7 hours ago, Khyros said:

Here's a change of pace. Instead of doing an Imperial Star Destroyer, I got to do a Chimaera Imperial Star Destroyer! I have one more ISD in the queue, and then I get to work on other things, like a VSD (and the CR90 and Neb-B. Go go core set!). I'm still up in the air on whether I like the light box or not. On the one hand, it puts the focus on the ship well, but on the other hand, I feel like the lights get kinda washed out.

Great work and I like the light box better for what it’s worth. Like you said, it puts the focus on the ship.

Finished up another CR-90 and Chimaera last night. I'm much happier with how the second CR-90 came out, though with the amount of zoom on the picture, it doesn't seem that good, but it looks great on the table.

Finished a VSD last night. It was my second one, but I don't remember it being that difficult to fit everything in the ship.

Hey look - my first light up Armada base. I'm happy with the overall appearance, though I wish it was a bit more secure on the actual ship.

Great job as always, just wish I could afford to get one from you.

Finished up the Nebulon B this weekend. Note, this ship is really annoying to light. I had to use 0402 SMD LEDs, which are 1mm x .5mm. But by the time I soldered the wires onto the side, they were too large to fit inside the engines, so I had to drill the engines out slightly and repaint them to get it all to fit. And then there's the issue of the wires - 7 wires ends up being a relatively large wire at the end of the day. I helped it out by twirling them all together and quickly ending a few of them, which helped on the journey to the peg, but the rear of the ship still has a massive wad of wires. Thankfully the lights steal the show, so you can really only notice when the lights are off.

As a disclaimer, I will say that lighting a small base *and* lighting the ship is not recommended. When I was doing it for the VSD, there is enough space between the center slot and the LOSI connector under the front shield that can be used for the base resistor and light. But on the small base, it's much tighter, making it kinda obnoxious to take apart / put together. If the ship wasn't lit, then I could just set the wires up permanently for the base LED and keep everything under the base, so it wouldn't be a problem on a small base.

This ISD is destined for life in a pinball machine. I'm excited to get some pictures of it in its new home.

Hi Khyros, I love your work! Have you considered looking into the new Japanese self-contained hobby LED units that charge wireless? I don't really know much about them, just curious to see if you'd seen them.

38 minutes ago, DUR said:

Hi Khyros, I love your work! Have you considered looking into the new Japanese self-contained hobby LED units that charge wireless? I don't really know much about them, just curious to see if you'd seen them.

I have not. Do you have a link?

http://www.x-base.com/products.html

I think there are others with the same idea (including ones with small batteries? Maybe I just dreamt that though ), but this one's in English.

3 hours ago, DUR said:

http://www.x-base.com/products.html

I think there are others with the same idea (including ones with small batteries? Maybe I just dreamt that though ), but this one's in English.

Heh, wow those are expensive. $200 for the box, and $35 for each LED. The concept is cool, but I think I'll pass for the moment .

Here's a set of 3 that I just finished up this past weekend.

And detailed pictures of the Gladiator:

Love your work! I think this gladiator needs a touch of light in/around the bridge area, but those hangers are a worthy trade-off. Well done.

12 minutes ago, Recon00 said:

Love your work! I think this gladiator needs a touch of light in/around the bridge area, but those hangers are a worthy trade-off. Well done.

I would love to do that. Unfortunately the bridge is a solid piece, so I can't get "inside" it so to speak. I supppooosseee that you might be able to thread individual FOs from the outside, and if you bend them properly you might be able to get them to make the 90 degree turn. But it's really not that feasible.

Forgot to post the MC-75 here.

Finished up the matching MC80 Home One for that MC75. As well as an ISD for the two of them to fight against.

If you get some free time to please tell us how much time and cost it was for each ship.

Really awesome work my friend!

23 hours ago, Draconis80 said:

If you get some free time to please tell us how much time and cost it was for each ship.

Really awesome work my friend!

You can find my work for sale on my Etsy store, www.etsy.com/shop/LEDhangar or if you'd prefer, you can PM me if you're interested in any commissions.

As for hours, that really depends. When I first started doing ISDs, they took over 14 hours, but after the first few, it was solidly in the 9-10 hour range. Now, if nothing goes wrong, and I optimize everything and really pay attention, my record is just under 7 hours, but realistically it's more like 8-9 assuming nothing goes wrong (which is really kind of a stretch, something almost always goes wrong).

Finally got around to doing a Quasar. My imperial domination is almost complete - I've done the VSD, GSD, ISD, Raider, Gozanti, Interdictor, and now Quasar. I just have to do the Arquitens, and I'll have done all of the Imperial ships... I suppose that should be the next ship before the SSD shows up and I'm busy with that. FYI, I fully plan on doing another video series on the SSD.

11 hours ago, Khyros said:

Finally got around to doing a Quasar. My imperial domination is almost complete - I've done the VSD, GSD, ISD, Raider, Gozanti, Interdictor, and now Quasar. I just have to do the Arquitens, and I'll have done all of the Imperial ships... I suppose that should be the next ship before the SSD shows up and I'm busy with that. FYI, I fully plan on doing another video series on the SSD.

How did you get that effect for the hangar bays? Are they lit from the back? From above? It looks amazing.

45 minutes ago, The Jabbawookie said:

How did you get that effect for the hangar bays? Are they lit from the back? From above? It looks amazing.

Thanks. I drilled them out from above and recessed them in the plastic.

And the final Imperial ship, the Arquitens. I have a lull in my orders right now that I'm utilizing to do this work on my own ships and experiment on things I haven't done before, thus the new ships (and a WIP interdictor that'll be awesome). I need to pick up a second Arquitens, but I'm pretty sure that I'll be doing engines only for the rest of them. Believe it or not, I had FOs running the full length on this one, but they all got damaged and broken the further they went due to the extremely limited space inside. So I'm not thrilled with just the center sections have FOs. I might try one more time with FOs, since the 2nd+ time is normally a lot smoother of an operation, but I don't have high hopes.

P.S. I have confirmed that this is the smallest ship I can do FOs on - I opened up another Raider on Monday, but the sidewall is actually shorter than my .3mm drill bit that I use for installing FOs... And not only do I not have (or know of) smaller FOs, but after years of using .25mm, I wouldn't ever want to try something smaller.

On 10/29/2018 at 10:07 AM, Khyros said:

What size LEDs did you use for the engines?

2 hours ago, Kylemcph240 said:

What size LEDs did you use for the engines?

3mm for the primaries, 2mm Fiber optics for the secondaries.

13 hours ago, Khyros said:

3mm for the primaries, 2mm Fiber optics for the secondaries.

Cool thanks.