Help with Lighting Practical Design: Camp Stove

[KingSky]

Good day,

I am required for my Master Electrician class to design and build a practical, any practical for under 50 dollars. I chose to build a portable camp stove and decided the best way to design it is to have pieces of lightweight colored fabric taped to a fan over a light, or possibly several lights if i use LED's. I have the fan, a Computer Case fan with a low enough draw that i can power it with several 9V batteries, but my question is, what would be the best light source with a low power draw so it can be battery powered. And if i do decide on raw LED's instead of a Candelabra base and lamp, is there any special need for wiring(in parallel)?

[BillESC]

Seem to me you could use LED flashlights. Gel two amber, one red, one blue and you'll be good to go. If the stove doesn't have the depth to use the flashlights vertically, mount them horizonal and use a bounce mirror at 45 degrees.

[KingSky]

Right, but i need a way to be able to turn them all on simultaneously with the fan. I suppose i could wire the flashlights together, but then why not start from scratch?
Also, can i wire things in parallel and dim just one section of the circuit? In this case i was thinking one switch, so one circuit and power source, for the whole device but i want to be able to control the speed of the fan for effect.

[icewolf08]

Basically, what you are creating is battery powered silk flame device similar to, say, the LeMaitre "La Flame." I have built such a device and it is relatively simple. I have a couple questions though, first and foremost, what size camp stove? I mean if you are talking like a table-top Coleman stove like this:

or something like a backpacking stove:


If you are going for something like the first image there, I would suggest going with a nice sized 12V sealed lead-acid battery, a 12V fan and some 12V MR-16 lamps. It works amazingly well. I realize that you have to do this on a budget of $50, but on a production scale I have even done this with the RC4 Wireless DMX2Dim wireless dimmers so that the lamps can flicker. This would cost you a pretty penny (not great for your project), but it is a great effect in practice. Unfortunately I don't have any photos of the last one I built as it is inside a stove in props storage somewhere.

A few more notes:
Remember that the fan needs room to breathe, you can't just stick it in the bottom of the prop. It needs to have clearance above the floor/housing. Also, make sure that your fan actually has a high enough CFM rating to move the silk flames. You will probably want at least three light sources, two in red/amber and one in blue. You might think that blue is odd, but it actually makes for a much more realistic effect. You can wire the lamps and fan together in parallel, just remember that you have to add up all the amps when you do this.

I have been doing a lot of low voltage effects over the past few years, so please feel free to post or PM questions. I am also sure that I am not the only one who can help.

[DAE]

Hello KingSky
You need to observe what you want to mimic to help you decide on which way to go.

The two camp stoves pictured above by Alex have the same characteristics, a steady constant flame, with an ocasional flicker, not a constant flickering flame which a camp fire will have. The gas flame in a camp stove is designed to maximum efficiency so you will see a hot flame. Alex has mentioned the colours, red, amber and blue. A camp fire does not normally have a blue flame, it has a steady red and flickering amber and yellow at the tip of the flame.

I do not think the silk flame effect is applicable here as you do not have the clearance and it does not happen in real life.

Why not look at a ring of led rope light that would be about the same size as the gas jets, the circular rope led would fit between the kettle and the gas ring. The gas flame radiated light in an even circular radius so a led rope light would have a similar beam angle. If you can get short lengths of flexible led strips, they could be bent into a circle. As most raw led strips use 120 degree smd leds, they should work. If you can get RGD leds, then you can build a small chaser circuit as it would be battery operated due to the leds low power consumtion.