El Wire & Glowing Ball Questions

[WildCat]

Hey Peeps,

Super excited for the burn this year! A few questions about El Wire and glowing balls.

I'm building a big glowing staff for Burning Man. The staff will be wrapped in El Wire and have a glowing ball at the top. My questions:

1) How do I extend El Wire so it's longer than 9 feet? Do I solder a connector from one end to another strip of El Wire?

2) Can multiple lengths of El Wire run off one battery pack? Suppose I use three 9 feet El Wires, each which comes with its own battery pack / inverter. I'd prefer not to have to change batteries and turn things on and off in three separate places. Is it possible to merge these all into one battery pack or on/off switch?

3) The glowing ball at the top runs off of 2 1.5v batteries. That means it's a 3 volt light- am I right? Could I use a 6-volt battery pack (4 1.5v batteries) and split half the charge to the El Wire and half the charge to the light bulb, so they're each getting 3 volts each? Thereby powering the staff on a single 4 battery pack.

Thanks !

- Wildcat

[Conduit]

Hey Peeps,

Super excited for the burn this year! A few questions about El Wire and glowing balls.

I'm building a big glowing staff for Burning Man. The staff will be wrapped in El Wire and have a glowing ball at the top. My questions:

1) How do I extend El Wire so it's longer than 9 feet? Do I solder a connector from one end to another strip of El Wire?

2) Can multiple lengths of El Wire run off one battery pack? Suppose I use three 9 feet El Wires, each which comes with its own battery pack / inverter. I'd prefer not to have to change batteries and turn things on and off in three separate places. Is it possible to merge these all into one battery pack or on/off switch?

3) The glowing ball at the top runs off of 2 1.5v batteries. That means it's a 3 volt light- am I right? Could I use a 6-volt battery pack (4 1.5v batteries) and split half the charge to the El Wire and half the charge to the light bulb, so they're each getting 3 volts each? Thereby powering the staff on a single 4 battery pack.

Thanks !

- Wildcat

Wildcat -

The battery pack and self contained driver are sized to run the length of el wire that they are attached to when you buy a pre-made kit. If you were to connect more wire then the brightness will diminish dramatically. Have you done much soldering? El wire has 3 wires within the plastic coating:

1 center wire with the phosphorus coating
2 tiny "hair" wires that create the current that makes the phosphorus glow

Stripping the plastic coating without severing the hair wires can be a challenge but totally do able. It takes practice. Also soldering the el wire takes some practice and steady hands. Make sure you have extra to practice with.

If you want to run all three lengths of wire you need to buy a bigger driver. Cool Neon is where I buy my stuff and they even offer a burner discount. They also offer some great tutorial videos on you tube. Make sure that if you decide to build your set up that you order the heat shrink tubing with glue, it holds your seams together really well. Good luck!

[percussivepaul]

Usually EL wire is hooked up like this:
{Battery/driver --> +- wires --> connector} == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire}

Where I wrote "+- wires" I mean the paired wires that carry power and ground. The connection from EL wire to +- wires is really finicky -- involves stripping the wire without damaging the little 'angel wires'. It's easiest to buy EL wire pre-attached to a wire/connector in the length you need. You can buy 20 foot lengths no problem if you want.

You can join up the +- wires from multiple lengths of EL wire, either by soldering them yourself, or you can get presoldered connectors like this four-to-one connector from Cool Neon (though I used one of these and only 3 out of the 4 worked, it had a quality issue). You can have any length of wire on each connector. However, the driver has to be sized for the total length of wire you have connected to it. Three 9-ft lengths makes 27 ft of wire -- a little baby driver won't work. Try this one. In this case it looks like this:
{Battery/ driver --> +- wires --> connector} == {connector -- four-to-one-joint -- 4 connectors} == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire }
.............................................................................................................. == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire }
.............................................................................................................. == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire }

If you wanted to extend EL wire, it could look like this:
{Battery/driver --> +- wires --> connector} == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire --> +- wires --> connector} == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire}

Or like this:
{Battery/driver --> +- wires --> connector} == {connector <-- +- wires <-- EL wire --> +- wires <-- EL wire}

The first gives you flexibility with a connector; the second is permanent, but might look better, since you could make the connecting wire very short. Soldering EL wire can be a pain, again, so it's better to try to avoid it if possible.

There is no good way to split up your power supply to power a 3V light -- the reliable easy option is to have two power supplies, or to have a light that can run on the same voltage as your power supply. Also, if you have a lot of EL wire (27 ft is a fait bit), you might have better results with a 12V power supply (8x AA batteries). Good luck.