Switch Theme:

[Blind them with SCIENCE] LEDs, Space Marines and You by Boss Fearless  [RSS] Share on facebook Share on Twitter Submit to Reddit
»
Author Message
Advert


Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you:
  • No adverts like this in the forums anymore.
  • Times and dates in your local timezone.
  • Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance.
  • Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely.
  • Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net.
If you are already a member then feel free to login now.




Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

...what?

Did you think that I only dine at Greater Goodburger? All of my wub-wubs and communist space fish aside, I have always loved a nice suit of power armor. The way it clings to your skin and hugs your junk is almost sensual. But that's a whole other tutorial. This one? This is about LIGHT . Now, as some folks might already know, I've put together an extensive tutorial on how to light up your Tau battlesuits HERE. But the one question I always got was....

How do I Spess Mareen?

Well, there are some tricks to it. FaceOfChaos did a series of videos on a (mind-numbingly aggravating) technique to build slimline powered bases using these horrific, gods-awful things called reed switches. If you value your sanity, try not to work with those. They're cool little sciencey things, and they use magnets which are fun, but they will make you hate your life when you actually try to work with them. And then there is the illustrious (for the third time!) Bob Hunk, who was my initial inspiration to get off my ass and make with the LIGHT, but his tutorial to my knowledge was only ever half done, and stopped before it got to the practicals. Plus, his method depended on oversized (at least 30mm and bulked up with scenery) bases that, in my opinion, took some of the magic out of the build. But I'm not hatin', much love to your Stark-pattern armor. All I'm saying is that I've found a better way.

The problem, and the solution, lies in the materials. You see, most Warhammer scale LED applications involve 20mm coin cells. This includes my Tau army to date. And why not? They're great, they're readily available, and they'll work for anything on a 40mm base or above. But what if you want to go smaller? The cells might fit under a 25mm base, but the cell holder, the thing that creates a workable powered base, does not. It's actually like 27mm wide. So we need to downsize. Your first option is some MacGuyver gak, tearing down the larger cell holder and trying to arrange it in a smaller area. You can do that, sure. But if you can do that already, then this guide isn't for you.

You see, this is an idiot's guide. I don't mean that it's a guide for idiots, but rather that it is written BY an idiot with his idiot kin in mind. I won't bore you with math and squiggles and formulae that will make you rage quit the thread. I'm gonna show you how to get gak done.

Shall we begin?


PART 1: HOW TO SPESS MAREEN


In this first part, we're going to look at how to give your marine badass glowing eyes and a sick glow effect around the collar.

YOU WILL NEED
Soldering Iron
Solder
3mm LED
Electromagnet Wire
Spess Mareen Infantry Model
Glue
Hobby Knife
Pin Vise
Drill Bits (0.5mm to 3mm)
Soldering Armature (Optional)
Green Stuff (Optional)
Cheetos and Mountain Dew (Absolutely Mandatory)
Fruity Oatey Bar (Not Mandatory)


That last item was for my Browncoats. Represent. Hokay, rightey-oh. Let's get this moveable feast underway. For this section, we'll only concern ourselves with the Legs, Torso and Head of a Spess Mareen, because the arms are unaffected.

0. Cut clean, trim and otherwise attend to your pieces with the due diligence that a model requires. Get those mold lines off.
1. Start with the legs. What we need to do is create a channel for the wire to move from the base to the torso without being seen. Take your set of legs, and find the leg that is the straightest. Line up your pin vise (with an 0.5mm drill bit) and angle it so that the drill bit will travel up through the bottom of the foot, and emerge in the hips of the model.

This can take some practice. As you can see in that picture, I didn't get it quite right, myself. The drill emerged from the joint between hips and legs, but ideally, you should be aiming to have it come up out of the rounded hip joint at the top. This is fine though, I can show you how to account for little errors like this.
((In subsequent builds, I found it much easier to cut the leg at the knee and drill through each half of it individually. This lets you come up dead center in the waist every time))
2. Fix your stupid mistake. We're all going to screw this up, because it's frankly pretty damn hard to get the thing to go exactly where you want it. In my case, I need to carve out a shallow channel in the hip ball so that the wire can fit snugly without screwing up the way the torso sits.

3. Prep your torso. Space Marine (I abandoned the silly spelling) torsos aren't hollow inside. But you know that, just look at them. What you need to do is make room for the LED, and that means chopping out anything that currently occupies the inside of the chest pieces. be sure to get both sides. You'll also need to carve out a space in both the neck and waist sockets so that your LED and wires can get through.

4. Test fit your LED. Do the legs of your LED fit all the way through your torso, through both holes? No? Widen the holes until it fits. Just the legs, though. The actual bulb of the LED will be hanging out of the top of the torso. Trust me.
5. Grab your head. No, the Space Marine head, dumbass. Turn it upside down and use your hobby knife to slice the rounded end of the neck ball off. You need a flat surface to drill into.
6. Drill the head. Use your 1mm drill bit to drill up into the head. Be *VERY* careful with this part. In fact. Skip this step and go to the next one.
7. Grab a practice head. That's right, put down that super sweet knight head that you only have the one of. I know that's the one you want on your commander, and that's cool. But put that puppy down for now and grab a bog standard tactical head, the one you don't really want to use for anything. Maybe even a beaky head. Use that one to practice on.
8. Drill that head. Go up into it until you reckon your drill bit is just above eye-level inside the head. This can take some guess work.
9. Switch drill bits. Get that big fat 3mm bit in there and use it to widen out the hole. Why a 3mm bit? Because that's the same size as your LED, and this will make it fit nice and snug. Be gentle, though. Don't use too much force or you can break the head. Once you've got it drilled, trim any rough edges around the hole.

10. Once the head is basically hollow, it's time to do the eyes. Switch to your 0.5mm drill bit. Tiny, isn't it?
11. Drill the eye. Put the tip of the drill bit into the eye socket at its widest point. Doesn't look so tiny anymore, eh? Drill into the eye at a slight downward angle and connect the eye hole to the main hole inside the head. It should only take a few turns.
12. Shape the eye. Take your hobby knife and, slowly, carefully and with great patience carve out the rest of the eye until your hole is in the shape of the helmet's eye lens. Repeat on the other side.

13. Test Fit the LED. This is what you've been waiting for. Stick the LED up into that slot. If it's a flanged LED (slightly thicker border around the base) then it won't go in all the way, it will stop itself at the neck joint. That's cool, we're gonna use that in a minute.

14. Test the LED. Take a coin cell and stick it between the LED legs to test it out, make sure it lights up. This will also show you how it's gonna look when your head lights up.

15. Wire the LED. Pull it out of the head, clip the legs nice and short, and solder wires to it as described in my other tutorial HERE.
16. OPTIONAL: If you want a "glow around the collar" effect, follow this step. Some people might want to skip this, it's just a matter of preference. If you want the collar glow, you'll want to chop out the back of the neck.

This is gonna let more light escape out the back and light up the inside of the collar.
17. Glue the LED into the head. Be careful not to get glue on the side of the LED that's facing the eyes, and don't shove it in too hard or you might push the legs loose and break the thing. Test your LED once the glue is dry to be sure you didn't ruin it.
18. Feed the wires down through the neck hole and glue the torso shut around it, leaving the round base of the LED sticking up out of the neck. Don't worry, the neck socket basically swallows up the LED's base so you won't see it when you're done. But test fit the whole thing just to be sure.

19. Eat your cheetos and drink your mountain dew. I'm not kidding. Hands off the model, you let that sumbitch set up right before moving on or you could screw the whole thing up. Trust me, I've done it.
20. Wash your hands. Don't get cheeto dust on your model.
21. Attach the legs. Now that the whole torso is dry you can set it on your legs. This is where you'll find out if you need to cut out more of a channel for the wire, if you're bringing it in from the side like I am. I actually had to cut a bigger trench on this model, so it's no big deal. Just feed that wire down into the little hole you made in the legs, and push it through til it comes out the foot. Nothing to it.

Once it's through and you've dry-fit everything together, glue it together and you're good to go!

An optional step is to go through and patch that little hole with some green stuff. It's not super noticeable, especially not once the arms are attached and everything is painted.

"But Boss," I hear you say. "It's just hanging there with no power going to it! What do I do now?" Now we need to build a powered base.






PART 2: ATTACK OF THE SOLDER


YOU WILL NEED

Your wired up space marine
25mm base
Hobby knife
12mm coin cell
12mm coin cell holder
Soldering Iron
Solder
Green Stuff
Glue


We're going to build a powered base for this model. That means that we're hollowing out a regular infantry base and shoving batteries up its ass. There's really nothing to this part except a little elbow grease.

1. Insert your battery into the battery holder. Do this before you forget. The dimensions of the holder change when you have the battery in it, because the clip moves to accommodate the battery. You need to fit this into the base while it's full, or else you could end up with wobbly model syndrome in the final product.
2. Grab your base. Drill a hole in it with your hobby knife. Doesn't matter where you start, because you're going to basically hollow the whole thing out. If you place the battery holder against the base, you'll get an idea of just how much you need to carve out, and it's a lot. So get to it.
3. Keep going. Give your hand a break if you need to, and be careful. You can cut yourself during this process, and once the base gets mostly hollow, it's really easy to break the thing in half.
4. Keep test fitting the battery holder until it fits completely inside your hole. Giggity.

5. Mix up a pretty big wad of green stuff. Now dot the outer rim of the battery holder with glue along the black plastic edges (don't get any on the metal, glue is an insulator and will block the contact with the battery), and put a few blobs of green stuff over the glue dots. This is going to partially fill the gaps around the holder, and the GS will make the whole thing stick together right away.
6. Put a few dots of glue on the other side of the green stuff blobs and shove the whole thing into the hole. Smoosh the green stuff down into the gaps if it gets pushed out, so that there is plenty of contact.
7. Fill the rest of the gaps in the base with the rest of the putty you mixed up and smoosh it down til it's smooth enough to pass for terrain.

8. Leave that sucker to cure overnight. I mean it. Put it down and walk away, don't even test it. You want the GS solid when you come back to it later.

Boom! That's all there is to it. Now you're ready to stick your model to this sucker and fire it up.

SOLDERING THE MODEL TO THE BASE

It's always best to solder the wires on before you glue the model to the base. It is also best to give yourself lots of extra wire to work with. You can always take excess wire and glue it to the base, paint over it and it will never be seen. If you don't have enough wire, you'll have to stretch the wire taut and it will likely be visible in the final product, ruining the magic of the piece. I'm not going to go into a whole tutorial on soldering, because I already did that HERE. Also, I'm at the image limit for my post, or very close to it, so I couldn't really do a proper tutorial with the space I have left.
This should be your finished product:




Just put some basing material over the wires and they'll be totally invisible. You might want to superglue them to the base just to be on the safe side.

"But Boss!" I hear you say, your breath redolent of cheetos. "I wanna do more! I wanna do cool stuff besides glowing eyes! I want multiple LEDs, and glowing guns, and I want to make the coils on my plasma rifle light up!" I sigh in exasperation.
"Are you never satisfied?" I ask you, knowing full well that you'll only give me the puppy dog eyes and I will inevitably relent. "Okay, alright. Put those away," I say in disgust, reaching deep into my bag of tricks. "I can do that. I can do all of that, and I'll teach you how. But it has to wait until I get more space marine models. I mostly have a Tau army right now and I'm totally out of marine bodies."
"Aww shucks," you say, and I facepalm with the force of a thousand suns.

This message was edited 10 times. Last update was at 2014/08/19 00:29:15


IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in us
Fixture of Dakka





TN/AL/MS state line.

Great tutorial Boss!

Black Bases and Grey Plastic Forever:My quaint little hobby blog.

40k- The Kumunga Swarm (more)
Count Mortimer’s Private Security Force/Excavation Team (building)
Kabal of the Grieving Widow (less)

Plus other games- miniature and cardboard both. 
   
Made in gb
Ichor-Dripping Talos Monstrosity






This would be great for Rubrics and Legion of the Damned tbh.

Almost makes me want to do some up.

   
Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia


SECTION ZERO
PARTS, SUPPLIES AND WHY YOU NEED THEM


This section is out of order, so sue me. Don’t just skim over this section. There is some really helpful stuff in the breakdown about how to work with each component.

First of all, you’ll need the following:

Enamel Coated Electromagnet Wire
LEDs
Coin Cells
Coin Cell Holders
Soldering Iron
Solder
Green Stuff
Hobby Knife
Pin Vise
Drill Bits
Spare Bases
Wire Cutters
Soldering Armature

And then these are nice to have, but aren’t strictly necessary:

Heat Shrink Tubing
Hot Glue Gun
Glue Sticks
Gel Super Glue
Epoxy Putty (plumber’s putty)
Fiber Optic Wire


Wow! That’s quite a shopping list, but don’t be intimidated. Most of the individual pieces are quite inexpensive, and you don’t necessarily have to get it all in one trip. Let’s go down the list of necessary components and talk a little bit about them. One thing that applies to every single component is that you should always buy spares, because you’re likely to fail horribly on your first couple attempts.

LEDs: Obviously very important. You’re going to want either 1.5mm or 3mm LEDs for 40k models. Anything larger is going to be too big. Check to make sure they require a 3V power supply when you’re ordering them. My advice is to buy a variety pack so that you have lots of options to work with. Order these from any model train supply store on Ebay.

Coin Cells: Often called watch batteries or disc batteries. They come in a variety of sizes, the most common I’ve found being 20mm. However, in order to use these in a 25mm base, you'll need the smallest variety out there, the 12mm cell. Don't be fooled, you'll be able to fit a 20mm cell under a 25mm base, but NOT the 20mm cell holder, and that problem will totally ruin your infantry lighting project. Make sure to double check that the ones you get supply 3V of power. Sold at supermarkets and Radio Shacks everywhere.

Coin Cell Holder: These come in a variety of sizes and basically just take power from the battery to a couple of metal leads. You can NOT solder wires directly onto a battery, so you need this kind of a component. This also allows the battery to be inserted or removed easily for when you’re not playing. A good component is the Keystone 500 coin cell holder. You can cut a lot of the plastic nubs and spacers off of this thing to allow it to fit into the model’s base easier, just be sure you keep a few spares handy since you’ll likely ruin the first few. Either find a supplier you can order these from, or buy them on Ebay or Amazon

Enamel Coated Electromagnet Wire: This is a type of wire that uses a thin layer of enamel on the wire instead of a rubber coating. That means that the wire is much thinner and can be used in much, much smaller applications. I use 30 gauge, which is incredibly thin, like human hair almost. When you go to work with this stuff, be sure to scrape all the enamel off of the ends of the wires with your hobby knife so that you can get a good contact. When you’re working with the wires, a good idea is to twist two pieces together. That will give them a bit of rigidity and make them much easier to work with. You probably have to order this off of Ebay or Amazon.

Soldering Iron: Not an expensive piece. I recommend getting a weak soldering iron with only a 25W heating element. It won’t ever get freakishly nuclear hot and become a hazard. Try to find one with a fairly precise tip if possible. They sell these at Walmart or any given hardware store. If you look, you can even find a battery powered soldering iron. Get one of those if you can. The nice thing about those is that, while they'll eat up AA batteries over time, there's no cord. That means you can't accidentally leave it plugged in and burn your house down, and also when you're working with a delicate bit of wiring, you won't have the heavy cord getting in your way. Much easier to use.

Solder: No need to get anything fancy. The cheap stuff will do fine. Sold at Walmart or hardware stores. If you want to make your job a lot easier, look for solder that says "Flux Core" or "Rosin Core." That kind will have a chemical called Flux built in, and it does some complicated chemistry nonsense that I can't be bothered to learn the theory behind. The important thing is that it makes the solder stick to the wire you're soldering and not the soldering iron. For a beginner, that is SO HELPFUL!

Green Stuff: Always useful, especially when you’re going to be chopping up bits. Use this to repair your models after you’ve carved them up.

Hobby Knife: Get some spare blades and maybe a spare knife. You’ll be hollowing out parts and drilling into things, which tends to wear out the blades or snap them entirely.

Pin Vise and Drill Bits: Always useful for modeling. However, you’ll be using this now to drill through entire bits, up legs, into arms, et cetera, to hollow them out and make a channel for the wires and LEDs. Go to your local hardware store and pick up a couple each of .5mm, 1mm, 1.5mm, and 2mm drill bits. Avoid any and all temptation to use a powered drill. I’m going to say that again for those of you who are either just skimming or are totally overconfident.

DO NOT USE A POWERED DRILL

Did you get that? Good. It’s a pain in the neck and time consuming to do this by hand, but any use of a power drill is just going to destroy your models irreparably. Trust me on this. Load the drill bits into your Pin Vise (you may need to flip the chuck or change it out with a spare one, many vises come with different chucks in the handle) and start with the thinner bits, then slowly open the hole up with larger bits.

Wire Cutters: Your sprue clippers will work fine for this because the wires are so fine. If you want to get dedicated snips, go for it.

Spare Bases: You will screw this up. Badly. Many times in a row. Until you get the hang of it, then it’s easy. Until then, you’re going to want to get a pack of extra bases. Now, the 20mm Coin Cell Holders are too big to go in the standard 25mm GW bases (there’s an extra part that sticks out to the side). You have a couple options for 25mm based infantry. Either scale them up to a 40mm base, or instead use the 30mm rounded lip bases from Warmachine or Dark Age, Malifaux, or any number of other systems. They look nice anyway. Personally, I already had models on regular GW bases before I started putting LEDs in so I stuck with them. You’re probably looking at putting LEDs in battlesuits, so start by getting extra 40mm bases.

Soldering Armature: This is optional, if I’m being honest. But I’m not. I’m lying right now, so get yourself one of these. You could probably find a way to solder without it, but don’t. Just don’t. You’ll burn your eyebrows off and never see the cat again. These things cost maybe 15 bucks on Amazon. No need to be fancy about it. They come with a couple of small, articulated clamps so that you now have 4 hands. I cannot stress how easy this makes the project. Also, it looks really cool sitting on your desk holding disassembled battlesuits, and I've taken to calling mine the "engineering bay." Don't judge me.



Okay! That’s it for the absolutely essential components. Now, there are a few things that are really helpful to have.


Heat Shrink Tubing: Rubber sleeves that shrink when you apply heat, these are useful for coating a length of wire to prevent shorts, or securing an LED right up against the end of a fiber optic wire. You can use a lighter, a heat gun, or you can just use the soldering iron you already have. That’s how I do it.

Hot Glue Gun and glue sticks: The thick globs of glue this puts out are really helpful for securing the battery holder in the base. Also, you can glob the glue over exposed wires to prevent them from touching and shorting out, since the glue is an insulator. Very handy to have!

Gel Super Glue: What’s wrong with the regular kind? Well, it’s liquid. Liquid runs. If you’ve hollowed out a model’s leg and run a wire through it, then when you glue that leg back together the glue will run down that tube and stick the wire to the inside of the leg. And there is no getting it loose. Trust me, you want some slack on your wires. Gel glue makes things a bit easier, and can also be used like the hot glue to insulate a wire.

Epoxy Putty (plumber’s putty): A cheap 2-part epoxy, very similar to green stuff only it dries more rigidly and much faster. You’ve got maybe 4 minutes of work time. The value of it is that you get a lot of it for very little money, which means that you can use it to cover up an entire base with a basic sort of terrain. Works very well for covering up your battery holders in your bases.

Fiber Optic Wire: This one is difficult. I don’t mean a finished fiber optic cable, but the individual fibers. I would search for Plastruct FOP 30 and FOP 10 for exact product names (.3 inches and .1 inches, respectively). This fiber gathers light in one end and transports it to the other end, losing almost nothing along the way. That said, it is incredibly frustrating to use. Don’t try to bend the FOP 30, because it doesn’t like to bend. But you can run it down the length of an arm and out the barrel of a gun, or through the eyes of a model to adjust a glow effect, as I’ll show you later in the tutorial. One important thing to note is that this material expands when you add heat. This means that if you touch your soldering iron to the tip of a wire, it will mushroom outward. This is useful for a number of reasons I’ll go into later.

This message was edited 3 times. Last update was at 2014/03/21 02:33:53


IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in sa
Longtime Dakkanaut





Dundee, Scotland/Dharahn, Saudi Arabia

That looks like a cool little project, where do you get the materials out in Saudi?
I fancy giving it a go, I've got some fiberoptic kicking around somewhere I could run into arms/legs/guns....
I wonder if I could put red fiberoptic into a bolters targeter....


If the thought of something makes me giggle for longer than 15 seconds, I am to assume that I am not allowed to do it.
item 87, skippys list
DC:70S+++G+++M+++B+++I++Pw40k86/f#-D+++++A++++/cWD86R+++++T(D)DM++ 
   
Made in ca
Trustworthy Shas'vre




My, what a bright looking fellow.

Tau and Space Wolves since 5th Edition. 
   
Made in gb
Proud Triarch Praetorian





Subbing to this...

Experience is something you get just after you need it
The Narkos Dynasty - 15k
Iron Hands - 12k
The Shadewatch - 3k
Cadmus Outriders - 4k
Alpha Legion Raiders - 3k  
   
Made in gb
Junior Officer with Laspistol





Desperado Corp.

 bossfearless wrote:
Thanks for the props. Now I can reserve this post for part 2 of the guide.

(Coming soon: Glowing plasma guns)


Dammit Boss, I'm trying not to buy more Space marines. You're just making an impossible job even harder.

I think I'm saying "good job!"

Pretre: OOOOHHHHH snap. That's like driving away from hitting a pedestrian.
Pacific:First person to Photoshop a GW store into the streets of Kabul wins the thread.
Selym: "Be true to thyself, play Chaos" - Jesus, Daemon Prince of Cegorach.
H.B.M.C: You can't lobotomise someone twice. 
   
Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

Oh snap, you know what time it is? Time to turn the crazy all the way up to eleven and just freak the frak out!


GLOWING PLASMA COILS


Did you read that right? You bet your sweet, sweet perfumed ass you did. Right here is where we're going to do something advanced. We're going to take an infantry plasma cannon and we're gonna build it with glowing power coils!




Holy crap! Did you see that? Now you want one, don't you? Well, too bad, you no can haz.


...awww, who am I kidding of course you can haz!


YOU WILL NEED
25mm powered base (see previous tutorial)
Soldering iron
Solder
Hobby knife
Hobby drill
Drill bits up to 3mm
1.5mm White LED (not green)
Green acrylic rod (Necron Rod)
Electromagnet wire
Glue
Space Marine Plasma Cannon trooper (unassembled)
Extra plasma cannons (You WILL screw this up!)
Green Stuff
Patience. Lots of patience!


So before we can go any farther, I need to say right away that trying to mod the infantry plasma cannon is a tremendously frustrating experience, so approach this with patience and the idea that you'll be working on it for a couple of days the first time. The objective is of course to get the green rod to line up with the gun barrel, and the LED in the receiver. The problem is that the gun has a bunch of internal details that prevent this from lining up correctly. After all, it was designed without a big rod running down the middle of it. So let's start by cleaning out the inside of the gun.


((This is still a WIP article. Additional details and images coming soon!))

0. Prep your green rod. To get the light up effect we want, you're going to need to scour the surface of the rod with coarse sandpaper, really rough it up. That's going to cause the light that goes through it to diffuse outward. Just put an LED up to a regular green rod, and then to the sanded rod, and you'll see the difference. You'll also want to cut the ends of the rod flat, since they have a little nub on each end that messes with light collection, then sand the ends too.
1. Clean the mold lines and flash off your pieces. This weapon is just lousy with them, so take your time.
2. Bend your LED legs. You aren't going to be able to fit the LED into the receiver on the cannon unless you bend those metal legs at a sharp angle, really close to the LED itself.

(Image)

This is a bit risky, as you risk damaging the LED with such an extreme bend. But just test your LED with a battery afterwards, and if it doesn't work, grab another and try again. LEDs are cheap, a legendary army is priceless!

3. Start cutting away the square coils on the model. A vertical cut at each end is a good start, and then you can whittle away the middle until you've got it flush with the body of the gun.
4. Hollow out the receiver. Okay, this is the part you're probably gonna mess up. What you need in order to get a sweet light effect is to hide an LED inside the box right above the grip. Not very wide, is it? That's why we're using the 1.5mm LED, and you'll still need to trim that down later. First, load up your hobby drill with a 1.5mm or 2mm bit (3mm is too much here). Now, CAREFULLY, drill into the box from the side where the coils were, at a bit of a downward angle so you're pointing down and to the rear of the weapon. You don't have to go in very far, and it's okay to break the surface of the box BUT you must ONLY break that surface on the side that is going to be pressed up against the marine's chest. That way it's easy to hide.




5. Keep hollowing. After you've gone in a centimeter or so, pull the drill out and come in from that inner surface which I just said was okay to breach. You're going to drill in a few times here at a few angles, trying to just hollow the box out. You don't want to use your hobby knife to do the drilling. The sharp tip will likely puncture the outer surface, which is NOT okay. Keep comparing your LED to the size of the hole. You may find your box is getting totally hollowed out but that your LED is still not fitting very well. If this is the case, take your hobby knife (with a new, sharp blade) and very carefully slice away some of the flanged base of the LED. That's just empty filler, it can go. Keep hollowing and shaving (and if needed, replacing your plasma cannon because you snapped the damn thing in half) until you are confident that the LED is going to fit in there as shown.

Don't glue it in there yet! You still need to solder the wires on and, if you notice, the light seems to be a bit low. What's up with that?

6. Dig a trench. Yeah, this is one of the pain in the ass parts. You're going to want to use your knife to start a trench down the middle of the barrel, then use your 2mm drill bit to widen it while keeping it nice and shallow and smooth the whole way down. Lay your green rod along this trench to test it out and make sure it fits in there with a litlle wiggle room. The depth of the trench should put the rod even with the light emitting bump of the LED.



7. Hollow out the muzzle. You've probably noticed that everything within the muzzle of the gun seems purpose-built to stop you from laying that rod flat in there. Now it's time to take care of that. You'll have to hollow out both sides of the muzzle with your hobby knife. There's no special trick to this other than time, patience, and making sure you don't break anything important. Every time you think you've carved out enough, dry fit all the pieces together and try to slide the rod in through the muzzle toward the LED. Chances are you'll hit a snag and have to cut out some more muzzle, dig the trench a little deeper, or otherwise alter the piece. This is, unfortunately, a very organic step of the process and I can't give you any definitive "CUT HERE" guidelines. You just want to keep cutting and filing til it works, and you'll have pieces that are hollowed out like this:



To test whether things are lined up correctly, stick a battery in the LED to see what kind of light you get from the

8. Once everything is lined up, you're through the hardest part, so rejoice! Now you just need to solder the wires onto the LED (you should be an old pro at this by now) and then set it into the little nest you made for it, along with a little nugget of green stuff so that you can adjust its position. Use a minimum of glue at this point, as too much glue can actually kill your LED if it gets up inside the gubbinz.

9. Attach both sides of the barrel together. Simple and easy, just make sure the pieces line up right. Test to make sure your green rod still slides all the way through.




Once you're absolutely pleased that the positioning is perfect, go ahead and glue the rod in place. You're almost done!

10. Patch it up! You're in the home stretch. just mix up a bunch of green stuff and start patching up the unholy mess you made of the gun's overall structure. This is not a pretty build at this point, is it? So fill in the area around the LED, the area in the muzzle around the rod, the space between the rod and the LED box, and anything else you messed up. Now just smooth it out and let it cure!



11. Run the wire to the base. Once the green stuff is ALL THE WAY cured, you'll want to run the wire to the base. So let's drill out the legs (see previous tutorial) and instead of doing any huge alterations to the torso, we're just going to put a little notch in the rear half of the torso like this:

(image)

This way the wires can enter through the side of the body, camouflaged by all the other wires and cables in that area. After that, cut another notch in the bottom of the chest piece so that the wire can go down through to the legs. When you glue the torso halves together, it's best to have the wire already fed through the notches, and be careful not to get any glue on the wire since you don't want them sticking somewhere inconvenient. This is the point where you'll want to glue both the gun arms to the shoulder, using little balls of green stuff in the shoulder joints to help you position them perfectly. Once you have the gun in place, go ahead and pull the wire through, leaving just a little slack.

(image)

Now you just run the wire down through the legs and attach it to the base, which you should already know how to do. Boom! Plasma!


Now, I know what you're asking me. Boss, you say, what if we don't want green plasma? And what about rifles, or pistols?! Surely they won't remain unlit forever! The good news is, I'm working on these problems for you already. Just give me some time to do a little more R&D and I'll add pistols and rifles to the tutorials. Different colored plasma is already figured out, I just need to write the thing up and I'm feeling lazy right now, so sue me

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/08/20 01:07:43


IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in gr
Basecoated Black





Athens, Greece

wow great idea!
It may take you a lot of time to build it but I thing it worth it

You can always visit my blog - http://greekminiatures.blogspot.com - Epic miniatures, terrain, tutorials
Also Youtube Channel : https://www.youtube.com/user/TheKostasiii 
   
Made in us
Thunderhawk Pilot Dropping From Orbit





Dayton, TN

I'd love to see one painted up.

Click the images to see my armies!


 
   
Made in us
Dark Angels Neophyte Undergoing Surgeries







This is pretty sweet. I've never even hough of lighting up my guys, but i might have to try it now. A light up Land Raider would probably be the coolest thing ever.

3500 
   
Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

 Cuchulain wrote:
This is pretty sweet. I've never even hough of lighting up my guys, but i might have to try it now. A light up Land Raider would probably be the coolest thing ever.


For something as big as a Land Raider, please do yourself a favor and forget this tutorial. Go over to poweredplay.net/‎ and buy one of their "Alpha Kits." It's a solder-free, plug and play LED lighting kit, but it's so big that you need at least a Rhino's worth of space to hold all the wires and the 9v battery involved. That's one of the reasons I did this tutorial, because vehicles are super easy but infantry are hard.

IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in us
Thunderhawk Pilot Dropping From Orbit





Dayton, TN

He send me a wired up Space Marine and I will paint it for you. I don't normally do free stuff but I can make an exception for you to get a model painted for your tut. PM me if your interested...if you feel like you just have to pay me you can just send an extra drilled out or wired guy SM.

Click the images to see my armies!


 
   
Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

This post is now reserved for a later chapter of this tutorial, probably involving inflatable pool toys.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2014/08/20 01:09:24


IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in gb
Human Auxiliary to the Empire




Wow, seriously nice work. Lovely. I never thought of this. I am going to go and do this to some of my models, probably burn my fingers off, set my troops on fire, and 1001 other calamities but it will be worth it. You are great. Hail you.

“Appear weak when you are strong, and strong when you are weak.”

“Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win”

“Let your plans be dark and impenetrable as night, and when you move, fall like a thunderbolt.”
Sun Tzu, the art of war.

 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User





 Cuchulain wrote:
This is pretty sweet. I've never even hough of lighting up my guys, but i might have to try it now. A light up Land Raider would probably be the coolest thing ever.


Ya.. wouldnt that be pretty cool..




Automatically Appended Next Post:
Just some notes for my two cents.

1, I never put the LEDs directly in the heads. First, most heads are simply not big enough for it to be done right. You CAN shave the LED size if you are careful, but its much easier to use some fiber optic line and put the actual LED in the chest cavity. This allows you to create more realistic effects with glowing eyes (or whatever you want glowing).

2. I love the comment about reed switches driving you insane... lol.. when I first put together my way of doing that it did me as well. It probably wasnt until like the 20th model I put together I got to where I could reliably do it without breaking a few. I like your method, but have yet to find coinholders small enough. I'm curious on the exact place you found though as it might be somethign I'd be interested into looking into. I think I even said it on my youtube series that I wasnt happy with the batter situation on my models, but it was the best out there at the time.

3. as with any of this modeling, practice is where its at. Every time I do something in a different way, I learn something new or get better at a certain skill set. expect to screw a bunch of them up before you get where you like it.

4. for drilling holes, I prefer old dental drill bits or stuff designed for a dremel tool (DO NOT USE THE ACTUAL DREMEL.. as boss said, thats a quick way to melt a model)

5, He touched on patching holes and making mistakes... Do your self a favor and just keep some green stuff handy. It makes life so much easier if you can just brute force it and fix the mistake later. His pic of the hole in the leg... I'd say something like half of my models have those (but patched up after the fact) I've also been known to cut a leg in half, bore out a channel for wiring, and then glue it back together. Whatever works, just keep in mind these are models tha tyou can mod... if you cut it, it can be glued.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/05/03 03:36:01


 
   
Made in gb
Water-Caste Negotiator




Stratford on avon

Very nice.

Ive ben making some obj markers and have removed the battry holder entierly noe just hot glue gun one wire to the upper side then have the second so i can twist it onto the other need to start doing some more actual models you have inspired me!

Careful I have CDO it’s like OCD but in alphabetical order LIKE IT SHOULD BE!!!!!!

Make it idiot proof and someone will make a better idiot.

4000Pts
3000Pts
1000Pts
2000Pts
1500Pts 
   
Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

Laruastrum wrote:
Wow, seriously nice work. Lovely. I never thought of this. I am going to go and do this to some of my models, probably burn my fingers off, set my troops on fire, and 1001 other calamities but it will be worth it. You are great. Hail you.


Just don't do what I did and stab yourself in the junk or grab the hot tip of the soldering iron like it was a fething pencil. By the way FaceOfChaos, not to diminish your work on the Land Raider but Powered Play Gaming has made all other forms of tank-lighting obsolete. Those kits are just this side of perfect, and when I retrieve my Land Raider Party Barge from the USA, I'll be installing the lights with that hardware.

IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in us
Fresh-Faced New User





So the lighting on my land raider is just sort of beside the point, bigger deal is the rc. However, you are right, those led kits are pretty sweet. I'll be checking them out next time I have a complicated build


 bossfearless wrote:
Laruastrum wrote:
Wow, seriously nice work. Lovely. I never thought of this. I am going to go and do this to some of my models, probably burn my fingers off, set my troops on fire, and 1001 other calamities but it will be worth it. You are great. Hail you.


Just don't do what I did and stab yourself in the junk or grab the hot tip of the soldering iron like it was a fething pencil. By the way FaceOfChaos, not to diminish your work on the Land Raider but Powered Play Gaming has made all other forms of tank-lighting obsolete. Those kits are just this side of perfect, and when I retrieve my Land Raider Party Barge from the USA, I'll be installing the lights with that hardware.
   
Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

Bump for plasma flavored justice! Scroll up to where I've laid out a tutorial for freaking sweet glowing plasma coils!

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/08/19 01:54:21


IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in us
Hellacious Havoc






awesome tutorial maybe one day I will give this a go

The wolves go for the throat.
We go for the eyes.
Then the tongue.
Then the hands.
Then the feet
Then we skin the crippled remains. 
   
Made in us
Gargantuan Gargant





New Bedford, MA USA

Great tutorial. Every time I see your stuff I'm step closer to attempting this form of insanity myself.

   
Made in us
Bounding Dark Angels Assault Marine





down range

You just won the internet. AMAZING. Especially love the plasma coils

Sometimes there's Justice, sometimes there's Just Us... 
   
Made in be
Longtime Dakkanaut




Fiber Optic is a good idea, so would smaller LEDs be.

I don't see why you're trying to fit such a huge led in a tac SM head when there are smaller sizes available

For lighting, what you did with the plasma coils is perfect, as its a colored material, it looks good even when it's off, that doesn't work with LEDs by themselves unless you paint transparent paint on them (tamiya clear red I guess ?).


Automatically Appended Next Post:
 bossfearless wrote:
Just don't do what I did and stab yourself in the junk or grab the hot tip of the soldering iron like it was a fething pencil.


I don't know why, but I've got the same reflex with soldering irons, it hurts.

This message was edited 1 time. Last update was at 2014/10/14 14:47:58


 
   
Made in sa
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

 Kal-El wrote:
He send me a wired up Space Marine and I will paint it for you. I don't normally do free stuff but I can make an exception for you to get a model painted for your tut. PM me if your interested...if you feel like you just have to pay me you can just send an extra drilled out or wired guy SM.



If anyone is wondering why I haven't updated this thread, it's because THIS GUY ran off with all my LED lit space marines. As for the people asking why I would use a 3mm LED in a marine head when there are smaller ones out there, it's because the 3mm LED is a perfect fit for the size of the helmet. No real need to fenangle a smaller, rectangular LED that won't shine out of both eyes, no need to use fiber optics that won't wind up shining as brightly. Could you do it differently? Sure. Is this the way I like to do mine? Yup.

On a side note, I'm getting up the gumption to get back on the horse. Anyone have any requests as far as a lighting tutorial?

IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
Made in us
Stalwart Veteran Guard Sergeant






Hey Boss, I got a quick request. How would one light up a Dreadnaught? It isn't big enough for the Kits you mentioned, and it seems like it would be too big for the Marine tutorial. That would be nice to see for the few of us who still field Dreadnaughts.


 
   
Made in us
Repentia Mistress






If you're willing to do something a bit more challenging, I'd love a tutorial on how to light up meltas/plasmas on IG-sized miniatures. I have no idea where to even start with that.

 
   
Made in gb
Been Around the Block





I foresee fires.
   
Made in gb
Bane Lord Tartar Sauce





Saudi Arabia

 AUGmaniac wrote:
Hey Boss, I got a quick request. How would one light up a Dreadnaught? It isn't big enough for the Kits you mentioned, and it seems like it would be too big for the Marine tutorial. That would be nice to see for the few of us who still field Dreadnaughts.



Oh, dreads would be super easy. I would just need a kit to put up a full tutorial. Basically you need to go back to my Tau tutorial. That covers head and chest lights for larger models, and it would give you the run down on the specific materials (20mm coin cells and holders, etc). Start by making a powered base and then run your wires up through a hole drilled in the leg (same as the Space Marine), and then into the torso. Depending on which dread kit you're running, you'd have either the flat faceplate or a marine head to light up. Either way, you drill through the eye holes and mount the LED within the inside of the main dread torso so it shines through. Then, following the instructions in the crisis suit guide, you can daisy-chain multiple LEDs and run them through the arms to a weapon or a searchlight. The options are pretty much unlimited because it's such a big, blocky kit. That gives you a lot of room to carve and drill inside the parts to create channels for the wires to travel through. And if you can't get the wire through the arms, you can run them down along the other sculpted wires and cables that are already part of the dread sculpt.




Automatically Appended Next Post:
 youidiotkid wrote:
If you're willing to do something a bit more challenging, I'd love a tutorial on how to light up meltas/plasmas on IG-sized miniatures. I have no idea where to even start with that.


IG guys would be pretty hard to do. I mean, sure, it could be done, but you would have some serious design obstacles to overcome. Size is one big problem. Obviously you're not gonna be drilling out those itty bitty arms to hide your wires. And of course the guns themselves are a bit slimmer. I was working on an LED plasma rifle concept but the theft of all my lit marines kinda killed that for me. Power supply can be solved in a few ways. One, you can take one of those big bulky communications backpacks and probably hollow it out. Then clip off the antennae and such and turn it into a "generator pack" rather than a comm array. You'd still put the battery in the base, then run it up through the legs into the torso, as with the marine. You'd have to probably cut the leg at the knee to get the channel dug out correctly, then reattach and smooth out the cut area with green stuff, just like the marine.

Then, drill up into the torso and then out the back. Feed the wire up the leg, into the torso, out the back, and into the comm pack. Drill a small hole in the side of the pack and feed the wire through it. You're going to hide the power cable in plain sight by running it directly from the "power pack" to the weapon. Twist the wires so that they form a single, twisted cable with a little more rigidity.

Now, the weapon itself is where we come to an impasse. Plasma rifles and meltaguns are not big enough to house an LED without some modification. You'd need to bulk out the receiver area, the main "box" of the gun, using bits in order to create a hollow big enough to house the LED. I really don't know if the plasma coils are able to be lit at this small a scale, so you'd be looking at just a light at the end of the gun barrel.

Another option is to run a fiber optic cable from the pack to the back of the weapon, and actually mounting the LED itself inside the pack and torso, which would both have to be significantly hollowed out to make room for this assembly. This is a bit more difficult, and the fiber optic cable itself can be rather fragile. You could shield the cable by feeding it through heat shrink tubing. On the bright side it would involve very little modification to the weapon itself. Just a single hole drilled *very carefully* in one end and out the other. You'd feed the fiber optic through the end and then melt the tip into a mushroom shape across the barrel (see the Crisis Suit tutorial for examples of this technique).

Just a with the dreadnought, I don't currently have a kit with which to make this happen. Most of these techniques are completely interchangeable between models. Once you've done one or two lighting jobs, you start to see how to get it done in other models. So my advice to anyone who wants to try bigger and crazier lighting tricks, just give my tutorials a try on something you already have laying around. That will teach you the skills that you would apply to the other builds.

This message was edited 2 times. Last update was at 2015/08/04 17:09:03


IMPOSSIBLE IS RELATIVE
Boss, everything you make is gold.

Dubstep Tau, let there be LIGHT.
Blind them with SCIENCE, a tutorial series for adding LEDs and effects to your models.
Powerlifting and Plasma, a Romantic Comedy 
   
 
Forum Index » Painting & Modeling Tutorials
Go to: