Final Documention

For the final version of my “tron” jacket, i ended up going with EL Wirevto light up my jacket.

Recap:

Back in the final weeks of my project, my jacket experienced a few major and crippling problems.

  1. The method of attachment was failing. Originally, I had planned to attach the LEDs strips on my jacket using hot glue. Because the jacket was to be treated more or less as a prototype, the hot glue was to be enough to hold. But as time went, the LED strip proved too heavy. This caused failure points and inconsistencies in the attachment and complete failure down the line.
  2. Solder points started to fail. Due to my lack of experience with soldering, the original points along which i used to connect the LED strips together started to break. This produced connectivity issues and certain strips did not pick up signals and currents.

Due to these issues, the completion of the project came to a halt. To avoid the same issues as before, I decided to revise the parts being utilized to make my jacket glow and simplify it.

New parts include:

2x__1m of yellow EL Wire

1x__ AAA (x4) battery inverter

Next:

Using orange thread, I was able to route the EL Wire first down the sleeve, and then back up towards the shoulder. This was done due to the wire’s extensive length. At the top of the shoulder, the wire ducks through a hole and runs down the inside of the jacket. The same process was repeated for the other sleeve.

To control the wire, the inverter was placed in a convenient place: the pocket.  The wires connecting to the EL wires were passed through a hole in the pocket.

Future improvements:

First, there was a lack of proper equipment like a sewing machine, the process of attaching the EL wire was done by hand and could not be done as efficiently and as clean as it could be.

Second, with more time and a better jacket as a platform, the EL wires could have been better hidden around the jacket for a cleaner effect.

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