Hello everybody!
For the diorama I'm currently working on (read all about it - here) I needed to do some grass. Heard about static grass, and after seeing it on the fotos and in person I wondered if I can achieve the same results. I borrowed a voltage multiplier from my friend who is an active model railroader. The voltage multiplier is used to produce high voltage and was built specially for the purpose of planting static grass. You can see it set up on the foto below:
What you can see, right to left, is an old computer SCSI stand-alone drive gutted for the power supply, giving 12 Volts DC to the voltage multiplier (in the gray box), from which then the yellow cables with red plugs go to the applicating tools. Let's take a closer look at them:
The blue alligator clip will be hooked up to a piece of copper wire driven into the base to be covered with static grass. Before the wire is driven into the base, the base itself is covered with a film of water based adhesive. Or it doesn't have to be water-based, but it has to conduct electricity. The adhesive film then becomes one of the electrodes. The second electrode is the strainer. The one supplied with the voltage multiplier had holes that were too small for the material used, so I clamped a second strainer with bigger holes to the first one.
In this case I covered a piece of styrofoam with a layer of fresh, dark-green acrylic paint from a tube. Then I drove the wire in the styrofoam and hooked up the alligator clip. I had two kinds of Noch static grass, one with short fibres (1-2mm), another with longer fibres (5-6mm). As I intend to go for 1:35 scale I mixed them up 50-50, filled the larger strainer with material and turned the power on. Holding the strainer some 50mm over the fresh paint I shook the strainer several times and the surface was completely covered with fibers. Then I turned the power off and took a break, about 20 minutes, to let the paint dry. After that I did shake the excess fibres off the work piece, and about 40% separated. I'm very satisfied with the end result, let me show it to you on the following foto:
What do you think?
A mail like this wouldn't be complete without a warning - watch out for electricity, voltages above 30V can potentially kill you! And the an encouragement - a car can kill you too, and that doesn't stop you from using it daily, does it? The most dangerous part of the setup in the first foto is the 220 Volts power supply. If you substitute 8 D cells instead, you get a device that would be safe to use for everybody. I estimate the output voltage of the voltage multiplier at 1000 Volts, but then if you take your swether off on a dry day, you can even reach 70 000 Volts and did you see the sparks you can get this way when it's dark? The multiplier has resistors installed, that limit the current flow through its output to a value that is well within a safety limit for humans. I still wouldn't like to hug that baby when it's turned on. But the grass looks grat in my opinnion, so I'm going to use it. And to anyone interested I'd say - don't be afraid!
Happy modelling and have a nice day
Pawel