Lighting the Engineering Section

09 August 2006

This time around, I have made some major progress in the actual physical construction of this model. It is starting to look less and less like a box of parts and more and more like a model, which is always encouraging! In this installment, I'm going to discuss the assembly and lighting of the engineering section of the ship (or the secondary hull, if you prefer!). The first step was to determine the location of the power jack. I selected a spot on the bottom of the ship, just aft of where I drilled the hole for the armature. I chose this location because this way I can potentially support and power the model from the same stand with no wires showing. To power the lights in the model, I am using a 2500 mA 9V power supply with a size "M" plug.

Left: This is how the jack for the power supply looks from the outside.
Right: The leads for the jack had to be bent to a 90 degree angle to accommodate the arboretum.

I am using speaker wire to run much of the lighting in the model, and I attached the main power leads to the jack at this point. I also wired and installed the ventral strobe LED, as this area is inaccessible once the docking bay assembly is in place. In order to make the strobe more visible, I drilled out the hole for the clear plastic insert and instead will just use the 3mm LED itself. While I will be losing a slight amount of surface detail with this method, I think the higher visibility of the LED strobe effect is worth the trade off.  Once I got these two elements wired, I cut a notch in the "bulkhead" that transverses the bottom piece to route the wires through. I then installed the arboretum. Many modelers have been going all out in detailing their arboretums, but the detail is hardly visible through the outer windows. Also, in the movies the windows are either dark or lit blue with indistinct shapes barely visible inside. To capture this effect, I am leaving mine a basic grey and lighting it with clear LEDs shining through a frosted, translucent blue ceiling.

Left: Here you can see the notch I cut to route wires through, as well as the Arboretum. This is all the more painting/detailing I did to mine!
Right: This screen cap from the end of Star Trek: The Motion Picture shows the effect I am attempting to capture on my model.

The next task was to trim the armature to the correct length. I only wanted the bare minimum showing out of the bottom of the model when completed, so I test-fitted a few of the key parts, marked the metal tubing of the armature, and cut it with a tubing cutter. As it turns out, I got the length just about right! After I trimmed the armature, I also gave it a coat of grey primer. This model will likely be spending a lot of time in humid climates, and I don't want the steel in the armature to rust on me. After trimming the armature, I installed the arboretum room and docking bay assembly. The docking bay assembly and engineering hull parts were chromed using the Rustoleum paint in order to reflect light more inside the model. This allows me to get away with using fewer LEDs to light the windows of the kit.

Above: The foundations for assembly have been laid.

Now that I had gotten this far, I wired up the internal lighting harness for  this section. The windows on my model are lit with four 5 mm white LED's arranged along the sides of the docking bay unit. These LED's also provide the light for the arboretum. There are also 4 3mm white LED's to provide a spotlighting effect on the warp nacelle support pylons. Finally, a red LED illuminates the docking control windows above the hangar bay doors, and a specially modified blue LED illuminates the deflector in front. I try to get away with using as few LEDs as possible in order to save time, money, and most importantly, complexity. Even with a model this size, it can be hard to find enough room for all the LED's and their associated wiring! All of the windows in the engineering section have been given a coat of liquid mask, so that they can be painted right over when this portion of the model is painted and then simply un-masked later.

Left: Here is the arrangement of the 5 mm white LED's.
Right: This dry-fitting illustrates that only 4 LED's will suffice to light the engineering hull if the interior of the model given a reflective surface.

Once I had the wiring part figured out, it was time to assemble the rest of the engineering hull. Earlier, I had glued the upper and lower halves of the pylons to the top section and side sections, respectively. Now, I attached the sides first, and then the top. Before I attached the top, though, I ran the wiring along the inside of the pylons for the lights in the warp engines. Once all four pieces of the engineering section were in place, I clamped and taped them together in order to minimize and gapping that might have taken place during drying.

 I did still get a couple of seams, which I dealt with in a couple of ways. First, large gaps existed around the base of the pylons. Those just had to go, so I used putty to fill the joints and then sanded them smooth. Next, small light leaks existed along the bottom edge of the sides. These I corrected by placing a strip of electrical tape along the offending joint using a pair of long tweezers. Finally, there were a few minor light leaks that I have decided to live with, as they are very small and/or can only be seen from awkward viewing angles. I actually wound up removing a portion of the after end of the hangar bay floor to get the end cap to fit better. This cut is visible below and is pretty rough, but I don't mind since it isn't going to show in the final model anyways.

I am trying something different with the pylon spots. As with the strobes, I drilled out the holes in the sides and I am using the LED rather than the clear plastic part included with the kit. Rather than try to mask the LED, I actually brush-painted it black before installation. The idea is to paint over it, and then once the painting process is completed plan to take a small file or sanding stick and remove the paint a little bit at a time to get the spotlighting effect seen in the movies.

Left: Here is the model clamped and taped as the glue is drying.
Right: here is a full-on test of the secondary hull lighting, with the red LED at the stern and the blue one up forward.
 

Overall, the process of lighting the secondary hull went fairly smoothly. Now that it is complete, I can move on to lighting other portions, like the warp engines and the neck!

Above: Here is the engineering hull with a few other parts (including the finished deflector) dry-fitted.

Andy Rucker