Dec 14

Dec 14 Absinthe Dispenser

For Spiegelworld's 2015 Absinthe Australia Tour they wanted to step things up a notch so they asked Sin City Scenic for a new glowing absinthe dispenser. The unit had to be entirely wireless, controlled by the lighting console, light enough to be carried, and all of the wiring had to be contained within the dispenser's existing structure. The dispenser itself came to us empty and I worked with some talented craftsmen that poured a custom colored UV reactive silicon insert. My portion of this project was to work closely with them to find the right mix of clear silicon and color pigment that reacts as desired with the LEDs available to find the best possible combination of visible light and ultraviolet luminescence.

All of the electronics contained within the base of the dispenser.

At the time this prop was built, RC4 wireless had recently come out with their DMX2micro dimmer (link) that controls 2 channels wirelessly and is only 71mm x 19mm x 11mm. This was the best choice for LED control inside the dispenser. This dimmer is happy to run with a 5VDC supply voltage so I designed the current limiting circuit around that value so as little heat from excess forward voltage as possible had to be managed. We were using a selection of component LEDs each with different forward voltage ratings, but most of the current limiting resistors were dropping around 1.5V with a current near 1A so heat was a real issue. We settled on a combination of single sources of blue and UV light from different angles. Luckily a 210 degree lens exists for this style of LED source so we were able to produce a fairly even field of light from each source. We were able to attach all of the heat producing components to large pieces of metal within the dispenser to act as heat sinks and all of the wiring actually runs through the very center of the fixture to prevent shadows.

The picture and video below are decent reminders of just how good this effect looked, but they really don't show it very well. The customers were very happy with the end result and have since returned to us for several other projects.