DIY EL Screens

Intro: DIY EL Screens

Based on information and material provided by John Sarik from the Columbia Laboratory for Unconventional Electronics Manuel Kretzer led a short workshop with the CAAD MAS class 2010/11 to produce selfmade electroluminescent displays as an introduction to a larger EL project. 

necessary equipment
- 2 screens for screenprinting: (150 threads/ inch and 190 threads/ inch)
- craft robo cc 330-20
- hot plate or hair dryer
- wire, copper tape, electrical tape, etc...
- ulanocut green knife cut film
- sponge, squeegees
- EL experimenter's kit including:
 1 vial of DuPont Luxprint phosphor ink
 1 vial of DuPont Luxprint dielectric ink
 1 vial of DuPont Luxprint silver ink
 3 indium tin oxide (ITO) coated glass substrates
 1 surplus EL power supply

step 1: design simple shape according to glass substrate 
step 2: apply thin layer of phosphor
step 3 and 4: apply two layers of dielectric insulator
don't forget to dry your substrate in between each step
step 5: apply silver electrode. avoid holes in dielectric layer to prevent short circuits and resulting frustration.
step 6: attach wires to silver layer and glass substrate. fix with copper tape.
step 7: POWER

www.caad.arch.ethz.ch
www.vimeo.com/materiability

Comments

[solemnraven]

This is great, can it be done with plexiglass or a flexible material?

[DanM6]

no, it needs to be a conductive surface

[AmpOwl]

I wonder if it would be possible to put the phosphor, dielectric, and electrode inks in spray cans...

[snotty]

It would be great to use some kind of conductive, elastic face material. I'm pretty sure that's how the tron costumes work; they're pretty expensive though.