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So recently, thanks to a tutorial on the W.I.P. forums, I have been taught a way of lighting up the tiniest of miniatures. Due to my dire need to take modelling to ridiculous excesses, I thought it warranted further investigation.

No! It doesn't involve the use of arcane fiber optics piped from a model's base, which was my original guess. (And a pain in the rear, to boot!)

Rather, I have been introduced to a marvelous little piece of technology known as the SMT LED.

What is an SMT LED? It's the most ridiculously tiny Surface Mounted Light Emitting Diode you've ever seen. About 1/5 the size of a normal 5mm LED, all told.

Now, I solder like a monkey, but apparently even I have the motor skills to bang this together.

From this little fella...



You get loads of light!



Don't believe me?



The applications for this sort of thing are limitless - just imagine an orky battlewagon all lit up, or the driver's compartment illuminated my different colored gauges! Even lit Kustom Force Field Generators! (Which I am currently planning. " style="vertical-align: middle;" src="http://www.wargamerau.com/forum/style_emoticons/default/wink.gif" /> )

And they fit in the tiniest of places...



This particular picture is a necron lord I'm working on who has had his head and eyes (and chest!) hollowed out. I put water effects in the sockets with a little needle so that it would dry and form a lens over the eye and diffuse the light from behind it:



And you can do it in a variety of colors! I was in a sudden mood to start lighting some of my Daemonhunter dreadnoughts, and after about 15 minutes with a dremel and soldering iron I was able to put this together:









Dremelling a forgeworld item is not for the faint of heart, but you could do this to any dreadnought, any power klaw, anything large enough to fit these super-tiny lights!

I'm working up the nerve to light an ork's bionik bonce at the moment. I might do it to Ghazzie's head for the sake of it.

This wire is the wire I recommend using with these things. It's super-tiny and can fit wherever the LED can, and it's pretty cheap. Don't expect retail radio shack outlets to carry this - I had to order my batch online. I also grab most of my SMT LEDs off ebay - they can get a bit pricy (I got 50 of the blue ones for around $15) but they're worth it!

all we need now is for someone to invent a teeny weeny photovoltaic panel, and our models can charge their own lights too.

seriously, the wires and the battery remain a problem - easy enough for a dreadnought or vehicle, but much less easy for say a Necron warrior

Actually...

The wire I linked in my post above is really, really tiny, which can facilitate wiring it to all sorts of locations, and I've found 3v batteries that are literally flat enough to be put into bases, which is really where I think they belong anyway.

And lighting up batches of necrons isn't as hard as you might think. The guy who wrote the tutorial I learned all this from has done it en masse:

INCREDIBLE!!!!!!!!!!!!

I may have to resurrect my lighted necron army. I'd put a stop to it when running super bright LEDs became a royal pain! I've got a couple of questions though.
What batteries are you using? Do you have a switch for them?
Is there a resistor needed between the battery and the SMT LED?
How long do the LEDs run on one battery?

Thanks

:| !!

That's really really sweet Jams, the necron lord especially.  Love the glowy dread too, and soooo many applications for the glowy fun!

Looking forward to where you go with this!

- Salvage

Posted By Foda_Bett on 07/01/2007 11:47 PM
I may have to resurrect my lighted necron army. I'd put a stop to it when running super bright LEDs became a royal pain! I've got a couple of questions though.
What batteries are you using? Do you have a switch for them?
Is there a resistor needed between the battery and the SMT LED?
How long do the LEDs run on one battery?

Thanks

I've yet to have an LED die on me running it off a 3v source, so I can't attest to how long they can run. I can tell you they've got a decent life to 'em, though, as I've been screwing around with all of this for a couple weeks now and have yet to have one die on me.

If you do this the correct way, you should probably put a resistor in. I might with the blue LEDs, because I think they need a 3.5v source to achieve proper brightness, so I'm going to have to double up on 3v batteries. I was told by the guy who wrote the original tutorial that generally, as long as the LEDs are not warm to the touch, they'll be fine without resistors.

The batteries I'm using are simply cheap 3v watch batteries. You could buy them at Radio Shack, but I've found some places like dollar stores or retail chains like Five Below carry huge packs of watch batteries for about a dollar a dozen for use in their silly little things they sell like laser pointers and their ilk.

If you check the necrons up top, yes, they all have switches which are built into their bases. I haven't actually finished a complete model with this, but in the particular case of the daemonhunter dread I'm simply going to leave the engine as removable and tuck the switch in a dremelled out alcove there.

Might be neat instead of painting the necron "tubes" black, you'd lite them up like a lite-brite toy.

that must be the most totaly awsome use of technologie in a miniature I have EVER seen.

This is up there with the magnetized floating Harbinger...

Bah!  It's been done before! 

Seriously, though, that stuff on WIP is damned impressive.  I've been working a bit with the SMT LED's and they're a pain, but it is amazing where you can put them.  I had a hard time with the larger T3-sized LEDs I used in my Thousand Sons, and the SMT guys would really have made quite a difference. 

But they are a pain to solder! 

Vale,

JohnS

That is some bad@ss stuff! As to the switches on the bases, you could disguise them with a bit of putty and paint them to look like rubble, a rock, or a brick, while still being able to move turn them on and off.

P.S: thanks for bringing the "Work in Progress" website to my attention. There is some great stuff on that site!

Ahhhh, great idea to use the "water effects" to diffuse the light. I've been doing some lighting in other projects, and diffusing/lensing has been the one thing I haven't gotten happy with yet.

Though I haven't had much problem with fiberoptics at all, it's just a matter of finding the right glue for it. I've been using microscale "Micro Crystal Clear", seems to work great so far. But it all depends on what you are looking to do. Fiberoptics are great for pinpoint lights, but ambient stuff is better served by an LED in place if you can do it. Haven't messed with the SMT's yet, but sure is a great idea.

-Hans