super cool bicycle LED tail light Fiber Flair glowing glue stick

The inspiration for this Instructable came from a product a friend purchased for his recumbent bicycle, the Fiber Flare. The Fiber Flare shines two LEDs down a solid tube of plastic and provides a nice glowing indicator. I wanted to see if I could make one from items around the house. I was successful and am proud to introduce this Instructable I call the Fiber Flair!

Step 1: Assemble the materials

Parts list: 9v battery, 9v battery clip, 10 to 1000 ohm resistor, two 3mm LEDs, wire.
Before we get started, lets take a look at the Fibre Flare
If you take a close look at the 2nd picture you will notice the hunk of plastic sort of looks like a glue stick from a hot glue gun. Glue stick? What is an Instructable without a glue stick? What happens when an LED is shined into an actual glue stick? Believe it or not, it actually lights up like a glow stick! What is so cool about this is that the glue stick is a very low cost diffuser. The diffuser spreads the LED light so it is visible 360 degrees.

Comments

[zazenergy]

Wow, I love the light you're getting off this. Really helpful instructable. How are you going to attach this to the bike? A couple zip ties?

Thanks!

[jim_2000]

I like duct tape. Zip ties fail when exposed to sunlight. I'm also trying to make an inner tube strap for this light.

[escapefromyonkers]

There are a lot to Zip ties, like duct tape they are not equal. For bicycle stuff and most stuff I like the . Thomas and Betts 7.3 inch X .184 or 166mm X 4.67 have a tensile strength of 50lbs/220N at a max wire bundle of 1.75 or 44.4mm nylon wearable material with a stainless steel "zip"
there are called TY-Rap and last for years attaching cables on outside telco plant. There are a lot of junk ones out there, even in telco we would get the lowest bidder sometimes,but with proof of their failure, the better ones were stocked . We had some , I think brand name was del-tec that came in 18", 24", 36", and rolls of about 25 feet , that you could cut to custom length., They are about 1/2 inch wide and that are extremely strong and impervious to the elements , we could cut to length and had non corrosive metallic zips,copper colored "zips" that came in separate bags.
if you know a utility guy ,he/she can show you the differece. There are some real small weak ones ,around 5 inches , that come in colors with stripes,, and are used to mark the count of cables,not for any strenth functions.
Find a old telco utility guy with a cherry picker type truck,they know the difference. in ty-wraps

[escapefromyonkers]

oh, i forgot to say, very cool light and use of glue sticks, and all the other devices mentioned, have to check out the antifreeze and gelatin too. I have a couple recumbent, want to get a trike , but want some kind of lasers that shoot straight up to keep the cars from running me over.

[longwinters]

Nice look I just posted a project with a similar format, I used anti freeze and gelatin to make a glowy core, I assume your LED's are white?

http://www.instructables.com/id/Working-Night-vision-Periscope-Steampunked/step5/The-side-light/

[destrianugerah]

cool

[Databanks]

Oddly enough the bracelet style glowsticks happen to fit on a 5mm LED just nicely - well, their joiners do, anyway. So, got a few dead glow bracelets left over? Otherwise, identical to your circuit should do nicely. Slide a joiner on each end, LED in the joiners, all done. My kids have a stack of dead sticks, might try colour matching (red LEDS on red glow sticks, etc).