Breakthrough

I’ve been doing a lot of testing with heating my thermochromic ink with resistive wire. And I’ve had some great results, to my relief.
First I had an almost two hour call with Marius, another electronics genius who helped me with the hardware on one of my other projects: www.collectingsilence.org. He pointed me in the right direction on which materials to buy.

Then I just started cutting up the wires, measuring and heating them. The wires heat up very quickly using much less energy than the former solution. At my electronic shop in town they sold wire at a resistance of 6,9 Ohm per meter. This works great for the medium size rings. The bigger ones need less resistance, the smaller ones more. So I ordered some different values online. This way I can use three D-cell batteries for all rings, still two less then in my previous setup.

wires
six resistive wires applied to interfacing

To be on the safe side I made a dummy display with six rings and checked if I can light the rings at once, which I could! I almost cried when I saw the result, just as I want it to be. Finally.

working_display
six ring test display
tube
small tubes for connections

For the connections I’m going to use a naked terminal tube. That way I don’t need to solder avoiding the risk of breaking or melting of the connection or destroying the displays. You do need a special pair of tongs to apply the tubes.

Because I don’t have the time to re-do the three displays I want to use iron-on nonwoven interfacing to apply the wires to the back of the existing displays. The only problem with this solution is that the conductive fabric interferes with the wires causing overheating… I’ve tried putting a layer of Iron-on Nonwoven interfacing between the wires and fabric. this works but I feel it’s a bit vulnerable. The interfacing is thin and burns quickly. So I’m hoping to find a better solution.

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