Electroluminescent Mountain Bike

Step 5 How to Solder EL Wire

If you're not familiar with how EL wire works, it's actually pretty simple to wire the stuff, though it is tedious. The EL Wire has four layers:

1) Copper core, coated in phosphorescent paint, the positive
2) Corona (Angel) Wires, the negative
3) Thin Vinyl Sheath
4) Thick Vinyl Sheath

Cutting to the Core
We need to remove the vinyl sheaths and expose the painted core and corona wires. The problem is, the corona wires are extremely thin and fragile, so great care is needed to expose everything without breaking them. The best solution I've found is to take an X-Acto knife, strip off the thick vinyl, look through the transparent thin vinyl, and cut along the wire wherever the corona wires are absent (spiraled on the other side), then carefully tear/cut off the thin sheath.

Copper Tape to the Max
Cut off a small piece of copper tape, maybe 1/3", enough to wrap around the thick vinyl once or twice. Since the corona wires are exposed, bend them backwards over the copper tape. Pull out your soldering iron, and solder the corona wires to the copper tape.

Stripping the Core
This part is simple, just scrape off the paint on the tip of the core wire, I use a razor blade or X-Acto knife scraping sideways across the wire. It should appear silver (rather than dull-white) all around, ready to be soldered.

Attaching Wire-Side Connectors
Most EL Wire shops sell their connectors with offset wires, meaning one of the two wires is longer by about an inch. This prevents any chance of the two wires bumping into each other causing a short circuit, it also makes your wiring more compact. The shorter end gets soldered to the core, the longer end on top of the solder blob on the copper tape. Cover the connections in heat-shrink, and either use a heat-gun or lighter on it.