Klingon Bird of Prey Buildup Part2

More lights!!!

So, things are on a good pace. I’ve been taking advantage of some rare free time that I have.

I started to prep the bulkhead lights at the bottom of the ship, so this will be visible in the underside.  Using a new method I learned of using clear , transparent Dental Acrylic I was able to cut out the squares and make windows. The dental acrylic diffuses the light and gives it the appearance of a dull soft glow.  There is still work to be done, and tons of light leak. Partially because I did not prep the area with foil yet. After doing this most of the light should be blocked.

Bulkhead Lights

I started to break down the wings and decided it was time to take a closer look. A few days ago, my son was watching Star Trek Generations on TV. I noticed that the wings of the ship each had 2 flood lights. It looked cool and thought to myself, I should use that as a reference.

Bird of prey Wing

Note the wingspan is rather large for a model at 6 inches, When put together it should look rather impressive. The flood lights can be seen at the top of the wing.

Using a 57 MicroBit, I drilled out the holes large enough to fit more than 1 optic cables through it,  The reasoning behind this was to avoid any hassles when running the cables through and in the event I wanted more light I can add multiple Optics to the holes.  the Holes are no bigger than 1/10th of an inch

Flood Light Holes

About 1/10th Inch

I ran two of the thicker fiber optics to each of the holes and this is how it looks, a nice dryfit shot.

Illuminated Wings

Wing Close Up

After sanding off some rough edges, I decided to give a quick glimpse of how this was starting to look together.  For this one I used my professional camera and ditched the phone 😛

1/2 Wing, Torpedo, Forward Lights & Port Flood Lights

As the project is finally entering the mid cycle, I’m starting to realize how challenging this is becoming. The wires are going to be one of the biggest challenges, there are so many optic lights and various electronic wires they need to be properly shielded to avoid a short, I don’t even want to think of that happening at this point. 🙂

Klingon Bird of Prey Buildup, Part 1

So for a long long time, I have been into building models, I actively contribute to various google modeling communities and have been an active reader on http://www.starshipmodeler.com/ Which covers not only Star Trek, but Battlestar , Star Wars and many other SciFi / Fantasy based kits.

Recently I’ve been getting into the lighting end which adds another notch of realism into the kit. I have collected over $300 worth of kits and lighting accessories. Everything from surface mount diode light strips to standard 3mm/5mm LED bulbs. All easily powered via a 9 volt and a few capacitors.

My ultimate goal is to build the 1/350th Enterprise but before taking that on I started a Klingon Bird Of Prey and would love to show the results of my works so far.

I began with the engines. First step to make this as convincing as possible is to use some sort of reference. Well, mine was about an hour of parsing through google images and trying to devise a way to make the light diffuse properly in the engine bay.

Engine Breakdown

 

To create the soft orange glow, I used 1 yellow LED accompanied by 2 red LED bulbs,

Engine LED

Using thin Styrene strips I masked the inner surface of the clear plastic ,

Masking Clear Plastic

And when turning on for the first time, the Styrene combined with tissue paper creates a soft orange glow.

Engine LED Diffused

After dry fitting the electronics and adding some more tissue paper progress was made.

BOP engine

——————————————————————————————————————————————-

After getting the engine sorted out I put those pieces aside and began to work on the windows.  I was using small fiber optics to install in the windows.  which would require drilling out the desired locations with a dremel and 0.7 mm bit.  The fibers are created using 1 white led and some heat shrink,  Using a soldering iron gently melt the ends of the fibers and bunch them evenly together, once attached via heat shrink there should be virtually no light leak coming from the heat shrink casing, forcing all of the available illumination through the fiber.

After this was done, I drilled out two small windows and a bottom strobe light on the dorsal side of the ship and ran the small lights through. See below for the effect.

Fiber LED and 1st set of windows.

Close up of the windows which will be right above the torpedo launcher and bottom stage light.

1st set of windows

———————————————————————————————————————————————-

Torpedo Launcher

The Torpedo launcher was in itself quite a difficult task. But using a few LED’s, heat shrink, and fiber stands I was able to get the job done. I’m using a special FX board , special thanks to John Cook @ Madman Lighting

To create the ring effect, using a piece of heat shrink and a  bundle of fiber attached to a red bulb, i was able to lay the fibers flat on a strip of electrical tape. Then using another bundle of fiber attached to a white bulb place them in the middle of the stretched out red fibers.  Slowly wrap the red fibers around the white bundle to create a ring effect.

Once completed the final product looked like this

Torpedo Launcher

To See a video of the torpedo launcher in action check out this link:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/109361875@N04/11076808156/in/set-72157638098836564

And of course a video with the lights off, to see the full FX of the torpedo launcher

http://www.flickr.com/photos/109361875@N04/11076806276/in/set-72157638098836564

While this build continues I plan of posting more detailed pictures and videos, I’m still figuring out may of the tricks used my professionals such as Steve Neil

Enjoy

-Sean