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Hehehehehe
Good to have you back brother.

Thanks Graven.

Shock... Horror... I pop up again.

This time with some wip. I'll spoiler life stuff at the bottom (and type this here to remind me to add it)

Full disclosure, this is not my idea: I saw a photo pop up on Mastodon and had to make one of my own (well, as a present).

UFO abducting cattle.

First, I had to find a tiny cow model. Check! There was one amongst the model train stuff.
Then a clear, cone-shape. To act as the traction beam and support the UFO. I had a couple of options in my junk collection, selected the best. Check!
And find bits to create the UFO out of. Check! Back into the junk collection...
Pick out suitable and working LEDs and design a functioning circuit. This is explained below...

Obviously, if the UFO is to be standing on a clear cone, the battery for any LEDs has to be in the UFO.
If the battery and LEDs are in the UFO, so to does the circuitry and "switch".
Therefore you need to access the interior of the UFO if only to replace the battery.

Long story short; I decided that I'd use magnets to afix the top to the bottom of the UFO, AND use them to complete the electric circuit.
You may be able to twist the top to act as the switch (this did not pan out).

Starting from the bottom.
I have an LED pointed down and the legs drilled through the plastic support and spread in opposite directions.

I built a battery housing out of plastic with a piece of metal to act as contact to the underside of a button battery CR2032.
This metal folds under the plastic and was soldered to the negative side of the lower LED and to a free wire (that will be for the upper LED).
Another wire was soldered to the positive side of the lower LED, but not connected to anything yet.
This is the first picture below.

Using hot glue I insulated all that and afixed the battery housing to the top of the lower LED housing.
Leaving the battery roughly in line with the mid-point of the UFO between upper and lower halves.
This is the second picture below.

The upper half would therefore contact the positive side of the battery in a sandwich.

The upper LED was attached to a plastic support and the legs soldered to wires, like the lower one.
The wires were left relatively long to allow me to position it into the upper half of the UFO after checking the circuit.

The ends of all 4 free wires (2 in top and 2 below) were soldered to pieces of metal (that were electrically conductive AND magnetic),
And one final wire was soldered to the positive end of the upper LED and to another piece of metal (this would lead to the top of the battery).

The theory being that with the battery sat in the lower half, the negative underside would contact the metal that would take it to the negative contact of the bottom half, and the -ive side of the lower LED.
A magnet would connect that to the -ive side of the upper LED in the top half.
With the top half attached, the central contact would join the positive side of the battery to the +ive side of the upper LED (completing it's circuit), and to the positive contact of the upper half.
Another magnet would connect this to the +ive side of the lower LED (completing it's circuit).
This is the 3rd (middle) picture below.

In reality, both LEDs would not reliably light at the same time.

So I settled on creating a two-position setup where you can have one or the other LED lit.
I fixed the contacts in place using putty (big blob, press both halves together, remove excess).
I added a third magnetic attachment point to give a firm join, but this does nothing electrically.

I used 2 pegs (plastic rod) in the upper half and 4 holes (plastic tube) in the lower half to position the contacts in one of 2 options.
Getting everything lined up reliably has been tricky, but if you work on one at a time it's much easier than you expect at first.
I filled in around all these various attachment points to make it neater.
And this is the final picture below.



With it all together you have the unpainted result below:

It amuses me that there is clearly not enough room for that cow in that UFO.

Now to paint it.

Life:


Thanks for sticking around.