Nike Mag V2 Mod Discussion (Page 58 Shopping List)

[DL4567]

Even though people say that you can solder onto EL sheets, I have NEVER been able to do it without ruining the EL. What happens is the solder burns the inside layers of the EL, rendering it useless. That is why I use Wire Glue.

Ahhhh crap I was afraid of that. I guess I got really lucky on my other pair with the solder. On these new pieces, no matter where I clip on the metal leads from the inverter, the EL just doesn't react at all now.

Well wire glue it is then once I get another EL sheet. Would you (or any anyone else) happen to have one of the ebay 5"x6" EL Panel Back Light Board Display Backlight Green from elwireseller that you'd be willing to part with? Would be much faster than ordering one from them in China.

 

[Tarchinoko]

What are you wanting to do exactly?

are you trying to do a full modification or just light up the strap?

If you are just wanting to light up the strap, you will need a seperate switch, inverter and battery. You cannot tap into the existing battery, as its useless.

If you are doing a full modification, the battery is useless and you will either need a 9v, 3v or 3.6v/3.7v battery setup depending on how you want to power your shoes.

9v is the normal method for a full conversion, but you can also try the more complicated 3v and 3.6v/3.7v methods.

Either way, you can't really use the existing crappy battery that comes in the shoe.

For starters, its either a CR202 or similar rechargeable coin cell battery, so most likely 3v or 3.6v, i'm not sure, I've never bothered to try and take it out of the plastic its inside. It will have a finite lifespan for sure, so maybe a couple of hundred charges before it starts to die out.

It also has a custom circuit board that its wired to which powers the 2 leds in the soles and the 12 leds in the ankle bubble. As it is, the leds are very dim and not accurate in any way shape or form. The wire is seriously thin too, and will snap very easily, and thats why you see many people's shoes with leds going out and then not charging. Once the wires snap, thats it, its game over.

The momentary switch thats at the back is also prone to snapping off, so that itself is not really a suitable long term solution.

thanks! thats very useful! may i ask what 9v battery you used? Im assuming you got a rechargeable one

 

[Mallmagician]

Well you can get to the battery with a little work.
Just lift the grey sole insert, and underneath you will see a white stitched fabric. Punch a hole through it and rip it out, underneath it is a pink cardboard type piece.

You will then see the small rectangular hollow space where the Coin Cell battery is sat inside. You may find however that the coin cell is glued down, and thats when you will start to feel pain!

You may need a flat screwdriver to try and pull it out. If you are lucky your's might not be glued down heavilly. I've had some pairs with the battery glued down like a pain, whilst other times the battery has just popped out without any force.

As for replacing this coin cell with another, if you know your elecronics and circuit boards, you may try, but like I said above, the coin cell is actually encased in a hard plastic shell which you will need to smash open somehow.

And since the coin cell is soldered to a custom circuit, you will have to check what the circuit is doing what in terms of the wiring.

Its not worth the hassle to be honest to even attempt to replace that crappy coin cell.

The coin cell is most likely 3v or 3.6v, probably a CR2032 rechargeable or something similar. They only have a finite cycle and since they have such low maH, they will only last a short period as they are powering 14 leds in total.

Coin Cells are best for watches, alarm clocks and other devices which don't suck so much power.

Even if you replace just your battery in your V2 somehow, you will still have the crappy lights which will eventually die out on you, and your shoes will still have the incorrect lighting anyway!

Thanks so much for the info. Reckon I'll go the whole hog at some point then. Thanks again.

 

[airair]

Even though people say that you can solder onto EL sheets, I have NEVER been able to do it without ruining the EL. What happens is the solder burns the inside layers of the EL, rendering it useless. That is why I use Wire Glue.

You are right. You can't solder onto the sheet.
You only solder onto the pins outside of where the el sheet begins.

Dl4567 has soldered onto the el sheet which is why it's damaged the el sheet.

 

[airair]

Hey guys,

Question please!!

I'm finally getting around to fully modding my 2nd pair of V2's (ughh... it's still a terrible job!!) and I've run into some trouble with the EL. I soldered the wires onto my painstakingly cut sole pieces, and now they don't light up. After doing the first one, I tested the 2nd one before soldering to make sure the inverter is working fine, and the 2nd piece lit up just fine. Soldered on the wires to the 2nd piece, and now it too doesn't work. WTF!?!?! I did it the exact same way on my first pair and had no problems whatsoever. Any idea what's going on?

Can too much heat ruin a piece of EL? I tried to be as quick as possible with the soldering on the 2nd piece for minimum heat, but as I said now both don't work. I'd hate to have to order more EL from China and have to wait 3 weeks to get it, nevermind the cost.

http://imageshack.com/a/img513/10/yxec.jpg





http://imageshack.com/a/img11/4725/9v89.jpg

From your pictures I can see why the el sheet has burnt. You actually soldered too far in onto the connection pins. You should only solder onto the pins outside of where the el sheet begins. Those pins are sort of staple pressed on. That's where the
Connection will have its current.

Never solder onto the el sheet where the pins are stapled in. Always solder to the pins outside of where the el sheet begins.

Your first one you must have been lucky as the solder heat will damage the el sheet layer.

 

[airair]

thanks! thats very useful! may i ask what 9v battery you used? Im assuming you got a rechargeable one

Any decent 9v alkaline battery is fine or any 9v rechargeable battery.

The Chinese 9v rechargeable ones are good as they have high maH so they last very long.

 

[DL4567]

From your pictures I can see why the el sheet has burnt. You actually soldered too far in onto the connection pins. You should only solder onto the pins outside of where the el sheet begins. Those pins are sort of staple pressed on. That's where the
Connection will have its current.

Never solder onto the el sheet where the pins are stapled in. Always solder to the pins outside of where the el sheet begins.

Your first one you must have been lucky as the solder heat will damage the el sheet layer.

Very lucky indeed. If only I knew this just yesterday.... I even have wire glue handy. Here's a picture from one from my first pair. Soldered in the same spot and covered in hot glue:

I even soldered all 4 strap logos back in May 2013, and they suffered no damage. But they are on the pins, if that is the key difference.

And as an added bonus from the joys of simple things in life going wrong, I looked in my mailbox this morning to find the LiteLong 9v batteries from China that I've been waiting for for 2 1/2 weeks, that had been sitting in there since yesterday. The problem being it was 16F degrees outside (-9 C) last night. GREAT!!! Of all the nights for them to be in the mailbox overnight. Also, a pair of cell phone batteries I ordered were sitting in there with them. Just, unbelievable. I'm hoping all these batteries aren't ruined....

Alright, at this point I'm assuming no one has a spare 5"x6" Green EL sheet, so I'm gonna order a couple more sheets today. Sucks because I could have had this pair finished today.

 

[airair]

Very lucky indeed. If only I knew this just yesterday.... I even have wire glue handy. Here's a picture from one from my first pair. Soldered in the same spot and covered in hot glue:

http://imageshack.com/a/img838/7683/xhtl.jpg

I even soldered all 4 strap logos back in May 2013, and they suffered no damage. But they are on the pins, if that is the key difference.

http://imageshack.com/a/img542/979/tmd5.jpg


And as an added bonus from the joys of simple things in life going wrong, I looked in my mailbox this morning to find the LiteLong 9v batteries from China that I've been waiting for for 2 1/2 weeks, that had been sitting in there since yesterday. The problem being it was 16F degrees outside (-9 C) last night. GREAT!!! Of all the nights for them to be in the mailbox overnight. Also, a pair of cell phone batteries I ordered were sitting in there with them. Just, unbelievable. I'm hoping all these batteries aren't ruined....

Alright, at this point I'm assuming no one has a spare 5"x6" Green EL sheet, so I'm gonna order a couple more sheets today. Sucks because I could have had this pair finished today.

Your el strap cutouts are soldered fine, thats what you should have done for your sole cutouts.

 

[DL4567]

Your el strap cutouts are soldered fine, thats what you should have done for your sole cutouts.

I appreciate your responses airair. I cut off the metal prongs because there isn't much room for them in the sole EL area. Also I didn't want them to be seen sticking out at the back of the EL behind the clear rubber.

 

[DL4567]

WHAAATTTT!!!!!!!!!

Now they work. I don't believe it.

And I placed my ebay order for the new EL just 15 minutes ago. Gonna try and cancel that.

 

[Jedifyfe]

That is strange!!!

 

[DL4567]

It sure is. Either they "healed" overnight by fully cooling down or something, or, when I went to try them for the first time today, I used the larger inverter that came with the EL rather than our tiny 9v inverters. Same battery though. Maybe that somehow "defibrulated" them back to life? Whatever the case, the small 9v inverter also lights them up now.

 

[airair]

It sure is. Either they "healed" overnight by fully cooling down or something, or, when I went to try them for the first time today, I used the larger inverter that came with the EL rather than our tiny 9v inverters. Same battery though. Maybe that somehow "defibrulated" them back to life? Whatever the case, the small 9v inverter also lights them up now.

That's great. Will save you time/money on getting another sheet.

They must have cooled down so thats great.

I see you're cutting out some of the grey sole to fit in the EL sheet.

The EL Sheets I have, the connector pins are thin floppy silver ones which can be bent easily, so you don't have to cut out any grey bits out.

You can save space if your EL sheet has tabbed connections and just use the wire glue instead.

Those hard connector pins are not really flexible.

 

[RLMcFly]

I had some EL overheat at the metal connectors before, I think the solder and heat interact with the metal pins and once they cool down the electricity flows as it should once again. I'm going to embark on modding my 2nd pair soon as well. I'm having trouble finding tabbed EL, but my online search has begun.

also, as JediFyfe said wire glue is best (he knows his stuff) but note that you can use solder on the metal prongs if you drip it onto the connectors (a no no usually when soldering wire :thumbsup)

 

[DJ1gocue]

i poopt the bed lmao and it stinks

 

[cbomb89]

Okay im on a quest to re make the mag Og. sole with the outer rim ive took apart the v2 soles on my 1st mag for a mold take, in mind I could re make the sole in crystal clear silicone rubber but I don't want to do that I might just try to re make it myself by cutting one half of one sole to re attach to the other witch should give me that 3d outer sole look plus the grid pattern will match problem is it will cost almost 500 bucks to make mold .On the bright side this idea has to work or, I will have 1 pair of soless v2 mags and a cut up pair of soles on another. Mag parts anyone. JK so wish me luck.

Do you sell the clear soles?

Sent from my SM-T210R using Tapatalk

 

[cavx]

Okay im on a quest to re make the mag Og. sole with the outer rim ive took apart the v2 soles on my 1st mag for a mold take, in mind I could re make the sole in crystal clear silicone rubber but I don't want to do that I might just try to re make it myself by cutting one half of one sole to re attach to the other witch should give me that 3d outer sole look plus the grid pattern will match problem is it will cost almost 500 bucks to make mold .On the bright side this idea has to work or, I will have 1 pair of soless v2 mags and a cut up pair of soles on another. Mag parts anyone. JK so wish me luck.

I too have been re-thinking this over. The issue is that good clear rubber costs more than a pair of the MAGs that the clear soles will go on. Anyway, last time I made flat sheets (didn't have a vacuum chamber, so got loads of bubbles and it took forever to cure), cut the parts out and glued them in place. The seams on the sides didn't look that great.

Since then, I have met a heap of guys that make silicon molds of virtually everything and cast themselves various things (mostly gun parts), so would like to give this another go. Looking that their work, I think what I would do different is to remove the clear sole from the V2 MAG altogether and take a mold off that part. Before I did, I would slice the outer side of the base, replace the surface with that pyramid mat and add in the additional 1/4" to allow for the "outrigger" style. The 1/4 slot would need to be filled and the angle of the outer side would need to be set first with a nice vertical inner surface to adhere back on the shoe.

I still need to ask many questions, but it seems that I would need to create the mold with the part upside down because that side part is effectively a wedge (triangle in cross section). Pouring the part up-side down should ensure the liquid will run into the sides. There would have to be a pour spout and an air outlet on the base of the sole which would be ground off later. At worst you would get two small of patches that may not be "clear" and because your walking on this, you won't see it anyway.

Thoughts?

 

[RLMcFly]

I have eaten Nike Mags! Lol well in chocolate form anyways!



Thought I would share some pictures of edible Nike Mag confections (cakes, cupcakes, chocolate Nike Mag garnishes) that I took while at a sneaker con in my hometown!

 

[DJ1gocue]

Thanks for the heads up on the best EL sheets to use (tabbed EL). I found these shortly after posting yesterday and was surprised at the price, but they look to be perfect for modding mags with, and the old adage is often true in that you get what you pay for...

View attachment 277518 View attachment 277519 View attachment 277523 View attachment 277526

Thought I would share some pictures of edible Nike Mag confections (cakes, cupcakes, chocolate Nike Mag garnishes) that I took while at a sneaker con in my hometown!

your welcome i have to warn you thou don't touch the side's or back of the sheet when it is on lol i kinda figured out how they make stun guns its with inverters ooowch lmao ,, but to be serious the A5 sheet they have is perfect tabbed on 3 sides its only 31 bucks i bought 2 and i think i can squeeze 3 mods out of them

 

[youngking59]

It looks like your el sheet is only usable where the metal pins are.
If you want you can test whether the rest of the connection points are usable by using a battery and inverter and just touching the black areas with the positive and negative wires.

If you have a coin cell inverter you can test using that.

You might also want to check if the black side is peelable or removable.

I have el sheets similar to the one you have, but mine have 4 connection points but nothing else is usable as the back of it is covered with a protective layer and there are no other positive and negative points like on your el sheet.

It looks like yours maybe usable if the black covering can be removed.

The other ones I have got from ebay have had 4 connection points and many other positive and negative points which can be used as they have no protective layer on the back.

These are more floppy than the other ones I have which have the protective layer on the back.

Where i can buy an el panel without protective layer ? I would like to make the EL STRAPE but i want to glue and don't heat it.

Best regards.