Today's video is sponsored by the Great Courses Plus,
A subscription-based on-demand video learning platform where you can learn how to become a Hacksmith, you can learn how to make cool stuff like this,
or even this!
Okay, maybe not that, but definitely stuff like this.
Hey guys with Justice League just hitting theaters we decided it's time to take on a Wonder Woman project for Jordie, a resident cosplayer.
We're gonna start small and work our way up to bulletproof bracers for Wonder Woman.
But in today's episode we're gonna make Wonder Woman's lasso. It needs to glow, and it needs to whip.
And it needs to make you tell the truth.
All right to build Wonder Woman's lasso we're gonna start with a base first and to do that
we're actually gonna use 2000 pound Kevlar rope that way this whip is extra strong. Now the tricky part is making this glow somehow
We like the look of EL wire, but the problem is the stuff you buy online
Well, it's pretty pathetic. It doesn't really look anything like Wonder one's lasso in the movie
So we're gonna have to hack this because that is definitely not bright enough.
Now, we did a bit of research online
And it seems like if you overpower EL wire you can get to be a lot brighter
The only issue is it might not last as long so instead of lasting for say 3000 hours
it only lasts for 30 hours, but for us that doesn't really matter
I don't think we're gonna be lasso-ing stuff for an entire week.
Now as you know I'm a mechanical engineer and not an electrical engineer, so I'm gonna get Bogdan to help me soup up the circuit
So we can have extra bright EL wire
So in order to overpower this we're gonna have to identify the components that are the weakest link so
how we're actually going to do that is we're gonna use a thermal camera.
So we're gonna actually look at the circuit board and as we pump more power into it
We're gonna be able to identify which components are getting a hot and which components we might need to replace
With bigger components in order to provide the extra power to make the EL wire super-bright
Bogdan: I'm only drawing 250 milliamps James: Alright 30 volts
Whew that's a capacitor there she goes!
Bogdan: So what we can do now, is replace the capacitor.
Bogdan: Just put two capacitors in parallel you turn
These are 50 volts and I made the proper capacitance and then replace the old one James: And what was the old one?
Bogdan: 60 volts. James: So that means we can drive this up to 60 volts now assuming it doesn't blow something else
Bogdan: Yeah. James: Let's do it!
James: Do we have any idea what the output voltage is now probably
Bogdan: I don't want to hook that to my oscilloscope because it's over it's limit so at 12 Volts it's
350 volt peak-to-peak
James: So we should just double that
Bogdan: Probably.
That's 24, okay
That's 28.
All right, also I maxed out the voltage on my power supply
Well its 30 per channel yeah. James: All right put er' in series. What kind of what kind of power supply is this again?
Bogdan: Well it's a Keithley so Tektronix basically.
And it's fully linear no ripple
They could do one-and-a-half amps at 30 volts on two channels, and then five amps at 6 volts on the third channel
so more than enough for just about everything except motor testing and
its got current limiting voltage limiting
Really high tolerances. James: So that's your favorite thing ever
Bogdan: No actually that's my favorite thing ever. Osciliscope, makes pretty lines.
Hey, I'm pretty sure it can run Windows I'm pretty sure you could literally put Netflix on it.
33 34 35
40 James: Alright stop stop. We wanna go back to 30
to you see like the difference between 30 and 40? Bogdan: This is also not the high high brightness EL oh this is the crap EL.
Alright ready?
You just type in tell you what I can do 32, yeah looks good now, give me 40 or whatever you want to
Now let's watch
It's pretty well that's significant, okay, I'll show you go to 20
That's 20
That's 40 boy, that looks good, what about 48? Can it get to 48?
45, 46, 47
That's 48!
Huh someone blows up
It's current limiting James: Oh so it is arcing and it's drawing too much power, and then they're killing an entire supply all right, that's it, it means its over.
Stop stop unplug it
Unplug it, and plug in the non broken one so I can see
You know I think we're just going to use the bright stuff
It's hard to say like they both have their own appeal, but the yellow turns more white so it actually looks brighter
Alright to explain what we did to boost the output of this EL wire. I had Bogdan draw up a circuit diagram
I'm gonna do my best to explain to you guys. How it works
So basically what we're doing is we're taking a 7.4V lipo battery
And we're pulling that through a buck boost converter
To increase the output to 28 volts and I've split the circuit diagram into three sections
We've got the input the conversion and then the output so the conversion happens with the EL transformer right here
And this is what it looks like when it's been taken apart
And we had to update this by adding a more powerful capacitor with a higher voltage
So it doesn't explode when running at high voltages, and the result is an extra bright EL wire.
Big thank you to the Digi-Key for providing the components for this project
For the complete circuit diagram and more information about how we built it check out the links in the description below
Now before we continue this build. I want to answer a question that we get asked almost daily
How do we know how to build this stuff and while it's true that Ian and I both have bachelor degrees in engineering,
That's not why or how we know how to build these things in fact almost every project we do
Requires us to learn something new and we learn by researching on the internet
Which is why I'm super excited about this video sponsor and their offer to you guys
we're giving away a one-month membership to the great courses plus a
Subscription-based on-demand video service that has lectures on almost any subject out there
You can learn exactly what you want when you want
They have courses on everything from engineering, math, science, history, to even learning how to cook or become a better photographer in fact
It's kind of like going to university without spending tens of thousands of dollars or sitting in long boring classes
These video lectures are the most refined and condensed versions of the classes so you get exactly the info you need
I've been checking out the DIY engineering course and even I've been learning new stuff that I didn't know and if you're like me and
You like to multitask they also have audio streaming
So you can seamlessly switch between video lectures and audio lectures
So you can keep doing whatever you're doing
so while you can grab a free membership to the great courses plus and start learning how to do whatever you want
Just visit thegreatcoursesplus.com/thehacksmith to sign up for your free trial or click the link in the description below
So remember you can learn how to build this stuff too all you have to do is try and be willing to learn something new
Anyways back to the build
Alright
So now that we have the circuit complete. It's time to figure out
How we're going to actually make this into a whip
so we've been playing around with a few different ideas of how we're going to actually use the EL wire to create a whip and
one of our thoughts was actually braid Kevlar
In with the EL wire to give us some strength and we're gonna have to do a few tests on this
But we'll do that a bit later
The other question is how are we gonna package this so it's safe to hold and I think what we're going to do is actually
Use the shell of a flashlight to hold all the electronic components
It's all a way of holding onto the whip so let's take this flashlight apart
See there's lots of room in there
All right, so we got all the wires connected now. This is going to connect to the frame of the flashlight
And the switch will then make a connection between the battery and the frame which then powers the buck-boost now
I want to see if we can potentially stick these back-to-back
Alright
So now that we have the circuit all done and all the wires soldered on we're actually going to cover it in heat shrink tube
To keep it from shorting the frame of the flashlight
It's a bit too big to put the shrink tube over the whole things around do two pieces one on one side and then one
On the other side overlapping the first side
Alright, let's see if this thing still works
Perfect so let's figure out where we're going to attach the other lead
To the frame of the flashlight, so we want to be able to remove the battery from the flashlight
Which just requires disconnecting like this, but once we put this guy in here
you want it close to this end and
This needs to be soldered to the frame somewhere.
Let's think these wires are probably too long
And we're gonna try and solder inside the pipe to that metal right there
Should be interesting kind of hard to reach
But we'll do our best
All right, so we have everything wired up now, and as you can see you can press the switch on the flashlight
And you can hear the high-pitched whine of the EL power supply so that means everything works
Wow that was barely even threaded in.
Bogdan all of this wire is too big.
Like problem here is this threads on
Yeah like I can pre twist them one way and then twist the other way, but it's not ideal
They might drop to the small connectors. Oh
Yeah, I think I'll do that first
All right, so everything should fit now. I think we're going to have to remove the entire
Power supply and battery when we want to charge the battery
But that's not really a big deal the other annoying thing is because we attached the wires to
The bottom part, which spins you have to pre twist this the opposite direction
Before you install it, otherwise you're in twist the wires way too much
Do you hear that? That's the sound of angry pixies.
All right, so now what we're gonna
Do is weave the EL wire
in with the Kevlar
now to make sure the Kevlar takes the entire load we need to make sure that one line of Kevlar is pulled taut and
Everything's wrapped around it so that way all the tension actually goes through the center Kevlar line
And before we start weaving we need to make sure there's no kinks in the Kevlar straighten it out like this
All right so full disclosure at this point I think I'm making up a different kind of braid it seems to be working
And again remember the important part is to keep one strand
Taut throughout so that it takes all the tension and the external parts which are basically just for decoration don't so...
I'm gonna try setting up this a different way and
We'll see if it actually works
I have a better idea
Oh
Just in time shrink tube shrink tube shrink tuuube
Hey, more EL wire shrink tube shrink tube shrink tuuube
Shrink tube!
3/8, perfect, I need some flux as well.
No clean flux. It sounds good.
Shrink it up. It's not shrinking fast enough
All right the whip is done we added a bit of a braided length at the end to give it a bit more weight
So it really has that nice whip effect now. Let's plug it in
Ian: Did you really only survive on KD?
James: No, that's a lie, it was no name brand
Now you might be asking yourself
But wait isn't this just a prop well we didn't go to all the effort of putting Kevlar into the whip to not use it
So hopefully we can even hang off of it
without damaging the EL wire
It's almost too low.
Ta Da!
But wait is it just me?
Or is it not glowing as brightly as it did before when we were first building it and testing on the bench
So as we mentioned earlier in the video
Overpowering EL wire can cause it to prematurely lose its brightness. Alright, so we got brand new EL wire
Old EL wire.
Yeah, look at that so as you can see over powering the EL wire does kill it pretty darn fast
Because this looks awesome compared to this so if you can replicate this project keep in mind you're gonna need more
EL wire if you want to really have that Wonder Woman glow
Well hope you guys enjoyed that video
I know it was a bit longer than most of our videos
But we try to keep as much information in there to really keep it educational and show you guys the entire process of
Engineering that goes on behind the scenes here at Hacksmith Industries, and I really do
Hope you guys take advantage of the great courses plus offer to get a one month membership
Absolutely free where you can learn to do whatever you want. Just click on the link in the description below
We receive a lot of comments asking for us to include more information in our videos
So let us know in the comments if this style video is something that you're interested in and you want to see more of.
Also, big thank you to XCoser for providing the Wonder Woman costume and as always there are links in the description below to anything else
That we mentioned in the video. Thanks for watching and make sure you're subscribed!