LED Cube 8x8x8

Step 16 How to make straight wire

In order to make a nice looking LED Cube, you need some straight steel wire. The only wire we had was on spools, so it had to be straightened.

Our first attempt at this failed horribly. We tried to bend it into a straight wire, but no matter how much we bent, it just wasn't straight enough.

Then we remembered an episode of "How it's made" from the Discovery Channel. The episode was about how they make steel wire. They start out with a spool of really thick wire, then they pull it through smaller and smaller holes. We remembered that the wire was totally straight and symmetrical after being pulled like that.

So we figured we should give pulling a try, and it worked! 100% straight metal wire from a spool!

Here is how you do it.

• cut of the length of wire you need from the spool, plus an inch or two.
• Remove the insulation, if any.
• Get a firm grip of each end of the wire with two pairs of pliers
• Pull hard!
• You will feel the wire stretch a little bit.

You only need to stretch it a couple of millimeters to make it nice and straight.

If you have a vice, you can secure one end in the vice and use one pair of pliers. This would probably be a lot easier, but we don't own a vice.

Comments

[hatschel]

jep steel welding rods so called in english in German "Schweißdraht" it looks perfectly perpendicular

[hatschel]

Hi
A good idea is to take soldering steel rods 1mm
They are copperplated,straight and cheap
I pay 3€ for 70pc[ of 1m

[alahamm]

Hi Hatschel; What exactly do you call " soldeing steel rods"?
Are you referring to steel welding rods? Thanks.

[paler31]

I could not get any steel wire that soldered very easilly so I bought a roll of tined copper wire 0.51mm thick. It was easy to straighten and soldered very easily onto the led legs. Steel wire may have given better structural support but the copper wire is easier to work with and when the cube is all soldered together it feels solid enough.

John

[AnEcho]

here is what i did ( thought it was neat ) took some steel cable ( the type with several strands wrapped around each other ) and took individual strands and to straighten them i held 1 end up and on the other i attached a small weight ( i used small vice grips as the weight ) then i heated the wire to red hot and after after it cooled it was perfectly straight ( i did have to sand the soot off it with 120 grit paper )

this made a very strong and light steel support