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Recently created a fiber optic glowing star map for wife and decided to expand that technology into 40k minis. The minis I have made so far have the fiber optics fully integrated into the body of the model, and a custom very small led light source located in the base. The idea was to make things like eyes or guns glow to give a more immersive feel on the battlefield, with the challenge being to not add a bunch of bulk to the mini. So far I have been successful with two small minis. Routing the fiber optic cables is a real pain, with eye holes being around 0.6mm. Creating a custom led light source that could fit into the base was another challenge as well. But in the end, it was fun and I learned a lot. Here are some pictures of what I have made thus far.

https://imgur.com/a/Z6mq1

https://imgur.com/a/8f9fe

Those look great especially the orc. I bet the genestealer shows up better in person.

What a cool concept. what tools did you use to run the fiber through?

Love the orc. Really cool idea!

what was a total price spent on these? the ork boy is hands down brillant

 Skerr wrote:
Those look great especially the orc. I bet the genestealer shows up better in person.

What a cool concept. what tools did you use to run the fiber through?

Since the lighting on the genestealer is yellow, it gets a little washed out in the pictures. But I designed it so you can swap out leds to change the colors; you aren't stuck with a color if you don't like it. Been meaning to make a tutorial of how I did this work. The fiber is ran through the body via very small holes. So I used a small hand twist drill with 0.6mm bits for single fibers and 0.9mm for multiple. I could probably go smaller if I wanted to. Also use a small battery powered hand drill with a 1/16th bit for quick larger stuff. After you have the holes you have to fish the fibers through the holes. The biggest thing to consider is that sharp angles are bad, they bend the fibers. If you bend the fiber, then the light won't travel through the entire strand.

 Skerr wrote:
what was a total price spent on these? the ork boy is hands down brillant

So cost was definitely a factor when making these. I took a $5 fiber light toy ( had about 150 fiber strands), used the fibers off of that, then the eletronics piece (battery,leds,etc.) came out to be maybe $0.50 a model? Maybe cheaper, hard to calculate since you have to buy most things in bulk. But this was very inexpensive and awesome. The only downside to this, is that it is time consuming. Smaller the model, the harder time you will have.

I suppose I'll wait for the tutorial to find out how/where you mounted the battery apparatus and the sites where you decided to drill the conduit to feed through the fiber. Please update when you have this tutorial posted! Great work!