Post by popeye on Aug 27, 2011 10:31:40 GMT -6
Adding LED lights to your model
OK! Firstly I ain’t an expert on LED’s so It’ll be quite simple, if you want working headlights/tail lights maybe an interior/dash lights this is what I do,
LED’s have the advantage over regular “bulbs” in that they are small, cool running,
Low current and long lasting, the tails can be cut down, bent and positioned for most modelling requirments, there easily soldered (no major skill required) and can be stuck in position with cyno glue, double sided tape or whatever,
There is only one rule to obey which is NEVER CONNECT THE LED DIRECTLY ACROSS THE BATTERY WITHOUT A RESISTOR OF THE RIGHT VALUE in line, (unless you’ve worked out the forward voltage of it/them against your power source,
I mainly use the 3mm ultra bright (water clear) white LED’s for the headlights and regular 3mm red defused for the tail, the red defused are not so bright which is ideal for tail lights, when you buy them they often come with “free” resistors which for say 12volt supply will probably be 470ohm resistors, however for 1/24th/1/25th models I found 680ohm resistors better for the ultra bright LED’s they “tone” down the brightness a bit, 470 or 680 ohm resistors will do for the red LED’s,
I use 12volt supply for all mine even the ones I’ve wired into the display cabinet, mainly because you can use those 12v “back- up batteries, (gel cells) that are fitted in alarm systems etc, fairly cheap and easy to come by,
The LED itself! Normally (and for our purposes) the LED will have two legs/tails whatever you want to call them, one is the positive (anode) leg and one is the negative (cathode) leg, the positive leg is nearly always the longer of the two, positive voltage MUST ALWAYS be connected to the positive leg, you can however fit the resistor to either leg, but as a rule I always fit it to the positive side, if you connect the voltage the other way round the LED just wont work, it wont damage it but it just don’t light up, it’s easy to check though, I keep a small gel cell battery handy, just always make sure you use a resistor when checking, (if you don’t the LED will just burn out in a millisecond)
The pics give you the general idea/layout of wiring the basic head/tail lights, also note that you cant run LED’s of different voltage rating/colours from one resistor so if you keep to say one resistor for the headlights (or one for each headlight) and another resistor for the tail lights (or one for each tail) also if your fitting a different colour for an interior light and/or dash lights then use another resistor(s) for these,
If you want some sort of lighting behind the dash it all depends on the particular kit and how much room there is behind the dash, also whether the plastic’s moulded in white or a light colour or black, an ultra bright LED will shine light through light coloured plastic but not through black so for black you’ll have to drill out the instruments whereas white plastic you can just fit the LED pointing to the back of the dash, it should give enough light to shine through decals but that’s trial and error and depends on the plastic (thickness and colour) and the decal, once the dash is painted the light should only come through the instruments/ radio/ gauges etc, one point about ultra bright LED’s is they have a narrow angle or view, hook one up and it’s only bright when you look at it “head on” (which I don’t recommend) side on and it’s not very bright at all,
Defused LED’s however are the same brightness all round, (but nowhere near as an ultra bright head on), defused are ideal for interior lights or dash where you have drilled out the plastic,
Part 2
fitting them in! it all depends on the kit! Most “modern” cars will be quite easy it’s another story for the more “vintage” cars, where lights were fitted on the fenders (wings to us) on larger scales its possible, there’s usually enough room inside the light for the LED to fit in, smaller scales my not be possible (I’ll find out as I’m doing the gangbusters Lincoln next, 1/25th scale!! No room in there I think, however it’s sometimes possible to use fibre optics to get the light where you want it, I did it on the hilux surf, a bit bright, I should have used a red defused as the source instead on an ultra bright, optic “wire” is available from Maplins (or Radio shack in the US) thinnest I could get was about 2mm though, time you add on the covering it’s a bit thick, another good source is Christmas fibre optic decorations
Headlights, you just need to drill a 3mm hole through the trim so you can position/glue the LED behind there, (not forgetting you have to then glue on the lense that comes with the kit, like I did), either solder the resistor to the pos leg of the led or fit it further back, for twin headlights just solder the pos and neg legs together and run the wires from them (like the pic) run you wires through to the back or where ever you want them the exit and glue or tape them out the way so they don’t foul when you assemble the interior,
On kits that have the headlight detail molded in and no clear plastic lenses I usually drill and file out the headlight till a “5mm” l.e.d just fits in without pokeing right through, brightness on 5mm l.e.d’s is the same as 3mm assumeing the “mcd” rateing is the same, this rateing should be marked on the packs when you buy, for model purposes lower mcd rateing is fine ie:- 3,000 mcd, some whites go up to 20,000 mcd which will be a bit bright especially on an older car model, which should be not too bright, and positively “yellowish” on vintage cars,
Again you can “tone” down the brightness with a different value resistor (within limits)
Tail lights!, a bit more difficult as most kit have a chrome plated part for the tail light, so you need to drill/cut the centre away so the light will shine through, then stick on the red plastic lens or stick a small bit of clear plastic in and dribble some Tamiya clear colour red on it, you don’t have to actually poke the led through the trim, sticking just behind will give enough light through,
Dash!, like I said, all depends on the plastic thickness/colour, decal colour etc, if it’s white or light plastic and not too thick just pointing the led from behind will give enough light through, just try it and see, if too much plastic lights up just paint round the led with matt black or similar so the light just comes through where you want it,
Interior, this is entirely up to you, centre roof, under the seats or dash as a sort of back light, if you want the disco look there are colour changing LEDs available, also in 3mm, very nice! They run through several colours, blending one to the next, (got some in the fish tank and the instruments of my 1/1scale hilux,
Under floor Neons, you could wire some nice blue LEDs under the kit for the “boy racer” look,
That’s about it, I’ll add more pics as and when and you can Google “LED wiring” loads of info there, gets a bit techicinal for me though
Part 3
I should add that if you want to make "spotlights" for you models you can carefully sand down the front of the led, as long as you dont go down to the diode filament, this gives ya a nice "flat" fronted look, then polish the front to take the roughness off, finish off with a cut off bit of ploished alloy tube (from the model shop and it looks something like a spot light, for roof spoties 3mm leds will do, for say two larger 6" front spoties use 5mm leds,
This is a bank of four 5mm leds for the front spoties fitted to the front bumper, led legs were just bent down and through drilled holes in the bumper, all connections made behind the bumper so you cant see em.
HOW THEY LOOK
a 3mm clear ultra-bright and a 3mm defused red plus 2 x 470ohm resistors
![]()
two ways of wiring headlight and taillights
i63.photobucket.com/albums/h139/ian619/tutorials/Picture659.jpg[/IMG]
use of fibre-optic cable, to take points of light to places on the model too small for the led itself, you can run fibre-optic wire, joint them all together into the end of a small tube, fix with humbrol clear-fix and stick a hight mcd rated led in the other end, dont use cyno to fix the optic wire as it makes it brittle and it just breaks off, (as i found out)
Thought i'd add this as it's concerning the lighting in the models,
i have been leaveing the pos and neg wires trailing from the cars lights and in the old display case i had to fiddle about sticking them to the copper tape which was acting as a buss bar type set up, in the new case i've still used copper tape (dolls house tape) but stuck two double lenghts of it along each shelf, wiring then connects these tapes together and will run to a transformer, i did double rows so when a car is placed on the shelf the rear wheels and front wheels will touch one of the rearmost pair of tapes and same on the front wheels, because different cars have different wheel bases and i already had this 25mm wide tape, you could use single wider tape with the same effect,
i will now alter each car so one wire is stuck to one front tyre and the other wire is on one rear tyre, so when ya place the car on the tape you get contact for the lights, hopefully the pics will explain it better than i am doing ;D
The copper tape stuck to a glass shelf, repeated on all shelf's
the "pairs" of tape joined by short lenghts of tape, thers bit also hold the wirs in place, no real need to solder as the adeshive is conducting so contact will be made,
wiring fitted to one tyre, do the same at the rear with the other politary lead, up to you which way round you do the polarity, i made the rearmost tape "pos" and the forward pair "neg" just wire the vehicle to suit or it wont work
i just thought doing it this way avoids wires showing and makes it easier to move the models about, alter the line up etc or even dust them ;D
OK! Firstly I ain’t an expert on LED’s so It’ll be quite simple, if you want working headlights/tail lights maybe an interior/dash lights this is what I do,
LED’s have the advantage over regular “bulbs” in that they are small, cool running,
Low current and long lasting, the tails can be cut down, bent and positioned for most modelling requirments, there easily soldered (no major skill required) and can be stuck in position with cyno glue, double sided tape or whatever,
There is only one rule to obey which is NEVER CONNECT THE LED DIRECTLY ACROSS THE BATTERY WITHOUT A RESISTOR OF THE RIGHT VALUE in line, (unless you’ve worked out the forward voltage of it/them against your power source,
I mainly use the 3mm ultra bright (water clear) white LED’s for the headlights and regular 3mm red defused for the tail, the red defused are not so bright which is ideal for tail lights, when you buy them they often come with “free” resistors which for say 12volt supply will probably be 470ohm resistors, however for 1/24th/1/25th models I found 680ohm resistors better for the ultra bright LED’s they “tone” down the brightness a bit, 470 or 680 ohm resistors will do for the red LED’s,
I use 12volt supply for all mine even the ones I’ve wired into the display cabinet, mainly because you can use those 12v “back- up batteries, (gel cells) that are fitted in alarm systems etc, fairly cheap and easy to come by,
The LED itself! Normally (and for our purposes) the LED will have two legs/tails whatever you want to call them, one is the positive (anode) leg and one is the negative (cathode) leg, the positive leg is nearly always the longer of the two, positive voltage MUST ALWAYS be connected to the positive leg, you can however fit the resistor to either leg, but as a rule I always fit it to the positive side, if you connect the voltage the other way round the LED just wont work, it wont damage it but it just don’t light up, it’s easy to check though, I keep a small gel cell battery handy, just always make sure you use a resistor when checking, (if you don’t the LED will just burn out in a millisecond)
The pics give you the general idea/layout of wiring the basic head/tail lights, also note that you cant run LED’s of different voltage rating/colours from one resistor so if you keep to say one resistor for the headlights (or one for each headlight) and another resistor for the tail lights (or one for each tail) also if your fitting a different colour for an interior light and/or dash lights then use another resistor(s) for these,
If you want some sort of lighting behind the dash it all depends on the particular kit and how much room there is behind the dash, also whether the plastic’s moulded in white or a light colour or black, an ultra bright LED will shine light through light coloured plastic but not through black so for black you’ll have to drill out the instruments whereas white plastic you can just fit the LED pointing to the back of the dash, it should give enough light to shine through decals but that’s trial and error and depends on the plastic (thickness and colour) and the decal, once the dash is painted the light should only come through the instruments/ radio/ gauges etc, one point about ultra bright LED’s is they have a narrow angle or view, hook one up and it’s only bright when you look at it “head on” (which I don’t recommend) side on and it’s not very bright at all,
Defused LED’s however are the same brightness all round, (but nowhere near as an ultra bright head on), defused are ideal for interior lights or dash where you have drilled out the plastic,
Part 2
fitting them in! it all depends on the kit! Most “modern” cars will be quite easy it’s another story for the more “vintage” cars, where lights were fitted on the fenders (wings to us) on larger scales its possible, there’s usually enough room inside the light for the LED to fit in, smaller scales my not be possible (I’ll find out as I’m doing the gangbusters Lincoln next, 1/25th scale!! No room in there I think, however it’s sometimes possible to use fibre optics to get the light where you want it, I did it on the hilux surf, a bit bright, I should have used a red defused as the source instead on an ultra bright, optic “wire” is available from Maplins (or Radio shack in the US) thinnest I could get was about 2mm though, time you add on the covering it’s a bit thick, another good source is Christmas fibre optic decorations
Headlights, you just need to drill a 3mm hole through the trim so you can position/glue the LED behind there, (not forgetting you have to then glue on the lense that comes with the kit, like I did), either solder the resistor to the pos leg of the led or fit it further back, for twin headlights just solder the pos and neg legs together and run the wires from them (like the pic) run you wires through to the back or where ever you want them the exit and glue or tape them out the way so they don’t foul when you assemble the interior,
On kits that have the headlight detail molded in and no clear plastic lenses I usually drill and file out the headlight till a “5mm” l.e.d just fits in without pokeing right through, brightness on 5mm l.e.d’s is the same as 3mm assumeing the “mcd” rateing is the same, this rateing should be marked on the packs when you buy, for model purposes lower mcd rateing is fine ie:- 3,000 mcd, some whites go up to 20,000 mcd which will be a bit bright especially on an older car model, which should be not too bright, and positively “yellowish” on vintage cars,
Again you can “tone” down the brightness with a different value resistor (within limits)
Tail lights!, a bit more difficult as most kit have a chrome plated part for the tail light, so you need to drill/cut the centre away so the light will shine through, then stick on the red plastic lens or stick a small bit of clear plastic in and dribble some Tamiya clear colour red on it, you don’t have to actually poke the led through the trim, sticking just behind will give enough light through,
Dash!, like I said, all depends on the plastic thickness/colour, decal colour etc, if it’s white or light plastic and not too thick just pointing the led from behind will give enough light through, just try it and see, if too much plastic lights up just paint round the led with matt black or similar so the light just comes through where you want it,
Interior, this is entirely up to you, centre roof, under the seats or dash as a sort of back light, if you want the disco look there are colour changing LEDs available, also in 3mm, very nice! They run through several colours, blending one to the next, (got some in the fish tank and the instruments of my 1/1scale hilux,
Under floor Neons, you could wire some nice blue LEDs under the kit for the “boy racer” look,
That’s about it, I’ll add more pics as and when and you can Google “LED wiring” loads of info there, gets a bit techicinal for me though
Part 3
I should add that if you want to make "spotlights" for you models you can carefully sand down the front of the led, as long as you dont go down to the diode filament, this gives ya a nice "flat" fronted look, then polish the front to take the roughness off, finish off with a cut off bit of ploished alloy tube (from the model shop and it looks something like a spot light, for roof spoties 3mm leds will do, for say two larger 6" front spoties use 5mm leds,
This is a bank of four 5mm leds for the front spoties fitted to the front bumper, led legs were just bent down and through drilled holes in the bumper, all connections made behind the bumper so you cant see em.
HOW THEY LOOK
a 3mm clear ultra-bright and a 3mm defused red plus 2 x 470ohm resistors
two ways of wiring headlight and taillights
i63.photobucket.com/albums/h139/ian619/tutorials/Picture659.jpg[/IMG]
use of fibre-optic cable, to take points of light to places on the model too small for the led itself, you can run fibre-optic wire, joint them all together into the end of a small tube, fix with humbrol clear-fix and stick a hight mcd rated led in the other end, dont use cyno to fix the optic wire as it makes it brittle and it just breaks off, (as i found out)
Thought i'd add this as it's concerning the lighting in the models,
i have been leaveing the pos and neg wires trailing from the cars lights and in the old display case i had to fiddle about sticking them to the copper tape which was acting as a buss bar type set up, in the new case i've still used copper tape (dolls house tape) but stuck two double lenghts of it along each shelf, wiring then connects these tapes together and will run to a transformer, i did double rows so when a car is placed on the shelf the rear wheels and front wheels will touch one of the rearmost pair of tapes and same on the front wheels, because different cars have different wheel bases and i already had this 25mm wide tape, you could use single wider tape with the same effect,
i will now alter each car so one wire is stuck to one front tyre and the other wire is on one rear tyre, so when ya place the car on the tape you get contact for the lights, hopefully the pics will explain it better than i am doing ;D
The copper tape stuck to a glass shelf, repeated on all shelf's
the "pairs" of tape joined by short lenghts of tape, thers bit also hold the wirs in place, no real need to solder as the adeshive is conducting so contact will be made,
wiring fitted to one tyre, do the same at the rear with the other politary lead, up to you which way round you do the polarity, i made the rearmost tape "pos" and the forward pair "neg" just wire the vehicle to suit or it wont work
i just thought doing it this way avoids wires showing and makes it easier to move the models about, alter the line up etc or even dust them ;D
