Glow in the Dark Projects and Mods

oops.. wrong post.

Lightmania

greenLED said:

I did several ArcAAA's like that as well - GID paint on the back of a 5mm LED. Pics of what I did are back in this thread somewhere. The pic JM linked shows that as well.

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greenLED,

You are my inspiration for this project. Your pictures are great. :rock: However, the question regarding conductivity of the paint goes unanswered. How do I know some of the driving current isn't being "wasted" in the paint?

Nevermind. Not important.

JM-99

EngrPaul said:

How do I know some of the driving current isn't being "wasted" in the paint?

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Other than asking Skylighter, you could finish the mod yourself, and then measure the current (if any - I suspect none, but that's just a guess based on my assumption of how other paints conduct electricity. You've spiked my curiosity now; looking forward to your tests.

I will be applying the paint on some kapton not the LED, and then measure across the insulator. If there is no measureable conductivity, I know I have no worry.

If there is any conductivity, I will coat at least one of the LED wires with something before applying the glow paint.

BTW, I did a E0 mod with the sandwich shoppe's high power white 5mm LED, and I'm very happy with the results. Much whiter color, and more of a flood. It's now an extremely useful flashlight. The glow paint will be the finishing touch.

The paint is solvent-based acrylic. My guess conductivity is non-existent. Measurements confirm/negate thoughts, so go for it! We can only learn from your little experiment.

One customer did some experiments a while back. His report is that:

The powder is conductive.
The paint, as-is, is not conductive.
Electricity does not work to excite (charge) the pigments.

I am off to do Glow Inc.'s yearly Free Haunted Trail. Glow Inc trivia: A bunch of us from a company called Network Inc. decided to do a yearly Free Haunted Trail for the neighborhood kids. One year, we needed glow in the dark paint. The stuff we bought was total junk, so we spent the next year researching to find better stuff. In the process, we accidentally created version 1 of Glow Inc.'s paint and the new company was born, originally as just a hobby.

My test agrees, no conductivity (infinite resistance on DMM)

EngrPaul said:

My test agrees, no conductivity (infinite resistance on DMM)

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Sweet! Nothing's better than confirmation.

Now, pay up. :lolsign:

However, the powder is reactive to heat and pressure.

When touched with a soldering iron the powder glows, or when I press down hard on it with a screwdriver

Yup, I noticed the same reactivity to heat. If I charge up one of my glow epoxy tab things I made, and then dip it in warm water, it glows really bright where it's in the warm water. Pretty neat. Heat and force though can damage the powder...

a hot iron across the glow powder causes it to glow. Does the heat kill it?

greenlight said:

Does the heat kill it?

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I don't know the answer to that one.

On other news, Glow Inc. should be announcing an innovative new product before the end of the year. Stay tuned.

Skylighter said:

One customer did some experiments a while back. His report is that:

The powder is conductive.

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Actually, no -- it's not.

I just checked with a multimeter. Infinite resistance. This was with the "pure blue". This was just the powder...not powder in epoxy.

JM-99

Now you have me curious if the Green or the Zinc products are conductive. Maybe I will give it a try tommorow.

Jumpmaster said:

Actually, no -- it's not.

I just checked with a multimeter. Infinite resistance. This was with the "pure blue". This was just the powder...not powder in epoxy.

JM-99

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Yeah, that could be it...would be interesting to check. I have (I think) the ultra green also, but had not opened it up yet. When I do, I will check it also and report back...

JM-99

A customer sent me this picture:

Skylighter said:

On other news, Glow Inc. should be announcing an innovative new product before the end of the year. Stay tuned.

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bucket-full'o

Innovative new product? I need an innovative way to get money! Now!
Curious mode is on....

Luigi

Skylighter said:

I don't know the answer to that one.

On other news, Glow Inc. should be announcing an innovative new product before the end of the year. Stay tuned.

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Here's something I've been working on and off for a long time now. I don't have much time to do real stuff anymore, so this is taken me a loooooooong time to complete. Let me start by saying that I knew ahead of time that combining GID colors wouldn't yield new colors. That said, I wanted to see what *would* happen if I decided to mix different GID colors (powder) together with epoxy, so that's what this little experiment was all about.

From left to right:

1. 2 color ultra green: the green portion is just ultra green powder, the orange is a combination of daytime orange and ultra green. (See #4 for more info.)
2. pure blue: this is definitely my favorite color of glow, forget the 12 hours of glow green gives, I like blue!
3. ultra green: the pure and unadulterated ultra green we all love
4. day-glo orange + ultra green: This was actually done before #1, just to test what the combination will look like. In daylight, the orange is not as intense as it would be if you only used that powder as part of the mix. You can even see it glow peach as usual. My intention adding ultra green to the mix was to enhance the duration of the glow by adding some ultra green. Whether I was successful in achieving this or not... haven't fully tested it yet (too tired to wake up in the middle of the night). As a side note, if you mix pure daytime orange or pure daytime pink with epoxy, the resulting (daytime) color is very intense (I did a daytime orange ring around my U2 at one point). Since I mixed the daytime orange with other powder, that visual effect was diluted somewhat.
5. ultra blue: pure and unadulterated ultra blue (turquoise) goodness!

Here's a close-up so you can appreciate the 2-color mod better:




My wife suggested I should try a pure blue/ultra green combination some time. I'd get the beautiful blue and the long runtime of green. She's a genious, that's why I married her.

Finally, a shot in the dark (I like the reflection off the table):



Some final notes:

• These are all Fenix L1P/L1P clone tails. The epoxy was applied on the space between the rubber button and the outer walls of the tailcap.
• Only in the pure blue one I left room for threading a lanyard split ring (as you can see attached); all others I just filled with the GID+epoxy mix.
• Although not necessary for proper operation of the switch (once assembled), I did sand down the inner edge of the glow rings. The pics don't show it, but the inner edge is curved (in most of the tails - I really was just playing with these).
• See how the pure blue ring is shiny? Sanding the epoxy makes it dull. I'm still trying to figure out how to polish it back to a nice shine. I tried sanding it with finer grades of sandpaper (that's why you see some dark spots in the pics, that's sandpaper residue accumulated in the bubble cavities, which obviously I wasn't careful enough to avoid while mixing the epoxy). At one point I tried polishing with Flitz, but it was a no-go. I've coated GID stuff with nail polish, and although acceptable to bring out shine and protect the material, I'm not sure it's all that durable in a high-friction area as this. Any ideas/suggestions?
• I used greenlight's "painting with light" techinique so you could see some of the background. The camera settings on the first 2 pics was the same; the difference you see in brightness is because of me bouncing light for different times.

I think that's it for now. Enjoy!