Machine embroidery of light-emitting textiles with electroluminescent threads | Hacker News Reader

Machine embroidery of light-emitting textiles with electroluminescent threads

science.org

108 pointsPaulHoule21 comments

"The EL threads were durable against folding, stretching, and repetitive machine washes while satisfying all the necessary requirements for machine embroidery."

All the EL wire that I have used has been very fragile, so this would be a great improvement.

It is only a matter of time before someone makes a version of the flexible silicone led filaments with individually addressable leds.

https://www.adafruit.com/product/5509

And it needs a high voltage I believe, making it potentially dangerous if broken

High voltage isn't necessarily dangerous. Static electricity is high voltage, but very low amperage and therefore relatively low power.

Yeah, but if your sweater were shocking you every so often that wouldn't be fun.

This would probably feel more like touching one of those electric fly swatters, it's have some kick.

Hey! Could be useful in mosquito country! (Of course, your sweater accumulating fried bugs could be a bit off-putting...)

Oooh, I like this!

I wouldn't worry about that too much. Can be used to overcome limits.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jolt_(film)

Yeah I guess 175V AC might get a little spicy with direct skin contact but I don't see this actually being dangerous just from a broken "thread". Point breaks would only result in current flowing through a small bit of skin right between the broken bits of wire. You'd need multiple breaks in places that result in current flowing through vital organs to do any real harm with something like this.

Voltage is not the same as current. At most, you might experience an irritating shock and a high-pitched noise from the electronics, akin to what you'd get from an EL inverter.

Indeed, no confusion here, you didn't need to say that condescending statement.

Both of which sound terrible for something one is wearing

Have you used these before? I am going to take on a project reupholstering my car's interior. It would be amazing to sew in some lights where you'd normally put in piping, make it match the rest of the interior. Mostly curious about the durability of sitting in a seat thousands of times. Wouldn't need to be as flexible as say something you put in clothing... But it would look really cool. the one trick that the manufacturers haven't done yet with lighting...

I highly recommend the silicone LED filaments over the currently available EL wire. Much more robust and easy to work with. They are also very bright and efficient - they were designed for LED Edison bulbs. The only real downside is the fact that you can't shorten them, so you have to design around stock lengths or hide part of the strand.

Tested - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zhe8d9NgcsI

BigClive - https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tykxeuyfX5Q

EL wire that the poster is talking about and the threads aren't the same "product" but work on the same principle.

If you read the article these lights are powered by 120V and 2HZ... Im not so sure you're gonna want to sit on them.

Cool but no way I'm wearing anything EL. The voltages involved can give you a really nasty shock (as I discovered when I touched the edge of an EL panel).

Festivals are going to be so wild when this goes mainstream. I've spent countless hours integrating EL wire into outfits with batteries strapped to my body anywhere they'll fit. This is such an exciting next step!

There's already a product on the market that works in embroidery machines.

https://www.ellumiglow.com/media/solwin/productattachment/at...

What's the power source?

They used an EL wire inverter from Adafruit. You can get one that runs on batteries https://www.adafruit.com/product/564 or 12V DC https://www.adafruit.com/product/448

Batteries obviously.

How do I wash this textile?

> More than 50 cycles of laundry were carried out using a standard household washing machine (Amana, USA). The light-emitting pixels were put into a water-permeable protective sack. Each laundry cycle was conducted using 10 ml of commercial liquid detergent (Tide, USA) at an auto-sensing mode with a duration of approximately 45 min, which included spinning, rinsing, and spin-drying. After each washing process, the light-emitting pixels were dried for at least 30 min using an air conditioning heater (PTAC, Amana, USA) at 26.7°C. In the machine washability tests, a standard “Amana” household washing machine was used, a methodology corroborated by numerous reputable studies (7, 36–38). The significance of international standards such as AATCC LP1-2021 or ISO 105-C06 is recognized, and their incorporation is anticipated for future evaluations to ensure improved reproducibility and validation.

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