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Dwarvin

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Dwarvin
Posted by Verdonck on Wednesday, November 18, 2020 2:45 PM

How do you use the Dwarvin system when lighting a building? How do you run the fibre optic cable to light the building

  • Member since
    September 2003
  • 21,669 posts
Posted by Overmod on Wednesday, November 18, 2020 2:56 PM

In the very old days of fiber optics, the idea was to provide a light source with some kind of heat filter inside a case, with drilled holes into which the various fibers were inserted (with their 'inside ends' either lensed or polished to admit the light).  The fibers use near-total internal reflection, so you bring them up in smooth curves, careful not to kink, and then position the fiber ends where you want the light to come from.  The ancient method was to rough up or dissolve the cladding on the end, or to heat-expand the tip to create a kind of bulb effect or lens if you wanted a diffuse 'point of light' on the end rather than a beam effect.

I believe Mel Perry has quite a repertoire of techniques in forming various kinds of end on these fibers, or making transparent castings into which the end of a fiber is inserted.

You can use mechanical shutters, or a rotating disk with holes in it driven by a motor or timer, to interrupt or dim the light to some of the fibers periodically; you can also use something like pieces of theatrical gel (or stained glass) to color the light without having to use radio dial dye or similar stuff. 

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