Revell Republic Cruiser with lights

Can't get the LEDs to glow at the brightness you like ? Is your model looking like a christmas tree with the light washing out the details ? I have found the solution - a remote controlled LED dimmer.

Last week I ordered more LEDs for the cruiser, along with a stockpile for my RC SD which will be built late this year or early next year. While browsing the website I came across the dimmers and ordered two of the single channel remote controlled dimmers to see what they could do.
I purchased them at www.ledsales.com.au

In the search box on the website type in LED dimmers. The ones I bought were $22 Oz.

I connected one up today as a test and am more than happy with the results. For displaying the model in daylight, turn up the brightness, and for displaying in the dark, turn it down. The dimmer is controlled by a key fob remote, the same as a remote entry device for a car. When the system is turned off, it remembers the dimming level before it was turned off.

Below are a number of images of the unit. The first is the whole set-up from power supply to the dimmer unit to the LED driver card to the LED.

The second image shows the wiring from the LED driver card to the LED then test piece.

The third image is with the dimmer at full power. Too bright !!

The fourth image is at half power. Sorry for the blurring but my hands are not steady at times. The difference can be seen in person though.

Finally are the instructions for the dimmer unit. It can handle different voltages and amperages.

Hope this has been of some help.

Finally, can anyone give me any ideas on how to grind down a lensed LED so that its surface is flat ?

Many thanks in advance.

Been a bit of a while since my last post. Had some time off on a trip to see a mate of mine and on the way home a kangaroo wiped out the front of my vehicle. So I have been laid up on pinkillers (fortunately no major injuries suffered).

Anyway, I have finished drilling the holes and threading the FO for the forward brim trench pieces. Time to do add some greeblies then undercoat and paint.

The numbers on the tape are not how many fibres in each part but, the part number. I lost count after about 300 fibres.

Many more parts to drill and thread but, I am getting a bit bored of that at the moment so will do some painting and greeblies.

Lots of stopping and starting since my last posting. Done a bit of travelling and also been sick.

Anyway, I have finished cutting away the side walls of the upper and lower hull parts to allow the FO from the brim trenches to be eventually connected to the LEDs.

Also added some greeblies to the lower hull brim trench shelfing to give a some texture. The shelf just didn't look right being straight and flat.

Finally, the top of the spine at the rear of the ship has been detailed with scratch built pieces to make it look as close as possible to the only screen capture I could get from the movie.

Now I need to do some sanding to remove the shiny residue left from the glue.

More to come later in the week.

Brilliant stuff! It's looking better and better!

Rich

clancampbell said:

Brilliant stuff! It's looking better and better!

Rich

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Sir Campbell, thanks again for your words of encouragement. It may be taking me a while to build this ship but as you know, turning an out of the box kit to something that does the film version justice is very tedious.

No worries mate! I bought one of these at Christmas, then sold it a week later when i saw 3 or 4 customizations like yours......i just wasn't up to the challenge! (and i was knee deep in a 1:350 Enterprise....still am!)

Looking forward to more.

Rich

Brim Trench Guns

I was just about to start painting then gluing the forward brim trenches when I had another Doh ! moment. I had forgotten to rebuild the the guns located in the waist of the ship....

Out came the razor saw to remove the original guns which to say the least, left a lot to be desired. I built new mantles for the guns by cutting some sprue from the kit and then sanding it down to 1/3 of its original thickness. The new mantles have now been glued where the original guns were located.

Next are the gun barrels. These are being made from 1mm copper wire which will have 1.5mm hollowed copper tubing at the ends for the muzzles.

Still a work in progress but the images should tell most of the story. BTW, in the last image is the kit moulded gun next to the parts which will become the new trench guns.

Awesome work sir! I initially saw your thread on the ARC forums, stoked to see it here to! I just built this kit myself,straight from the box. I chose to paint mine in the Imperial scheme. I only spot glued the the top hull so I can crack it open once I study the whole Fiber Optic thing, which looks daunting to say the least ! Thank you for the play by play sir!:thumbsup

ReplicantShadow said:

Awesome work sir! I initially saw your thread on the ARC forums, stoked to see it here to! I just built this kit myself,straight from the box. I chose to paint mine in the Imperial scheme. I only spot glued the the top hull so I can crack it open once I study the whole Fiber Optic thing, which looks daunting to say the least ! Thank you for the play by play sir!:thumbsup

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Shadow, many thanks for your comments. No need to call me sir BTW, I'm Dave.

Putting in the optics is a very tedious and time consuming process, particularly when it is the first time you have ever done it, as is the case with my build. I will as always keep up the progess reports so that everyone new to FO can learn form my mistakes.

Re the ARC forum, I am not a member. Has someone being claiming my work as their own ? Could you please send my the link to thread in question so I can have a look ?

Many thanks again for your feedback and help.

A lesson from last night. DO NOT TRY THIS AT HOME

1. Don't wear track suit pants / sweat pants which contains polyester while using CA glue.

2. Don't wear any rings on your fingers when using CA glue, and

3. Don't try to remove CA glue with acetone by using a Q tip.

Last night I was installing the circuit boards to drive the LEDs. After working out where they were going to placed I realised that I didn't have the tiny screws needed to fasten the boards to the styrene slats I made. So good old me thinks to myself, "you can add a drop of CA glue to the bottom of each circuit board, that will keep them in place."

Now I use very thin, fast drying CA glue which comes in a bottle. It has a two part cap, one that screws onto the bottle proper and has a small hole in the top to apply the glue. The second cap screws onto the first to seal the bottle. Well, the second part fused to the first months ago. So I have been opening the bottle itself and dipping in a toothpick to get a drop of glue then applying it where required. No problem.

I secured the first circuit board without any trouble and checked it to make sure the glue didn't stuff anything up. All is good . I then got the second board and started to apply a drop of the glue when my left arm twitched - I suffer from muscle spasms from time to time. This is where the fun began :eek.

I knocked over the bottle of glue. I grabbed it with my left hand. Some of the glue got onto my hand. Some spilled onto my left leg. My track suit pants started smoking and I felt a quite uncomfortable heat on my thigh. So I ran out of the modelling room to the back door then outside, trailling acrid smoke behind me.

As soon as I got out the back door I stripped off my pants, forgetting it was about 2 degrees C outside. I called my wife to get me another pair of pants. She was watching TV. She said "what do you want pants for Dave ?", followed by "what is that smell ?".

She eventually came out with another pair of pants and did a double take when she saw I was without pants and had a still smoking pair on the ground next to me. "What did you do ?", she asked. "I just spilled some glue, that's all". She just shook her head and asked if I was OK and I said, "yeah, scorched but not burnt".

After putting the new pants on and going back into the house, I found that my wedding ring was glued to my finger :unsure. I asked my wife where the nail polish remover was. "I don't know, you used it up", she said. "No, I have half a bottle somewhere, thought you knew where it was". "No" she says. So the hunt was on for the elusive acetone bottle. After 15 minutes I found it amongst a stockpile of unused cans of of primer paint. I was feeling chuffed :cool.

Off to the bathroom I go to remove the ring from my finger. I pulled out a Q tip and put some acetone onto it. The Q tip started smoking and giving off horrid fumes :cry. Out side it went with the pair of dead pants. I ended up soaking my hand in the acetone until the ring finally came off.

The moral of this story, see points 1,2 & 3 at the start of this post.

Anyway, after the unexpected experiment with glues and solvents, everything worked out fine. The circuit boards are in place and have been wired in parallel. They work fine :lol.

Here are some pics. The first is the inside of my pants just after the spillage. The rest are of the installation and testing of the circuit boards.

Hope you all enjoyed my little story.

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.

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... :lol

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

ReplicantShadow said:

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

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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 !!

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

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

blakeh1 said:

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

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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.

HIGHWAYMAN9674 said:

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

Click to expand...

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

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.

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.