She-Ra

Reference photo and concept notes shown above. I wanted to create a costume made of neoprene that glows with fiberoptics along the side seams. Originally I designed it to have RGB LEDs controlled by a microcontroller, but I have since pivoted to ultra-high-brightness white LEDs.

The LEDs originally designed were WS1812Bs, coloquially known as NeoPixels, as they're simple to use and very easy to source. Unfortunately, the brightness of them + inability to assemble them to a laser collimator due to size made me pivot to smaller white LEDs sourced from a fiberoptics company.

LED intensity is described in units called Candelas. The intensity of the light is related to both the emittance of the LED + the viewing angle, so I picked LEDs with a high Candela value + a low viewing angle, which helps concentrate the light into the fiberoptics. NeoPixels are used elsewhere in the costume instead.

I designed the sword in SolidWorks with the intent to 3D print the base and resin cast the blade. After a horrible resin casting failure, I pivoted back to 3D printing the blade, much to my chagrin.

The sword is lit by a custom PCB I designed in KiCAD and had manufactured overseas. The controller driving the LEDs is an Arduino Nano 5V clone, and the piece is powered by 3x AA batteries installed in the handle. This board has 18 individually addressable LEDs.

This is a demo of the base + PCB and the internal structure of the blade. This is a 0.75in acrylic tube sourced from McMaster Carr. I chose acrylic because it's clear, and I didn't want to detect it when the blade was on. Additionally, tubes are specified by their outer diameter (versus pipes, which are defined by inner diameter) so I could reliably design the handle and blade around this known outer dimension. If I did this again, I'd consider using a fiberglass tube, because the acrylic is a bit brittle and chipped when I cut it.

I designed the mold from the blade model shown above, and used a ShopBot at my local makerspace to cut the halves. Shown is a fresh-off-the-machine half on the left, and sanded on the right. If I did this again, I think I'd try to make the master of the mold (instead of the mold itself) on the ShopBot, and then make the mold out of Silicone.

The mold was sanded, painted, sanded, painted again until it had a nice finish from 500 grit sandpaper. I coated it in a silicone spray mold release, which ended up being the failure mode of this whole thing. The mold release was insufficient, and the part stuck to the paint in the end. I should have used PVA and/or a wax.

Epic fail.

Duct tape dummy for bodice

First swing - I added princess seams because it seems like there are some on the character design based on placements of the gold detail + general structure of the garment. Plus, who doesn't love pricess seams?

The gold applique on the bodice conveniently terminates at the princess seam, so i can sew it on flat instead of after assembling the garment.

I used abutted seams because this 3mm neoprene is too thick for my machine otherwise. I also think it just looks cool.

These stretchy pants don't fit me correctly (too short) but had similar stretch to the neoprene, so I cut them up to use as my base pattern, making modifications to raise the waistline from a mid to a high rise, and lengthening the pant leg.

Naturally they still didn't fit, but got pretty close. I was also prototyping using bias tape as channels for the fiberoptics with this mockup.

I created a duct tape dummy of the shoe, and then spliced this to the pants pattern.

First attempt at spliced leg.

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