Revell Republic Cruiser with lights

Noumcea

Electronics, LED's and FO

Well, I have most of the LED's wired to light the brim trenches, the white lights that surround the hanger doors on both sides of the ship and the white lights on the upper part hull. The aft board will be for the engines and ligthing of the upper hull and bridge.

When wiring the LED's to the controller boards (Delux 8), I followed the wiring diagram from the manufacturer (see the first image). The board has 8 sets of pins to connect LED's to and can power up to a max of 12. There are 8 sets of pins to wire the LED's to. In order to power 12 LED's, you need a power supply of 12V DC for the card.

At first I wired 4 LED's, each to a seperate set of pins. All went well. When I tried to add a second LED in series to the one on the first set of pins, none of the lights worked - the voltage required exceeded 12 V. After more experimentation, I that the board cannot handle LED's in series at all ???

The only way to power 12 LED's on the type of cards is to wire them in parallel. See image 2

Finally, when completed the model will be powered by a wall wert. Batteries don't last long enough due to the amperage required. If any one wants the reasoning as to why a wall wet is better than batteries, please let me know and I will give an explanation on this thread.

The final images are of the fully wired forward board, and a an image taken in the dark to show the 12 LED's running.

The rest of this week I will be finishing drilling and threading FO for the brim trenches before they are painted and glued into place.

Enjoy.

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Abaris

BTW, CA Glue (aka Super Glue) is IMPOSIBLE to remove from any kind of fabric, so beaware of what do you wear while using it, I ruined some cloths myself because of the CA Glue...


It's looking awesome (the Cruiser), I have one myself I will paint someday...

ReplicantShadow

Bummer about the sweat paints! I get glue everywhere myself and I end up cutting my work shirts into paint rags lol.I am sorry for the slow response to your question sooner but no one is claimimg your work, I made an assumption that you were the same fella working on a Venator on another forum. The guy is out of Melbourne. Here is a link to his thread: Upgrading the Revell Venator - ARC Discussion Forums - Page 5

Noumcea

Shadow, no problems about the delay in replying and the confusion about the build on the ARC forum. I must say that guys works is quite impressive.

It would be very interesting to see a number of modified Cruisers to see how each builder interpreted how it should look.

Should have more pictures up over the weekend. I am just finishing off the FO for the hanger bay doors on each side of the ship.

Stay tuned all !!

blakeh1

thanks for showing the wiring diagrams. I need to learn more about putting electronics in models

HIGHWAYMAN9674

I like how neat you work,were did you get your fiber-opt cable??nice work I like how this is the future star destroyers..lol

Noumcea

Blake, no problems about the diagrams. I like to share the stuff I have learned through trial and error. I am learning the electronics side of things as I progress with the build.

Noumcea

Mate first of all, many thanks for your comment on my work. To me it looks like a tangled pile spaghetti.

I got the FO, LED's and controller boards from near and far. I initially got the Republic Cruiser Lighting Kit from MadMan Lighting. After working out that I needed another controller board because I wanted to use about 20 LED's, I purchased another controller card from the MadMan. He also gave me a few more LED's.

For the extra 0.25mm FO I bought 10 feet of the 64 strand cable from http://www.thefiberopticstore.com

Because it was too costly to import a bunch of red, white and blue LED's that will not only be used on this build but, a Randy cooper Star Destroyer, I got 10 red, 30 white and 20 blue LED's from an Australian online store - LED Sales.

Finally for 0.5mm FO, there is a store not far from me which although specialising in everything for model railroads, they have have FO. I bought about 20 metres of 0.5mm from Gwydir Valley Models.

I hope all of the above helps you.

Cheers.

Dave

Noumcea

I have finally got all of the FO in place for the brim trenches and given the parts an undercoat. The only pieces left of this part of the build are the lights around the hanger doors.

Trying to turn individual strands of FO into something that looks like strip ligthing is the hardest thing I have tried on this model so far. Fingers crossed and I will have them done by the end of the week and post more pics.

After that comes painting all of the trench pieces..A change from drilling, threading and greebling.

Take care.

Dave.

Noumcea

After much fiddling, I have worked out how to create the strip lighting around the brim trench hanger doors....

I started with 0.5mm FO but it was obvious that there were individual strands used to create the strip.

Next was 0.25mm FO but they proved hard to place in a straight line so the strip effect was jagged.

I then remebered that I had a few sheets of 0.25mm clear styrene. After cutting a few test strips and placing them into the rather brutally created slots, I used an LED torch to test the effect...Perfect. Not too bright as to wash out the blue FO that will placed on the rest of the two panels.

The first image is of the hanger bay piece without the clear styrene. The second is test in darkness. Sorry for the quality of the images.

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shinra

WAOUH!! I like all detail on the kits!!!

Noumcea

Oh dear.

The experiment using the strips of clear styrene didn't work out as I had hoped. In the end, they didn't transmit enough light.

So back to the drawing board. I am going back to using the 0.5mm FO after a few days of trying this and that.

Shall have some pics of what I am trying to achieve in the next day or so.

Stay tuned.

Noumcea

A question for all, moderators included.

With the use of CGI to create many things in movies these days including the model I am currently building, what is now classed as studio scale versus general modeling ?

I have read the definition of SS on this site but find that there is no provision for digitally created "models" used in movies, etc.

I am not saying that my build should be moved to the SS part of the site. What I am looking for is some type of clarification as to where to post a build for a CGI model, eg a ship from the Chronicles of Riddick.

Noumcea

After the failure of the clear styrene to provide the strip lighting around the brim docking bays I went back to using 0.5mm FO. This has been a slow process as I had to make the slots wider to accomodate the extra 0.25mm for the FO. This made the outside of each of the 2 pieces look like they were ravaged by some type of styrene eating monster.

Nevertheless, I have all but 2 more sets of strips to install. The way I have tried to keep the FO in as straight a line as possible is using 0.75mm styrene chips to place the FO against then secure with masking tape. Once this is done I then liberally applied white glue to the back side where the FO was threaded through. Any gaps in the slots were filled with strips of 0.25mm styrene. The first 2 pictures are a better explanation than what I can write here.

While waiting for the glue for the FO to dry, I have been working on the spine of the ship. The top side is completed and I am now working on the sides. All of the detail for the spine is derived from one screen capture from the movie.

More to follow later in the week.

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Noumcea

G'day all,

Sorry for the long delay between posts. Been down and out with the flu, had some travelling to do and a fair amount of spring cleaning around the place.

The port side trenches are finally complete. It was an excercise in patience trying to work out the paint mixes and how to get the pieces looking somewhat "used". In the end I opted for a dark grey in the recesses and around the edges of each piece then, a lighter grey for the more visible, protuding parts.

I then tried a few different washes to make some of the detail stand out but was not happy with result. After some dep thought (a few beers), I rumaged through the drawers of my modelling desk and found some Tamiya weathering master pastels I used on a previous build. So I slathered that across all of the raised sections of each piece then wiped some off with my finger. Now it looks like it has been in and out of the atmosphere quite a few times.

Next I had some problems with a number of the FO. I cut 30 or so of them too short. So they had to be pulled out and new ones installed. Once that was done I was able to get all of the port side pieces glued to the bottom hull piece, and the FO bundles connected to their LEDs in about 4 days.

Now that I know what I am doing (sort of), the starboard side should be completed by the end of next week.

Hope you like the pics.

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Noumcea

Trenches done !!!

I know it has been more than the week I expected to get the trenches completed. I found on the starboard side that I had to replace the FO on the first four pieces. The light wasn't being properly sent through the FO and I found that a number of them had snapped because I was trying to bend them too much in order to conserve space.

Anyway, after stripping out the old FO, cleaning off the white glue, re-drilling a few holes then adding the new FO, all is good.

One thing I am not happy about is that the white FO (0.5mm) around the door of docking bays on both sides of the ship are too bright. You can see what I mean in one of the pictures below.

Can anyone please give me some help on how to diffuse the the light from the LED ? I have used heat shrink tubing so it is not much of a problem cutting that away and placing something between the LED and FO. The question is what should I use ?

Many thanks to anyone who help with this minor problem.

Next stop, the engines...Time for some nurnies and greeblies !!!

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takevin

One way to difuse the led, is light sand the led with some fine wet sandpaper, another on top of of that is using a dremel and slightly veering the tip off a bit.

Noumcea

Takevin,

Many thanks for the tip mate. I removed the shrink tubing and used some 200 grit sandpaper on the white LEDs. Now the white "lights" around the docking bays don't look like 3 billion candle power.

Thanks again !!

Dave.

Noumcea

Well, a couple of months have gone by with the build being a stop and go affair. Life, the universe and a breather slowed progress for a while but, I am now back in the saddle.

Am now working the engines and fine tuning the electronics...What a job I tell you ! From the few screen caps I have of the main engines it has ended up being a guessing game for the detailing of the tubes. They are not yet finished as I am doing some hack and slash to make the original main pipes look much more like tubes than the thick mould castings OOB.

The LEDs are installed and some detailing has been added but there is still a fair amount of bits and bobs to be added.

Also been thinning down the walls inside the exhaust tubes and after being stumped for a while on how to make the inserts, I received a lot of help from the MadHatter on another forum. Many thanks MH.

I also could not but try out and see what the engines looked like when they were "lit up". I'm happy with the results so far....

So below are a few pics of what little I have done in the past couple of weeks.

Enjoy.

Dave.

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Scratchy

It's coming together nicely Noumcea, the lighting effects really does throw some life into the build. Those details are a huge improvement to the kit.

I don't know if you need any extra reference, but here's a link
Screencaps » Star Wars

Looking forward to future updates!

yuumi2891103

Your detailing and lighting are really impressive.
I can't wait for the next post.

Oriontide

As I am also getting into lighting my kits, I've been following this thread with great interest. I'm really loving the way this ship is looking so far; very impressive work.

Noumcea

Many thanks for your comments everyone. I am guessing that the main engins will be finished in about a week or so. Then it's onto the smaller engines.

More pics in a week or so.

Cheers.

Dave.

Madhatter

Gidday Dave!
Mate - thought it was about time to drop in and say Hi
It's really looking good now - not far from completion?
Hey, do you want some of the triangle frames I used in mine as I still have some left if you want some?

Will drop in again soon

Si

Noumcea

Well, it is more than the week I thought it would take to get the engines done. Had some (a fair amount) of time off with my good wife so modelling was a hit and miss affair.

Anyhow, the thruster tubes for the main engines are now ready to paint. The detailing consisted of various thicknesses of copper rods, styrene rods and styrene sheets.

To add a touch of something different other than stock tubing, I have cannibalised a couple of SkyWave 1/700 Krivak II frigates. There are a number of radar "dishes", gun barrels and assorted bits and bobs which connect to the styrene and copper plumbing.

I did the detailing of the tubes in a simplistic way. I looked at a number of images of the outside of turbofan and turbojet engines and then extrapolated this to what I thought would be cooling tubes, secondary fuel injectors, etc.

Hope the primed tubes look OK. Now I am thinning the walls of the exhaust tubes for greebling.

Hopefully more updates next week.

Enjoy.

Dave

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