The big secret

Happy New Year! Was a little distracted these few days and forgot to keep up with my updates. Despite running out of time before school resumes, I have been playing games on my phone and neglecting everything else. Still, it’s time to let the big secret out.

With this one picture the answer should be quite obvious.

It’s easier to work with these prepacked tiny kits as you don’t have to travel around sourcing them and the SMD LEDs are much smaller than those I’ve worked with before. They’re pre-wired so I don’t have to struggle with trying to solder wires onto their tiny terminals. The biggest challenge though is still the wiring and finding the right place to store the power source. I could take the easy way out by running an umbilical cord, but I decided to make this guy self-contained. To make things difficult, the Wing Zero is slightly smaller than most other MGs.

After looking around the backpack and torso which are usually potential spots to store the battery, I found that it was possible to hide the battery inside the crotch area.

Dug out as much plastic as possible inside and cut a notch in the polycap. There was just enough space to fit the battery.

Drilled a hole behind the polycap to run the wires out.

Working on the torso, I had to make space for the switch and for all the wires to meet. I sacrificed cockpit detail and removed the back of the pilot seat. The Zero System indicator was also getting an LED. The pilot figure will be left out to make space for the wiring and switch.

Too bad the finished product won’t look half as bright as this right now. I’ll be covering the LED with the usual silver tape + lens combo so that the orb would still look halfway decent without any light. Also, this LED isn’t alone…

The arms are also getting the LED treatment.

Drilled holes to run the wires through the entire arm. I’m a little worried about the structural integrity of the elbow joints as quite a bit of material was removed to allow the wires to thread through them, and ABS joints are brittle and will crumble in a few years.

Testing them out. The articulation range of the elbow is reduced to around 135 degrees due to my poor positioning of the wires. Could have stretched the range a bit more but I’m not keen on removing even more material from the joints.

Topping things off with the head.

Derp, the LED is so small it can’t be seen clearly in this picture. It’s sitting between the putty mess and the polycap. Cut the forehead camera off so that the face can be re-attached after painting.

Again the final product won’t be bright as I would most probably cover the eyes with silver tape too. Also I wonder if the little battery can even put out enough juice to power all 4 LEDs at the same time. I’ll see how it goes. However, things are far from over as I can only join all the connections when I’m at the very last stage of re-assembly.

Back to the pla-plate nonsense, I extended the waist by around 1mm as I found the arms to be a little long. The waist joint extension isn’t anything special – just some sheet styrene, a piece of brass wire and some super glue. Put a few pieces of plastic around the gap in the waist to make the joint less obvious. It still looks a little empty inside there but I can’t think of a good way to fill it up without losing the upper joint’s ab crunch ability.

I should be done with my messing around so it’s one round of checking through the parts again before priming them. Then it’s another round of checking. I have a feeling I may need to fix all my freehand scribing and chiseling.

Advertisement