[melodiousdirge]

Thanks! I'll bust out the heat gun later and have a go.

Kinda glad I only bought one to test with currently... I see a few slightly different models on ebay for only a few dollars more that appear to have visible screws... might be worth the extra if they're easily disassembled.

Easy dis-assembly would have been worth a few extra $ in my book too. They are cheap enough that I didn't mind the risk of breaking one once I discovered they were glued together, but I probably would have considered different ones if I'd known ahead of time.

[melodiousdirge]

Blacklight umbrella put together with 365nm 3W leds. These leds might be a bit more than I needed for this project... they get pretty warm, and use a lot of juice, but man do they produce a strong effect.

[Jovankat]

This arrived yesterday.

71cGD-DjFgL._SL1200_.jpg

It takes the same giant 400w bulb as melodiousdirge was playing with on the previous page.

It is excellent

[gaminwench]

My braids are gonna look GREAT under this light! I'm gonna be the UV flowergirl!!!

[Jovankat]

Yes my hair glows!

[gaminwench]

It's a themed wedding!

[Token]

MD's shenanigans are getting me weirdly aroused.

Keep it up.

[melodiousdirge]

MD's shenanigans are getting me weirdly aroused.

Keep it up.

#confusedboner

[melodiousdirge]

Stressing out about bugpocalypse now, considering I was planning on carrying around what amounts to a high wattage insect beacon at night. Bah I say.

[Token]

Two words for you.

Tesla Coil

[melodiousdirge]

Tesla Coil

I'd hate to see the battery pack I'd have to lug around for THAT, but wouldn't that be the baddest f'n costume accessory out there.

[Token]

You seen a tazer before, right?

You could scale that concept up a bit without much trouble.

[Canoe]

Hang up a white sheet and light with your blacklights. Instant bug party.
(technique to gather them. used to do this to be able to collect them to photograph)