Polar Lights 1:350 Enterprise refit - my build up

I'm totally in awe of your electronics expertise!

I'm probably preaching to the choir here, but, remember it's the thin inner lines that are lighted......a lot of folks light the raised flat surfaces......i used some .75mm masking tape from ebaywhich fills the recesses very nicely! Then it's spray away!

Also, sounds crass, but after painting the warp grilles, i used (on my last build) a Black Permanent marker to go over the flat surfaces.....this gives a mettalic black/purple look to the grilles.....

Rich

No expertise here Rich! Like Indy, I'm just making it up as I go along.

Here's a light test of the 2 cathode's:





A quick video:

Narcelles cold cathode light test - YouTube

For some reason the lowermost cathode wasn't lighting properly in the test. I think they need a couple of minutes to warm up sometimes, it's fully lit and working fine now.

In person it's really bright and with the purple diffusion in front of it, I think it should work out well?

Thanks for that. I'll follow your technique of painting the grills leaving the trenches clear, great idea.

I'm going to stick with the cold cathodes for lighting as I'm happy with the even glow they create.

Nice work on your big E!

More lighting tests. I still have a bunch of white led's to add to the hull and in the struts, then the strobe lights and flashing navigation lights, then the lighting aspect will be finished. It'll be a relief, I've had enough of the electronics at this point. I want to make a start with cementing all the substructures together, light blocking and painting:





I feel like I've learned a lot on this build so far. If I built another one of these kits, I would correct a lot of the early mistakes I made (light blocking the saucer walls BEFORE adding the windows for instance) and proceed much more smoothly and assuredly. But I guess thats the way with everything.

Anyway, onwards and upwards hopefully!

Wow!!! Great build. It's amazing how much lighting brings it all to life.

Looking really goot, although I'd tone down the warp engines.
Those are supposed to glow, not act as a night lamp

Thanks. The grills aren't painted yet plus the purple gel is going in front of the cathodes, that'll tone it down loads.

ob1al said:

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Thanks. The grills aren't painted yet plus the purple gel is going in front of the cathodes, that'll tone it down loads.

You should be getting the purple gel today sometime....

Rich

You are a star cheers mate

Hey guys, area I know your working on soon. Here are my grills i completed today.

I know the filming model has a purple sheen to the raised ribs, but after a few tests with different paints I did not find one that I really liked, I opted for a straight gunmetal which was then buffed to a sheen. It will match the outside grills which is ok by me . Clear lacquer purple sprayed on the inside.

WOW! Those lit grooves look razor sharp! How did you do that? Despite all my attempts mine are not that sharp but jagged at some portions. You don't see it from a viewing distance but its noticeable when you get closer to the powered warp engines.

Those look great. I'm going to go for purple on the outside and clear grooves on mine, but I'm struggling to find a way to mask the inside grooves. How did you do it? or did you paint them freehand?

I am right at this very moment trying to mask the inside grooves on mine with .75 mm masking tape....it's bloody frustrating.....

Rich

Oh am not doubting. It's just that even with the masking itself being razor sharp after I was done laying it out the color became jagged after I removed the tape. It was not so much a problem of the masking process itself as removing it. Took me hours to get the jagged edges appear even again. As I said, you wont se it untill you get really close and personal. Still it bugs me. Anyhow. The warp engines are long done, the saucer is my place of work right now (almost done with the construction work) and that is an entire other beast to deal with.

Excellent work so far and I'm following this build closely for all the tips I can "borrow"

I do have a question for anyone that may know. Is there a definitive list of all the lighting for the 1701-A (other than windows of course) with the color and flash rates? That's the first thing I did on the model I'm working on now (not a 1701-A so don't want to hijack) and it was a lot of work, but makes programming the Arduino (I use a RBBB) much easier.

I used these as reference, plus lots of print-outs of screen caps. Hope they help.

In the first diagram the deflector dish position lights are marked as white, but I chose yellow to match the screen caps.

All RC- Thurstes (deflector, saucer rim clusters, at the fins at the nacelles) are yellow!

very nice!!!!

Garbaron, I used 0.75mm masking tape (a bit useless - very little stickiness!) and did the best job I could to mask off the groves, then hit the pieces with a coat of clear purple. When I removed the tape I had exactly the same problem as you - lots of paint bleed into the grooves.

I started to clean the grooves up, but after half an hour or so I gave up. I've now hit the entire clear parts with translucent purple and it has removed the headache of trying to get the grooves perfect. I don't need any more stresses on this project so I've decided to compromise.

When the cold cathodes are lit behind it, the solid purple shows up as blue. When unlit and on display (as in most of the time) the purple kind of looks like this pic:



Not precisely what I wanted, but I'm limited by my own abilities, materials and time. I'm going to call the clear warp pieces done and move on to the next job.

That is exactly how you should approach this build. Got a problem, try to fix it to the best of your abilities and then move on. There is always that one point where you think "I can't do it any better, but still..." and that is when you should leave it as is. When I had spent almost a day trying to get rid of the jagged edges of the warp grill grooves, I declared it "a-ok" and moved on.

Always think of Ian "Raytheon" Lawrence's resume on his first Refit build:
You won't build the perfect model.
You will fail on certain aspects.
Accept it and move on.

Wise words.

After experimenting with a few different whites, I've just pulled the plug on some Tamiya Pearl white. I think it's the best way forward for the base colour of this ship.

Just 6 more LED's to add and I'll be ready to seal everything up, fill the seams and start masking and painting! I'll be glad to put the soldering iron away, I'm sick of the sight of it!

Thanks for the lighting info/plan - looks really good.

Model is looking really great - good job!

ob1al said:

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Just 6 more LED's to add and I'll be ready to seal everything up, fill the seams and start masking and painting! I'll be glad to put the soldering iron away, I'm sick of the sight of it!

Oh I know how you feel. Last week after I had installed the final LEDs in to the saucer I had to solder all corresponding color coded wires to a saucer main circuit board. It almost drove me crazy!

There are 38 LEDs in the saucer total. Some, like the lower saucer wires had already been reduced as much as I could by wiring them to intermit circuit boards but still, there was plenty of wire from the LEDs that power up the saucer rim view ports alone. Well picture says more than a thousand words, this s what it looked like after everything was soldered



(there is one smaller circuit board missing in this picture: I use fiber optics to realize the position lights, which are powered by a single LEDs for the lower and upper saucer segments. The board connecting the lower to the upper saucer is missing here. So add some more wire to what you see here.)


But when you turn the result "on" you know why you tortured yourself like that


(And no, that is NOT an internal "Raytheon" spot light, but a practical one using 2 SMD)


All soldering work left now are two connectors (1x 4 Pin and 1x 3Pin) to connect the saucer circuits to the secondary hull master circuit board.