What do I need to get..............?

[DavidTHM]

Well I am attempting my first lighting project. I have the holes drilled and the light paths more or less mapped out in my head I only have one problem......... I have no idea what I need to wire and power it.

The Model is an anime mecha piece called Priss. What I have in mind are two red Bright LED's 3 mm I think, a bundle of lit fiber optics, five or six, colored blue, and a bright yellow or white fiber optic or LED to light the weapon. I think the muzzle of the weapon is too small to fit an LED, but i believe its just the right size for the end of a fiber optic.

So nothing fancy ( considering a flicker in the bundle of LED's),and I would be thank-full for any help I get.

[jwrjr]

I know of a character named 'Priss' but not a mecha. What is it from?

With certain exceptions, leds don't draw more than 25ma each. Wire size will not be critical (I often use #24 stranded). But avoid single-strand wire. If you nick it (usually while stripping it) and bend it a few times, it will break. Not really what you want inside a model.
Batteries are okay in a model if you don't mind changing them. In the case of 9 volt batteries, changing them frequently. I prefer AC adapters most of the time.

[Sparky]

Pick your LEDs would be the next step. Size first, brightness, next, then if you can match amperage or voltage.

You probably won't be able to match amperage and voltage across all those ranges.

You will also need to decide which ones will be driven direct from battery or from an FX board (like flickering or chasing/striping).

Get good LEDs that you have all the specs on:
max min normal Current, Voltage, color/wave length. You want to know what current and voltage the LED likes best to give you the longest life. On a normal data sheet this will be called something like 'normal' or 'typical.'

Note that you can also get surface mount LEDs that are very small but very bright.

A good source of surface mount LEDs is right from kingbright. They have the same minimum order as Digikey. I have recently ordered direct from and it was great. Most of the LEDs have all been used up, accept the really small ones. You can also go to digikey. I got my nylon coated stranded wire from mouser. Use stranded where you can since solid at the small sizes ones uses in models tends to break off easily (metal fatigue as you move the led and wire around during installation).

http://www.mouser.com/index.cfm?handler=home

http://www.us.kingbright.com/

[DavidTHM]

jwrjr Its Priss from Bubblegum crisis. in full amrom standing on a boomer. The Kit is called Priss at war. Here is the box photo.

http://i35.photobucket.com/albums/d157/ ... /label.jpg

I am going to light the Eyes n the boomer, and the muzzle on the gun arm on Priss. The boomers neck has a big empty space which to me just seems to be calling for some lighting effects.


Sparky, I did'nt know about the surface mount LED's and I will look into them. Since basically I clueless any help is good help.

[Sparky]

Here's the latest project using some of the surface mount LEDs i got from king bright sorry there's no pics of the console light up. Maybe tonight I can get it test lit.

http://www.kc6sye.com/techmages_tm_euro.html

[tetsujin]

http://www.us.kingbright.com/

Holy crap! I feel behind the times now - I didn't know there was another LED size smaller than 0603! I'll have to pick up some 0405's one of these days...

To the list of suppliers I'd add Mouser.com and EBay.

David: If you decide to use SMD LEDs (which I think would be a good idea, given what you're trying to accomplish) I can offer a few suggestions on how to handle the little buggers. The trick is, until you get at least one wire soldered to 'em, they're very easy to drop and almost impossible to find again once dropped. I had to practice soldering to the little buggers before I got the hang of it. Basically, my procedure is like this:

1: Take an LED out of the packaging. (They usually come encased in a little plastic strip - you can peel off the sealing layer to remove one LED at a time) Don't lose it!
2: Get some pliers, with rubber bands wrapped around the handles. Put the LED face-up on a flat surface, and grab 'em with the pliers. Try to grab just the lens - you don't want the pliers making contact with the electrical contacts too much, or they'll sap away all the heat when you're soldering your connections.
3: Fire up the soldering iron. Get it clean and shiny, then put a bit of solder on it, smear some on one of the contacts. It should now look pretty much like the contact is silver, you don't want too much solder on there. If there's too much you can clean the iron again and use it to wipe away some solder.
4: Prepare your wire. Lately I've been using magnet wire (from Radio Shack - though they only sell it in a pack of three spools, of which only one is of a suitable size - so you may want to find an alternate source...) Magnet wire can be hard to prep, though - so you may be better off with Wire Wrap wire or stranded 30 AWG wire. Anyway, strip off some insulation from the end, without damaging the wire - then heat up the wire with the soldering iron and put some solder to it - silver the wire like you did with the contact on the LED. If it's stranded wire the solder should fuse the strands together. Wipe off excess, let it cool, then trim the exposed part of the wire very short - about 1-2mm.
5: Clean the soldering iron again, then put a bit of solder on it again - bring the wire to the contact on the LED and heat it up with the soldering iron. You don't want to add too much solder, you just want to make sure there's a good (electrical and mechanical) connection.

Right now I'm working on a project that's using some surface-mount LEDs: you can see some of my wiring here.

[Sparky]

A good fact sheet is up over here under solder tips:
http://www.n0ss.net/index_general.html

Its under
SOLDERING TIPS, Useful Soldering Hints

Moral of the story:Did you just clean th tip?
Then its not clean.

I use the new tip cleaner, it s a thick brilo style brass scrab pad in a dish (looks like gold).

Also you will want a nice small 'chisel' tip on the soldering iron. I'll have to see if I have a pic. of the one I use. Also you want to get a little tin of 'tip tinner' cheep soldering irons don't even come pre tinned. And after leaving the soldering iron on for a while and clenaing it you will loose the tining on it.

[tetsujin]

A good fact sheet is up over here under solder tips:
http://www.n0ss.net/index_general.html

Hm, well it sounds like your knowledge of soldering may be a bit better than mine - I hope my advice is helpful nonetheless...

[DavidTHM]

Helpful indeed, I think thatt the way this thing is made, ( it wasnt ment to be lit and judging from the matirials its made from drilled into at all ). I am going to have to run some of the wires backwards and pull the LED's into place that way. Are the Surface mounted ones suited for this purpose ? Or would a more standard version be called for? When I get a camera I will post pictures of where things are going, and thank all of your for all the help so far and keep it coming.

[Sparky]

That solder tip document is version 8, he's been refining it for some time. I had version 6 but last time I went to post the link to it (I found it one night via google) I downloaded the copy and saw the v8 tacked on to it.

Its good to have handy since someone else is doing the work to maintain it.
The tip on tining your iron came when I bought a brand new (all be it cheep) solder stand with variable heat. It's not vary variable, I have to crank it all the way up nearly to solder regular solder. And solder wouldn't flow when I first tried it, I suspect it wasn't tined, and had brought the tinning agent. As soon as I plunged the tip in to the tinner, and cleaned it it was up and ready to solder.



For pulling wires you should go with standard LEDs and stranded wire. Strip back the insulation and make a tight wrap at the base of the LED. this gives you a good strong physical connection, the solder is what maintains the electrical for you.

As with all wire stripping, especially magnet wire where you have to scrap it bear, the trick is not to damage or nick the wire while striping. With stranded you want to avoid loosing to many strands in the strip process. Since these strands add to the strength of the joint where the wire attaches to the LED.

[jwrjr]

I know about Priss from Bubblegum Crisis. Not so much a mecha as a girl in a hardsuit.
To state what may be obvious, people who are not experienced in electronics (soldering, especially) should probably avoid surface mount leds (or surface mount anything else). I have seen listings for them in 0402 packages (0.04" x0.02"). Maybe you can solder that, I can't.

[tetsujin]

I know about Priss from Bubblegum Crisis. Not so much a mecha as a girl in a hardsuit.
To state what may be obvious, people who are not experienced in electronics (soldering, especially) should probably avoid surface mount leds (or surface mount anything else). I have seen listings for them in 0402 packages (0.04" x0.02"). Maybe you can solder that, I can't.

When I first tried soldering an 0603 LED I failed, dropped the LED and it disappeared in the carpet. But I practiced, got better, lost a bunch of LEDs along the way - and now I'm good at it.

I agree that regular leaded components are easier to work with - but then there's more work involved in getting them installed into the place they're going to live. Same's true for stranded wire versus magnet wire. It's less prone to damage and easier to strip and handle, but it's bulkier, so there's more work involved cutting a channel to hide it in, and in covering them up again - or else drilling a hole through the interior - but the other end has to come out somewhere and then you've got the same problem...

I personally feel like with the difficulty of installing in a solid-cast kit a larger LED isn't a great option... Better to just learn how to handle thin wire and tiny LEDs. Magnet wire is strong enough so long as it's not subjected to a lot of stress. In the interior of a static-pose kit it'll be just fine...

[Sparky]

One thing to remember is most surface mount stuff is either baked in place, something you can't do with a model, or a hot air gun is used (re work almost always uses this method).

If you can get away with not using SMT stuff do so. The problem is with a model you are on a tight space budget.

With the console, since the LED needs to be facing into the clear cast bit I had it easy. White glue the LED upside-down. If your really sure or need a stronger connection super glue it down (like I did on the canopies, the white glue just popped off). Use a dab of glue so as not to coat the metal pads on the 'top' of the chip (really its the bottom but now its glued upside down). Just like you were placing photo etch, tiny amounts of the super thin glue.

With the part glued in place its easier to attach the wire. You can even lay the wire down and glue tack it in place before soldering, so the wire isn't applying any leverage force on the LED glue joint.