Lighting a model..how?

[yeehah1]

10-12-2008

Guys...can anyone advise or point me in the direction of a good tutorial on how to light a model, please? Haven't worked with electronics before and have one or two kits I might like to try this with.

Thanks in advance

Liam

[seanrgb]

Madman did a 32 scale Greek F4 some time back ..I think he used Fibre optics ..I'll try find the thread for you

Sorry Liam just had a search all the pictures have gone ... Maybe worth while PM'ing Madman here

[TonyT]

10-12-2008

Guys...can anyone advise or point me in the direction of a good tutorial on how to light a model, please? Haven't worked with electronics before and have one or two kits I might like to try this with.

Thanks in advance

Liam

one way was like this that impressed me

http://www.ketzer.com/frameset.html?http:/...king_index.html

but these are jaw dropping and so is the price...

http://hyperdynelabs.com/products_elec_modelLight.php

This might help.

SciFi models are often done so google that and lighting.......

http://www.starwarsmodels.com/techelec.html

Edited December 10, 2008 by TonyT

[bexwh773]

Madman did a 32 scale Greek F4 some time back ..I think he used Fibre optics ..I'll try find the thread for you

Sorry Liam just had a search all the pictures have gone ... Maybe worth while PM'ing Madman here

So whats this then Seanybaby Liam, heres Pierre's album for his Greek F-4, all 500 plus piccies and if you look through the rest of his album you'll find all his other projects

Madmans F-4 Gallery

Bex

Edited December 10, 2008 by bexwh773

[tornado64]

10-12-2008

Guys...can anyone advise or point me in the direction of a good tutorial on how to light a model, please? Haven't worked with electronics before and have one or two kits I might like to try this with.

Thanks in advance

Liam

a good place to try is gaugemaster or peco they are model railway supplies but the lighting techniques are transferable using grain of wheat bulbs or a fibre optic system

they will also probably be able to point you in the way of a how to light models publication

they will also more than likely be able to put you onto a fibre optics suplier if they don't stock them themselves

[little-cars]

Fibre and grain of wheet bulb kits are readily available.

Fibre is about £9, for the battery case, light source with a bundle of about 30cm fibres attached.

You can get a set of filters to change the light colour these sit just in front of the light source.

Grain of wheat sets are £6 with a number of bulbs, and battery case.

It all depends on the type of light source you want, the fibre is great for multiplle small sources and are easy to concele, grain of wheat are good for less areas needing more light.

If you want to use led's for lighting then go along to your local Maplin,the guys at the parts dept will usually help you out with curcuit diagrams and all the parts.

[John Laidlaw]

So whats this then Seanybaby Liam, heres Pierre's album for his Greek F-4, all 500 plus piccies and if you look through the rest of his album you'll find all his other projects

Madmans F-4 Gallery

Bex

Nice link there Bexy - ta!

[BigReg]

You can also get grain of rice bulbs which are only about 1mm in size, about 1/3rd the size of grain of wheat bulbs. Remember though incandescent bulbs put out heat and LEDs don't. I melted a model that way!!

I got all my lights for a model via model railway stockists.

Regards

David

[LotusArenco]

Remember that it’s that time of year when there’s all sorts of tat for sale with battery operated lights.

Shouldn’t take much to pull apart that ‘Rudolph with the Flashing Nose and Light up Sleigh’

Mart

[tornado64]

Remember that it's that time of year when there's all sorts of tat for sale with battery operated lights.

Shouldn't take much to pull apart that 'Rudolph with the Flashing Nose and Light up Sleigh'

Mart

prefrably before the batteries run out ......

[sciford]

prefrably before the batteries run out ......

When I started to light my kits, I used a lot of grain of wheat and grain of rice bulbs. They did the job but I didn't really like their amber-like tungsten colour. If I wanted the light coloured, I used to use miniature colour gels in front of them. It was a lot of extra and unnecessary work. Then I was introduced to LED's by a colleague at work when I complained about the problems lighting a tungsten bulb. The only thing you need to remember about LED's is they have a positive and a negative pin. (I believe the proper names are cathode and anode but I can never remember which is which). An easy way to remember is that the longest stem is always positive. The shorter is always negative. LED's don't have much tolerance for extra voltage going thru them - when so, they blow real easy. On the other hand, they are so cheap it's easy to learn to use them without breaking the bank. Therefore, a resistor is needed to reduce the power going to the LED. The resistor can be addedto the + or the - stem ; I always attach mine to the - stem. Resistors are also real cheap. Certain LED's of differing size and colour often need varying voltages so I tended to experiment when I forst was using them. If the LED gets hot, a higher resistance is needed. There are formulae for working out the exact resistance with ehatever LED when the voltage is known, but as I'm a maths no hoper, I use trial & error. Have been doing this for the last 16 years, it's pretty easy to match up. I've included a photo of a basic circuit, in layman's terms. I haven't even soldered the connections. In the pic I'm obviously using a nine volt battery. The positive (+) red wire goes to the longer stem of the white LED. On the shorter negative (-) stem of the LED is a 680 ohm resistor (otherwise the 9 volt battery would "fry" the white LED which runs off of somewhere in the region odf about 2.2 volts (??). The black wire from the battery is connected to the other end of the resistor...presto, instant live circuit. If I put a simple on/off switch on any one of the wires, I can turn the LED on and off. Put a flasher circuit on any one wire and I can make it blink. It's really quite simple. Go to Maplins and pick up a handful of 3mm coloured LED's - they're really cheap. White ones and blue ones are usually more expensive. Also get some resistors, I normally use 680 ohm with a 9 volt battery and 820 with 12 volt wall units (a single 9 volt battery can power a number of LED's simultaneously and also be easily hidden in the kit base. Anyway, give it a try. Here's the photo of the simple LED circuit:

http://s69.photobucket.com/albums/i64/Scif...asiccircuit.jpg

[LotusArenco]

Something I picked up about this time last year from a ‘Pound shop‘. Would be very easy to pull apart to fit into a Sci-Fi model.

Mart

[Scarlet]

I've put lights in a few models, an Airfix Hawk and a Wallace and Gromit Van to name two. I used lighting kits I bought from Maplins as a starting point and then modified them to suit. They do a flashing light kit and a strobe kit with adjustable flash rate which is perfect to simulate the strobe lights on 1/48 jets. They sell various size and colour LED's, resistor's, fibre optic cable, battery boxes, switches, etc. If you get the square LED's they can be filed to shape for wingtip Nav lights. It took a bit of trial and error to get everything right, but the bits are very cheap to buy.