PEX Candy Canes

It seems more heat is what was needed... I heated the sand to about 500 degrees and when the hotter sand was poured into the PEX it softened up more, to the point where I could easily form it. I've been doing the rest of them at this sand temp and then, after getting the tubing into the candy cane form, I still heated it with the heat gun for 5 to 10 minutes, making sure to heat the whole thing well. So it's heated by the hotter sand from the inside and by the heat gun from the outside, and this is working well now. I used a small fan to move cooler air across the cane in the form to cool it a little quicker so I can do a few more canes in a day. To clean the sand out I just blast water through them and let them air dry.

I'm only making 12 of them for this year but at least I've gotten a good process figured out (with help from all of you!) which appears to be working. The 'acid test' will be to have them in the show for the season and see if they droop or change from the intended shape.

I tried one cane with the 3mm spaced seed pixels and it lights up pretty well. I've discovered a nice way to secure the top end of the pixel string... I use a length of waxed cord secured to the cable next to the last pixel and pull it down snug so the string is out the end of the crook of the cane, then insert the pex cap to hold it in place. the waxed string flattens out well and doesn't appear to cause any room for leakage of water into the tubing (I think the wax would seal it even if there was a small gap). I should also mention that I'm using the 4-wire string (4th wire being for the data return). So no extra loose wire inside needed to bring the data line back down to the bottom.
At the bottom I'll drill two holes in the cap for the input and output cables. The inside of the cap will then be filled with hot glue once the cables are pulled through the proper amount. The caps will remain removable so the string can be pulled out if a pixel needs replacement.
 
OptykMuse said:
I used a small fan to move cooler air across the cane in the form to cool it a little quicker so I can do a few more canes in a day.
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I've seen Halloween props made with heated PVC and they use a wet rag to cool it down in seconds. Then you shouldn't have a problem with it moving while it's cooling.
 
For what its worth.....I bought end of season candy canes from HD, removed the incan and put in seed pixels. They look nice in the daytime as well.
 
Utimgr said:
For what its worth.....I bought end of season candy canes from HD, removed the incan and put in seed pixels. They look nice in the daytime as well.
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Great idea!

I had 9 28-inch incandescent candy Canes I got from George Simmons several years ago (If anyone remembers him). I found 30 10-inch Battery LED ones at Walgreens and 8 30-inch battery LED ones from Dollar Tree (only about 1/2-inch width). All internals were removed and replaced with WS2811 pixel seeds. I found that I had to double them up to get the brightness level right. These were controlled by ESP8266 D1 mini's and worked well last year.

I bought another 100 from Amazon at the end of Christmas. These will be seeded and placed in a grid, similarly to Peace Stakes.

It's hard to beat the translucent plastic these are made of. I tried to use PVC pipe because I acquired a lot of it free from Craigslist several years ago but I needed an insane amount of light to get them up to a useable level.
 
Yeah, I have a bunch of those store bought candy canes, maybe 14 white with red stripe, 14 red with white stripe, and a few green ones I think I found in yard sales. I thought about upgrading the white ones to seed pixels, but I decided I'm still going to use them as they are. I still have quite a few incan (and 'standard' LED) props run from three LOR dimmer controllers and I love the look of them. They look good during the day too. I know eventually they will deteriorate to the point of un-usability so I'm slowly adding pixel props. The new props at HD are so expensive I don't purchase them very often since I can make several pixel props for the price of a single nice prop from HD. Most or all of them are gone by the time the big price drops come along... except for the inflatables which I generally stay away from (except my giant Grinch which inflates for that particular song only).

The new candy canes should be a hit with the neighbors who are constantly asking me what's new for this Christmas. I decided to add four arches also since that's pretty easily done. I didn't even have to heat the 1" tubing, as it has pretty much relaxed to the arc shape I want. I plan to zip tie them (white zip ties of course) to my metal fence so they will be perfectly shape-stable, and no need to stake them to the ground.
I just about have the candy canes done, been doing a relaxed pace of 2 a day. I think I've used about a pint s far of Coleman fuel in the old camp stove heating the sand.
 
I'd be interested in hearing how they make it with time and the heat of summer.

Even some of my old clear PVC candy canes straightened up a bit from the attic heat over time.
 
Curious about that myself. We don't have many hot (90's) days during the summer here so they may do fine since I keep everything in my garage (no room for cars in there :)
I'll probably review all of my posts around October / November next year so can add an update then.

I got all of my canes done yesterday. I did one without the added heat of the heat gun to see how much that helped them hold their shape... I can say that the heat gun step after putting the hot sand softened PEX into the form really made a noticeable difference. The one I didn't do that on is not holding the shape in the crook curve. It's straightened out to about a 90 degree curve instead of 180 degrees like all the others. I'll have to redo that one.
For that heat gun step I slowly moved it along the length a section at a time until there was a noticeable sheen on the surface of the PEX. That seemed to be the amount of extra heat that did the trick.

I will mention that I had to work quickly once I had the really hot sand funneled into the pex pipe. Using leather gloves, my hands were getting pretty hot by the time I had it properly in the form. I think maybe a set of welder's gloves might actually work better (didn't have those on hand).
 
Glad you got it. mine are a few years old now and pretty much hold their shape. The strait part on some likes to curve a bit, but when I did mine I did it in two steps, first straiten then the curved end. I expect the ones that like to curve didn't get enough heat.
My findings were that you almost have to get the PEX to the temperature it was during its manufacture.
 
Time's getting short, but I have all the candy canes ready to go and the first one assembled and tested with a new weather-tight D1-mini controller (running ESPixelStick) and it's working great! I still need to see how the brightness looks in a few weeks when they're in the display out front but it looked pretty good in my lab with the lights out. I got out an oldie but goodie (wizards in winter) and cobbled up a brand new sequence from scratch for it to give all the pixel props a chance to show off (that song is perfect for dancing the pixels around). None of my neighbors here have seen that one (last time I had it in the show was around 2012 or so, at the old address) so it will be fun to hear their reactions.
I'm shooting to 'flip the switch' the Friday after Thanksgiving (wife won't let me start the show before that ;) )
 
What effects do we all use for the candy canes? I just light mine up using red pixels, and a few flashy sequences but haven't landed on anything that makes me go wow. And I'm easily impressed.... :)
 
I like the meteor fill effect to dribble light down the base and let it fill up. I also use the plasma effect a lot on them. They also coordinate with my Arches (they are each located between a pair of arches).
 
I just started my show tonight and the pixel canes are holding up fairly well... just a slight bit of warping so far. The brightness is pretty good, even at 70 or 80%, easily visible in a stand-outish kind of way. I also made 4 arches using 1" pex and zip-tied them to my fence (steel bar fence) so they won't warp at all. The canes are right in the front of the display and holding their own against the rest of the props.
Now maybe a third of my display is pixels and I've used different setting of the wipe effect along with the the rest of the pixel props and it looks pretty fun. I dusted off the Wizards in Winter audio and built a new sequence just because it works so well to show off the pixels.

Anyway, just wanted to say all the advise on turning coiled pex into nice Christmas props helped me and I'm grateful for it.:)
Hot sand at about 550 degrees pretty much did the trick getting the pex soft enough to easily get it into the came form and they are holding their shape reasonably well, especially the crook at the top. THANKS GUYS!
 
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