Color-changing Laser Cut Jewelery
Intro: Color-changing Laser Cut Jewelery
After seeing some of the nice wirewrap pendants on instructables like https://www.instructables.com/id/Copper-wire-wrap...
i decided to try something similar. Since i'm quite sure that i wouldn't be able to make such beautiful freestyle forms, i decided to stick with my standard knowledge: Put some WS2812B LEDs in it, and it will light up nicely. In this case i used 3mm acrylic as a lasercut base form - in a future version i want to replace the inner part of the acrylic with something like a mosaic glas stone for a better 3D effect. 0.4mm Silver wire works as borders and connectors, and a small silver ear studs and a thin silver necklace complete the necklace and earrings. For electronic: The earrings use 3mm green Leds and a 2032 coin cell, while the neclace needs some WS2812B LEDs (the SMD version), some wire and a Attiny micro controller (on a pcb) and a small lithium cell. A better option might be to remove controller and battery from the necklace and integrate it into the clothing (with a wire connection) to make it smaller.
STEP 1: Preparation
In the first step we laser cut the acrylic, each part includes a hole for the LED and various small ones for the connection with the silver wire border - Since we use 0.4mm silver wire, and 4 wires next to each other looks nice, roughly 0.5mm*2mm holes are used.
2 lines of silver wire are put in parallel and twisted with a milling machine. After that we can start the construction.
STEP 2: Making the Earings
The earings are pretty simple - here we just use just a regular 3mm LED, since a WS2812B with controller and battery would take to much space. If you connect the Earrings with wires with the necklace, you can of course also use them (with nice color matching).
The LED is just put into the corresponding hole in the acrylic, on leg on each side. One (on the inner side of the earring) lay flat downwards on the acrylic, the other one goes arround the border of the earring (and makes the connection with the silver wire border). Three of the twisted wires are put on parallel around the border of the earring, hold in position with wires wrapped around it through the small holes (4 wraps in parallel). Don't forget the put the ear plug on the middle wire before fixing all the wires.
For the Battery a single wire is wrapped from one hole on the side to the the other around the battery, just make sure it can be removed to the top and sits otherwise thightly. The best and cleanest way would be directly do it while fixating the twisted wires with the wrapped wires through the tiny holes.
STEP 3: Starting the Necklace
The first steps are similar than the earrings: First take the acrylic, wrap three twisted silver wire in parallel around each piece of acrylic. For the fixation wires through the tiny holes: Leave some of them open to connect each piece (the top and bottom on the sides) and the upper ones for wires.
In the next step the upper and lower ones one the sides are used to connect two pieces with a fixation wire through two of the tiny holes as a hinge between the pieces
STEP 4: Electronic
Thereafter the W2812B are included into the acrylic. Just make sure that the small triangle on one edge of the LED is always on the same side of the acrylic (best front). The pin at this position is then wired with a small piece of silver wire with the border connection as ground.
Thereafter standard isolated wire (as thin as possible) is used to connnect all the supply pins (opposite side of the ground pin) and then connect each data out of one LED to the data in of the next - here i connected the data output of the middle one with both LEDs on the left and right side, such that we automatically get a central symmetric light pattern.
The wires are then fixated again with silver wires together with the upper three twisted wires, and the middle LED is then connected with a attiny microcontroller with Adafruits neopixel library and the strandtest example (see http://highlowtech.org/?p=1695).
STEP 5: Final Things
The silver necklace is then connected with small pieces of silver wire with the end pieces of the acrylic part, and a small lithium battery connected with the attiny is used to power up the whole necklace.
Done and enjoy!