LEARN: Capacitive Touch Unicorn Horn

Check out our newest tutorial over at the Adafruit Learning System: a magical capacitive touch wearable unicorn horn!

It’s got a 12-neopixel ring inside that makes a pretty color-shifting rainbow glow.  When you touch the copper tape spiral, the rainbow fades out and the light at the tip of the horn glows white.  Like a magical freaking unicorn.

From Erin:

This was my first creation using the 3d modeling software Fusion360.  I’ve done lots of 3d printing projects before, but my modeling program of choice has been Tinkercad.  Tinkercad is the kindergarten of 3d modeling.  You grab shapes and smush them together and then try and get them to look vaguely like your vision.  It works surprisingly well, if you can think creatively.

Fusion360 is a grown-up program that gives its users much, much more control over the models.  It has accurate measurements, sculpting tools, and 4 or 5 different ways to model just about anything you can dream up.  It’s kind of intimidating, which is why I’ve been putting off learning it for so long.

This unicorn horn is modeled almost exactly after a Layer-by-layer tutorial by the Ruiz Brothers.  I designed the mounting plate and did a few modifications, and it took me FOREVER.  It took weeks of work and dozens of test prints.  I never seemed to get anything right on the first print, or the second or third.

But, behold!  It’s finished.  It works.  It’s gorgeous.  I used my new Sigma BCN3D printer with dual extruders — that means I can print in two colors at once.  The horn is made of glow-in-the-dark ABS and the spiral is made of heat sensitive pink and purple color changing ABS.. so at room temperature the spiral is purple, and in the sun it turns pink.  This makes me unreasonably happy.

I love this project because I get to actually wear it to work.  My kid’s entertainment company, Fire Pixie Entertainment, offers a Rainbow Unicorn character for kid’s parties, so that means I get to wear this out and make a bunch of little girls unreasonably happy too.

Make your own and post pictures in the comments!

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