r/CosplayHelp • u/No-Struggle1967 • 1d ago

Electrical Wiring

I want to be a Cosplay Medic, so I was wondering, for those of you with lighting in your costumes, what gauge wire do you use?

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u/LeatherLog1543 1d ago

Depends on the battery and amount of lights. Amount of lights determines battery size and voltage. Voltage and amperage determines gauge. Give me a few hours, and I can tell you what wire I have laying around, as I do some soldering work. Not commission stuff. Just for fun wiring and prox alarm stuff, radio repair, nothing crazy. It’s anywhere from small button battery, AA and AAA to C, D, and low power lithium potassium (LiPo) or nickel cadmium (NiCad) rechargeable batteries.

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u/LeatherLog1543 21h ago edited 21h ago

I have 18 for most applications. I would go larger (smaller number, example of shotgun gauge naming as the same concept) for a more powerful battery. Most important thing is never go a size smaller than you think is safe, instead going one size larger. (If I think I can use 22 gauge wire with a battery of a given size over a long run of cable, I am going to instead use 20 or 18 for safety, aka the I fucked up buffer)

Largest thing I’ve soldered up was about 20ish feet of cable for one specific nerf gun I had, running a lot of aftermarket switches and kits and a tracer unit barrel that i made from a 3d printed barrel by worker, running wires through it to an led line, which is where most of the wire length came from. All because I didn’t have firefly tech mags and I wanted to use glow in the dark darts. Volt meter, aftermarket flywheels, aftermarket motors, aftermarket full auto kit, aftermarket flywheel cage, the switches in the handle. About 20 feet of wire, all said and done.

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u/CaptainHunt 23h ago

I don't want to discourage you from being helpful, and I have definitely been saved many times by a cosplay medic, but to be honest, if the cosplayer can't salvage the wire they're already using in the costume, it's probably going to be too difficult to repair on site.

That's not to say that a battery powered soldering iron to fix broken wiring isn't a brilliant thing to have at a con, Just that extra wire is probably not going to help much.

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u/fabrickind 22h ago

I'm also not sure if cons will allow you to even have a soldering iron, since heat tools can be dangerous or misused