Hey guys! Slowly finishing up my Grey Knights army, next up, a Phobos pattern Land Raider. To make it a challenge for myself, I wanted to get my feet wet with some new things I haven't tried before, so I decided to light it up with LEDs. I plan do do interior lighting and the headlights.
The first problem I had to tackle with lighting up the headlights, was drilling out the headlight bits. Most converted Landraiders I see just drill out a giant hole in the headlight bitz, but I liked the look of the wired mesh in front of the lightsm so I attempted to keep that, by drilling out the lights from the back and using a dremel to make little holes in the front for the light to shine through.
Well... that didn't work out so good:
As you can see, the grill is so tiny I basically destroyed it in the process.
So I had to work on a different solution. With the advent of 3d printing, I thought, heck, why not give that a try? There's a company based in the Netherlands called
Shapeways, where you can send a 3d model and they print it out for you for a reasonable price. I've dabbled in 3d modelling in the past, so I had some experience using the tools.
I measured up the original bit with a digital marking gauge to get reasonably accurate dimensions, and recreated the original bit as best I could, but with the headlights 'pre-drilled' to fit a duo of 3mm LEDs:
And send the model to Shapeways to print out a couple in their 'Frosted Ultra Detail' material. As it's somewhat transparent it's hard to take decent pictures of it, but here goes:
Lessons learned for the next bit I create: carve the details deeper! Here's a test fitting:
Still needs some fine sandpaper to smooth it out a little and make it fit better, but all in all I'm quite happy about the result!
As for the rest of the Land Raider, I couldn't just leave that stock either, so here's some other modifications I've done:
I combined the multi-melta gunner out of a
PAGK's helmet, left shoulder pad and torso front with the legs, arms, right shoulder pad and rear torso of the techmarine included in the tank kits.
And I added the twin-linked lascannon barrels with the laurel wreaths from the Venerable Dreadnought kit to fancy those up a bit.
Of course some Forge World doors are always nice to spuce up a Land Raider.
I've already got some work done on the interior:
I've left it pretty basic, as in the Grim Darkness of the Land Raider interior, you can't see that much detail anyway, especially when peeking through the front assault ramp. If you're wondering where all the holes are for: the battery compartment is going to be housed behind the engine, so I've made the rear engine panel removable with magnets to be able to exchange empty batteries for fresh ones. The smaller holes are for the wiring.
Now to get everything together, solder/glue all the leds, wiring and switches in place and get it ready for painting the exterior!