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morgoth wrote:
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 ?).


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 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.

The problem with some of the smaller LED's is their propagation angle. Fiber can work but on the angle eyes of the marines you could also use hot glue. That's right... Fill the head with hot glue and plop the LED in at the neck before the glue dries. Hot glue does a great job dispersing the light. I just finished a lit Tyranids army that I showed off at ATC and am taking to NOVA. I used some of the power play stuff in some of the models due to the programmable controller and it works pretty good. It's critical when doing your carve outs that you make it clean. Nothing sucks more than drilling out a model and thinking it's perfect until you light it up and see all those plastic shavings you missed hehe. I tend to clean my models, arrange the LED location, then paint the model in pieces before installing the LED's.

Neat tutorials...and stop doing work in your lap hehe. I could not stop laughing at your "stab your junk comment" and we all have that soldering iron scar on our thumb and forefinger heheh.

Great tutorial! Would this work for say flamers? If you used some hot glue to make a fire, and some glazes to colour that.

Whoa that land raider is crazyyyyyyyyyyyy

I would not try hot glue to make flames but maybe you have more skill with hot glue than I do heh. I would point you to Zinge industries. They have several clear pieces that you can use that are already formed and you just put an LED touching it.

With flamers you're looking at major conversion work to the gun itself before it's ready for lights. Just look at the little bitty plastic rods that connect the flamer muzzle to the receiver, and then ask yourself "can I drill those out without ruining them?" Spoiler alert, no you can't. BUT you can cut them off and replace them with some similar hollow tube (the nozzle from a can of compressed air comes to mind) and run your wires through there. Then you can rig an orange LED in the muzzle by hollowing it out, then put on a clear flame effect around it. Bandai makes a lot of different clear energy effects for the Gundam range but they're huge (knight scale), so you'd be clipping off a suitable piece and using that instead. From there you can mount a fuel tank on the backpack, and run the wires from the gun to that along with some other cables to conceal them.

Like I keep saying, I'd make tutorials if I had the kits. But this one is one I might be able to do. I've got a SM Tacticals box and some Bandai weapon effects. So maybe it's time to dig out my soldering iron and show you how to Spess Mahreen all over again.

On a side note, somebody mail me a dreadnought kit! I promise to mail it back to you all glowy and awesome.

Hi friend,

Your tutorials are great, doing large vehicles is easy, but doing a tiny 28mm figure is awesome.

Is there anyway this would work on an ork head? I thought it would be cool since they naturally have those sort of red glowy eyes.

It would work with an ork head almost exactly the same. You'd just need to do a few practice runs to figure out the right angle to stick the LED in. Nothing else about the process changes at all.