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Hey Guys,

Ok, so ive had an idea I will be trying out hopefully later today and just wanted some input if anyone could see any problems or suggestions?

I have bought some (very cheap) fibre strands that are connected to an LED; its a hair accessory for little girls to put in their hair and makes it twinkle and glow.
What I intend to do is mount the fibre ends within some UHU glue or any clear glue that I can find, the overall aim being to disperse the light from the fibre tip and make the clear glue glow.
My overall intention is to attempt to achieve a 'force' effect, So on a model what I would do is lay the fibres over a blade and then give it a light UHU glue layer, hopefully shaping the UHU so it atleast appears like a 'power force' or energy dispersion effect. Secondly if it looked too obvious, I could then airbrush a layer of the transparent paints from badger.... (name escapes me) over the glue, so it is then tinted, allowing the light from the fibres to simply accentuate the tinting. It wouldn't be very difficult to then modify the circuitry so the fibres faded/twinkled/pulsed or whatever as currently I think they simply remain full on.

Any thoughts?

Minitaire is the Badger paint line, with Ghost Tints being the transparent segment thereof.

One concern would be brightness. To avoid having the fiber optic cables be so fat as to make placement around a blade utterly destroy the profile, you'd need a lot of fine cables and a very bright LED lightsource - fiber optics only emit light at the very tip, after all, so you'd need enough strands to dot the entire surface you want to light. Side-firing fiber optics are harder to find (and more expensive), but might better serve your intended application. A light-diffusing coating and automated variable-voltage power source with a fine, edge-mounted EL wire sounds even better, to me.

Without having seen your light-y-widget in action, I really can't say whether I think it would work with your current plan. If it was truly that cheap, just go for it and see what happens!

P.S. - Clipping the strands at an angle will broaden the light-emitting surface area of each fiber. If the points of light are too focused, sanding them lightly will frost the tips, diffusing the glow without necessitating additional colored coatings, which will dull things down to, I assume, barely visible levels.

be careful if you are cutting or working with the fibre optic strands.

wear glasses, use gloves, and have a covered surface you can throw away to work on.

also have tape on hand to pick up shards, and enclose your workspace with cardboard or something so no peices go flying out.

its *NO JOKE* get one sliver of this stuff in your hands, or worse, you eyes, and it will annoy you for the rest of your life IF you are lucky.

I think instead of the fibres you should use he 0,2 mm LEDs you can use much Smaller wires and its not so obvious like the strands

Thanks for all the comments guys, I have quite a bit of experience with fibres so dont worry about that front Aint gona be taking no eyeball shots of fibre

I have considered EL wire before, the main issue is cost, anything like that is going to start getting pricey, as currently I paid like £2 for a pack of 4 of these accessories, they dont have the best reviews - ie strands falling out, but with a bit of glue they will hold much better.

There seems to be quite a few strands per accessory, more than I expected, I am hoping the clear glue will help diffuse the light from the tips. I could potentially mix the glue with glitter. I'll do that as a comparison I think.

Winterwind, I think i'd find the 0.2mm LEDs too large, I would be able to get away with less, but I would have to hide it somewhere neatly. I didn't get a chance to try it last night, but i've got all me tools prep'd for when I get home. I will post pictures of each stage. Primarily an experiment, as I think there is much more that electronics has to offer modelling. Starting to see some nice LED incorporation, but I think there are loads of other awesome things you could do

Be sure to post your results when you start fiddling around with it! Based on the OP, I wasn't sure if you were an expert or a total neophyte - only one of those two types would ever casually suggest that modifying circuitry "wouldn't be very difficult."

Still have my doubts about the plan, but I'd love to be proven wrong - it'd open up tons of potential model lighting projects based on cheap fiber optic toys/decorations/widgets for the electronically disinclined, of which I count myself a reluctant member.

 oadie wrote:
Be sure to post your results when you start fiddling around with it! Based on the OP, I wasn't sure if you were an expert or a total neophyte - only one of those two types would ever casually suggest that modifying circuitry "wouldn't be very difficult."

Still have my doubts about the plan, but I'd love to be proven wrong - it'd open up tons of potential model lighting projects based on cheap fiber optic toys/decorations/widgets for the electronically disinclined, of which I count myself a reluctant member.

ahaha oh dear...
Last night I couldn't find my UHU glue to save my fricken life! I literally searched everywhere I could think of (but it is certainly not beyond me to put something somewhere I initially think is a good place and to never find it again). I had a look at the toy and actually switched it on, it emits a reasonable amount of light and there are quite a few strands. Although I couldn't see the circuitry operating it, the LED was RGB and had a predefined pattern, fade, fade, fade, flash flash flash, moving between the colours. I had thought it was single colour, but nvm a flashing multicoloured sword here I come!

So now; anyone UK based know where I can get UHU glue from a shop?
Should I go to my arts and crafts store or is UHU more a B&Q job?

That stuff is almost impossible to find in the states, short of paying $20/tube on Amazon.

Found some of my other glue, not UHU, but similar, not quite as good a product I dont think....

well i had some weird results for sure.
This is the device in question


The two glues I tested



Test 1:


I wanted to demonstrate the difference between with glitter and without, however, if you can see at the edge of the photo I have glued the tips of the longest fibres down and they are not lit. Initially they were lit, but when I put a secondary bit of glue a few cm down the same fibres (its basically staggered, the fibres are all various length, so this was the second stage from the tip where it glowed.) the glue lower down has somehow cut off the tips, I believe the glue must be melting the fibres ever so slightly, however as you can see the end result is reasonable.

hard to capture pulsing LEDs on a phone camera, but the light dispersed ok, unsure what to make of the melting, as its effective in that I can simply put the glue where I want the light, but it also means I cant have the fibres running through the glue, thus limiting its range.


Second test to demonstrate the melting.


I poured the glue in a circle and spiralled the fibres into it, however as you can see it has cut off the fibres right until they leave the glue. Was bizarre to watch, as initially it worked fine, the spiral glowed, but slowly it faded until it was simply what you can see above.

Think there is some potential, but its going to need some thought.