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Alright, so after a very long time in the hobby, I've finally gone and picked up a Chaos Reaver Titan. Once I came down from the ecstatic high of unboxing aforementioned beast, I had the spectacular idea to make this my first attempt at LED lighting as well. However, while there are fantastic examples of Imperial Titans being lit (AlterEgo does a great one here), I didn't find much in the way of Chaos Titans. The main issue there is that the cockpit is full of wires, tentacles, and miscellaneous body parts that get in the way of wiring, but I'm going to give it a shot regardless.

So I decided to document my little adventure, so other can learn from my inevitable disaster.

CAVEAT: This is not necessarily the best way to do this.
Or the easiest way.
I am not known for either of these things, just for doing it my way.


So, first: The Goals:



Thankfully, modeltrainsoftware.com sells LEDs in the following sizes: 1.8mm, 3mm, and 5mm, with resistors built in and ready for a 3V power source. The eyes, as pictured above, are about the following sizes (left to right): 2mm, 3mm, 3mm, 5mm, 2mm. Easy, right?

Pictured with holes and channels drilled. I'm not terribly worried about the holes being visible from the inside, since there's a neat control panel/screen that'll cover up all the damage I just did with my drill.

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Pictured with wiring in place (test placement). The wires will be glued flat to the sides of the panels, and run along the floor underneath the princeps (or what's left of him)



Once the wires were in place, I ran them through a hole I drilled in the ragged mess at the back of the cockpit. The cables leading from the princeps are made to look like they run through this gap, and there's plenty of space to add in the wires alongside/beneath the resin cables.



Test lighting!


Next stop will be the battery pack (which is going to require some serious drilling), and the magnets to attach the head to the torso. Thanks for reading, have a virtual cookie.

Carry on.


-EoN

Nice read thinking of doing this to my own Reaver but I have a question about the actual circuit: is it as simple as LEDs and a power source, or are there switches and resistors also required?

The LEDs from modeltrainsoftware come with resistors built in, so no math necessary. The 3V coin battery I got from them as well has a switch (which I may or may not use depending on how it fits). So realistically, it's pretty plug-and-play.

All that also means I can wire the LEDs in parallel instead of in series.

Links to the goods:
http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/miniatureleds.html

http://www.modeltrainsoftware.com/3v.html

Update, after some delay, with a good news/bad news situation.

The good news is, after extensive drillwork, I've carved out a neat little socket in which to place the coin battery holder.




The magnets to anchor it (some 5mm cubes I have laying around) will be place along that slot in the top. But that's later.

The bad news is, while hand-jamming the LEDs in place, I neglected to use pliers to bend the wires and instead decided to use my Man Hands (tm). The end result of which was that I pulled the LED free from the leads. So now I'm waiting on more LEDs.