Static grass any ideas

[Barney]

Any one had good results or can recommend  using these static grass and grass battery powered applicators I notice you can make one cheaply  and the grass fibres are widely available Never tried it before
Barney

[Lawrence@NZFinescale]

I got one of the Noch ones when they first came out (well over 20 years ago).  The reservoir was far too large and it was underpowered. I've used various home made ones since and know others who have as well. Currently I'm using a WWS unit, which I'm relatively happy with. My main driver in buying this was that the borrowed home made unit that I had was wired and that was inconvenient. A self contained unit is a lot more useful. I would have been happy with home made, but you can waste a lot of time looking around for the bits.

You can certainly build your own from the entrails of a photocopier or a Chinese negative ion generator. Performance of these can be extremely good.  Even too good as the energy levels can be (literally) shocking if you get a bit casual. Probably not dangerously so to a healthy person, but certainly attention grabbing. I suspect that commercial units err on the side of caution when it comes to shocks, so a DIY unit may give you something with a higher static charge and thus make the static fibres more lively.

Up to a point lower static voltage can be overcome by reducing the working distance.

My thoughts:

• Something like the WWS is quite good, known performance and not that expensive
• If you have the time, interest or specific needs then DIY is well documented and can work very well
• It's a tool you use intensely, but seldom. If you have peers that own them then borrowing one is low hassle all around

Good results come not so much from how erect the grass is as using the right fibres/colours, layering and so on.  WWS has some good YouTube videos with some ideas you might not think of.