Connectors for docking ships to a DS9

[RickP]

Hi,

as this is my first real post and I couldn'd find a 'new members' forum I'd like to introduce myself.

My name is Rick and I'm from Hamburg/Germany. I'm building models for about a half year now. I came to it through my other hobby - collecting and restorating pinball machines.

I bought an Indiana Jones pinball last year and restored everything on it last winter (I even gold-plated the ramps). There are two plastic airplane-models on the indy's playfield that look like very cheap toys (The biplane and a Messerschmidt from the 3rd movie) and that bothered me.

So I bought a 1:48 Messerschmidt Bf 109 and a Tiger Moth Biplane off ebay. I build them, modified them so they won't break apart when they're hit by a ball and put some leds in the Messerschmidts wings that light up in certain situations. Then I painted them (quite badly) with a brush and enamel colors. The playfield looks much better with these installed.

It was fun building the models, so I decided to build another model for my Star Trek TNG pinball. On this machine there is a large borg ship on the top of the playfield, that shoots balls at you in multiball. But for the borg ship the designers took the rogue borg ship from a TNG episode - not the cube (http://www.ipdb.org/showpic.pl?id=2357&picno=19079).

I was searching for a borg cube the right size, but couldn't find one. So I had to build it from scratch. To get some material to work with I bought some sci-fi kits from ebay and got some others from a friends atic. I ended up with the AMT three piece adversary kit, an AMT Millenium Falcon, a Revell Voyager, an AMT DS9 and an AMT Enterprise D.

To get some practice before starting on my cube I fist build the three piece adversary set. It was impossible to paint the Warbird with a brush, so I bought an airbrush. It was fun building and painting these. After that I build the Facon, lit it and learned about weathering - even more fun. Then I build an lit the voyager and now I'm getting to the question :-)


THE QUESTION:

I'm currently working on the DS9 that I'm lighting with fiber optics.

I'd like to dock some ships to it later that should light up, too. For this I neet some kind of connector or plug on the docking ports that are wired to the power source, don't look out of place and will hold a small model like the furuta Defiant of a small galaxy class ship in place.

Has anyone ever done this or an idea what kind of connector I could use?


/Rick

BTW: I have started on the scratch build borg cube (actually it's just the upper half) in the meantime and it's starting to look like one - but I got a bit tired of glueing thousends of small plastic parts and tubing to it. I'll return to it when the ds9 is done :-)

[photoguy]

Welcome to the fun house!

Sounds like you're off to an ambitious start! I've always thought that super detailing a pinball machine would be a lot of fun, but a HUGE challenge because of the needed durability of the component models and such. Keep us posted. The Borg cube sounds particularly challenging - lots and lots of itty bitty bits involved. There are guys on here who have been working on cubes for YEARS, and still don't have them complete. Don't get discouraged, it sounds like you're off to a great start!

As far as connectors for the DS9, I have two suggestions.
1. 1/8" headphone jacks/plugs that you can buy at an electronics supply store like Radio Shack.
2. Lithium Battery connectors available at just about any good R/C hobby shop. My shop has various sizes, for various applications. They're small rectangular polarized plugs, with a plastic housings. They're a little more expensive than the headphone jacks, but they're another option.

[Adam Baker]

Im hoping to start working on a DS9 FO kit in the not too distant future, and plan on doing exactly the same thing.

My plan is to use the small headphone jacks that Photoguy has suggested. My thought was this way I could put different ships in what ever positions have the jacks, as long as all the ships are set up for it. That way you can change the display around so its not always set up exactly the same.

[RickP]

The small headphone jacks (2.5mm) are a good idea. I looked at some jacks from my local electronics store and they have an outer diameter of 3.8mm - that is almost exactly the diameter of the small rings on the docking clamps.

But the jack doesn't fit in the tips of the pylons

So I'm thought about using an optical connection. That way the docked ships could be lit without any LEDs - just FO. It would be just one color (white), but I could use transparent color on the models FO and the warp drive won't be lit on a docked ship anyway.

I'll try to build such a tiny optical connector to test this.

[Richard Baker]

Welcome to the Forums!
It sounds like a great project you are working on- be sure to take notes and some photos of it in progress- others may wish to try a similar things.

.

[Underlord]

I really like the optical connection. I haven't broken the seal of my DS9 (on the to-do shelf) to look, but is there room for a rare earth magnet to hold the ship in place when docked? I bought a bunch of REM's for dock/undocking shuttle pods to my PL 1/350 Refit, but this sounds like a good use too!

Keep us posted!

[Sparky]

Depends on the weight of the ship, you could try press contacts, a pad on the station presses against a pad on the ship. If the ship was held in place by a magnet it will allow you to pull it off and re-seat it as needed, even if you have to tack it back in place between trips to contests.

here's a press fit example, the power comes out on the copper tape rails.
http://kc6sye.com/techmages_5_14_04_b.html

Rails were wired by drilling a small whole at the end of the rail, threading a small wire (30AWG) through then cutting a scrap brass square off some rail road girder sets. Solder was added to the wire and rail quickly since the resin casting melts easily, then pressing the brass square down over the top with the iron then switching to some needle nose pliers to allow the joint to cool. The brass square is there to hide the solder joint. Sory there's no pic of that procedure. Brass squares are lower right corner of this pic:
http://kc6sye.com/images/images_05_04/t ... s_lits.jpg

magnet mount, note tug was not wired to take power from the rails, it used a mini jack on a copper rod for a stand.
http://kc6sye.com/images/images_05_04/5 ... ag_dck.jpg