This is a tube of silicone with two bundles of optical fibers and some highlighter fluid. It’s lit from above with a UV LED. There’s a little 3d printer collar that holds the fiber bundles onto 5050 RGB LEDs. I did a few handheld tests with the fibers with a collar and I thought it transmitted enough light to be an interesting effect so I jammed some fiber into some silicone and let it cure.

The results are pretty messy and not really what I had in mind. I cut the ends at an angle to try to make them more visible, but as it turns out you can only really see them from above. I tried to get the bundles to fan out to the sides in the silicone but they broke at too great an angle so they mostly ended up semi-parallel with the tube so their lights are invisible. Also there’s no way to avoid big bubbles coming up through the bundles- silicone finds a way.

It was weird enough to justify documenting, but I don’t think I’ll be gung-ho with the optical fiber. There may still be some uses for it but this test was pretty unimpressive.

The rest of the video are various things in a temporary lighting rig with one RGB LED below and a UV LED above. Not sure any justify permanent builds because of various defects, but they’re part of the learning process.

This is the same balsa tube concept in the fresnel tube rig. I should have made the plane a bit bigger and rotated it a bit so it’s not just going straight. Also the powder smoke effect didn’t work out as cool as the other one but I think I know how that works better now. I sprayed the plane with a good bit of highlighter fluid and it pops pretty well with the UV but it gets washed out by the RGB in the video. I like the general balsa plane in a tube scene concept so I’ll keep working on that.

Same basic idea as the balsa plane but a paper plane also soaked in highlighter fluid. They’re surprisingly hard to fold symmetrically that small. I placed it too far off center so it’s too close to the edge. I also added some dandelion seeds but they squished so it looks pretty weird. I’ll probably work more with the paper plane but this one was kind of a bust.

This one was just stupid and gross. I gathered some little flowers and berries, sprayed them with highlighter fluid, and stuck them in silicone. I guess I was thinking silicone stops time but they continued to wilt but they aren’t drying out so it’s just a mess. The only interesting bit was I just squirted some elmers glue at the top for no reason and it make an interesting ‘concave cloud’ formation that I might try to work with later. Overall it’s just a nasty mess but I wanted to see what it looked like under the light so this is it.

Also if you’re wondering the solder roll at the top is because the temporary rig isn’t secured to anything and the wires pull off the top so the roll is just as a weight.