The MB Joule is a papercraft electronic ornament that combines design, digital manufacturing, code, and hand assembly. For this project Moving Brands created 500 physical joules to share with their friends and partners as holiday gifts. The production process included laser and Kongsberg cutting card and screen-printing with Bare Conductive Paint. The assembly was finished by hand, by connecting electronics, painting on additional ink, gluing some parts together and adding ribbons. When a joule is folded into its 3-dimensional shape, its electric circuit is completed, and the LEDs light up, forming a glowing holiday ornament.
Moving Brands also created a website to bring a wider participatory element to the project. It includes an in-browser tool which combines design, 3D rendering, persistent storage, and dynamic output of vector graphic files. Simply put, it allows visitors to the site to create their own patterned joule, to be added to the online gallery, or to be printed or laser cut to create a physical object. The conductive ink would not carry enough current for really bright LEDs for the purposes of our window installation, so we replaced the paper electronics with BlinkMs, highly bright LEDs with an embedded control module that will run pre-programmed light sequences.
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