[TUTORIAL] LED techniques 1

I have been asked countless times regarding my LED techniques. So here's a bit of documentation on how I do my LED mods. Do note that the stuff I'll be talking about may not be electronics common practices or standards. Some might even find them unpractical. I'm just sharing you how I do things and how they work on the things I want to do. 

For today's lesson, I'll share how I power my works.

I have 2 ways of powering my circuits, using a 3 volt and a 5 volt source. The 3 volt source comes primarily from a button cell battery. The 5 volt source can either be a phone power bank or a phone charger that outputs 5 volts.

I mainly use the 3 volt battery during WIPs where I need to quickly test parts that I'm working on. While the 5 volt supply is for displaying finished kits.

One of the most frequently asked questions along with the power supplies would be the nature of using resistors. I often get asked by people what value of resistors they would need for their circuits. Resistor values generally depend on several factors: Voltage source, color of LEDs used, Number of LEDs used, and connections of LEDs.

I'm not going to discuss those into detail since there are already tons of tutorials on the internet and there are even calculators that make computing easier. But to show you an idea, here's some pics of LED circuits with various supply voltages, LED colors, connections and numbers.

See how varied it can get? So to spare myself the trouble of having to compute and get the right values of resistors for any specific circuit, I keep my circuits simple and consistent.

The simplest I can think of is to do my circuits with 1) no resistors and 2) wire all LEDs in parallel. I know it sounds inefficient, impractical, and a little bit lazy. But for something like Gunpla building, I don't think I need to consider power efficiency and also since I'm working with very tight spaces, additional components would make modding the kits really troublesome.

To achieve the no resistor circuit, I need to match the power supply to the LED's required voltage. And that's where the 3 volt battery comes in. 

If I can run my circuit with the same voltage as the forward voltage of the LED, no resistor would be needed since as per the sample above, the circuit would only require a 1 ohm resistor which can be considered negligible.

That makes sense when we have only one LED. But what if we have to use multiple LEDs?

That's where the parallel connections come in. As seen in the sample above, the positive terminal of all the LEDs are connected to the positive of the power supply and the negative terminal will all be connected to negative of the power supply, neglecting the resistors.

Also note that I primarily use white LEDs since they're close to 3 volts and that by painting them with clear colors, I can get different colored LEDs. I find that more practical than combining different color LEDs in my circuits since each color LED would require a specific resistor value to be used together with the other LEDs. 

One side effect of this would be that the nature of parallel connections tend to draw the same amount of current for all components. Meaning parallel connections will drain the batteries faster.

Once a kit is done and ready for display, 3 volt batteries wouldn't really be enough to display the kit for as long as I wanted to. That's where the % volt power supply comes in. I currently have a 5 volt power bank  and a phone charger. The power bank can store enough charge to power my displays for a long time or if there's an outlet, I can use that for longer periods. But since the Supply voltage and the LED's required voltage isn't the same anymore, we'll have to use a resistor here to lower the supply voltage.

The sample above is how an LED is powered by a 5 volt power supply. This will require a 120 ohm resistor to lower the voltage to 3 volts similar to the LED. For multiple LEDs, instead of multiple Resistors + LEDs combination, I directly connect the LEDs at a point after the resistor where the voltage has already dropped to 3 volts, as seen from the image below. This way, I've managed to lessen the number of components and minimized the area the LED + resistor would have taken inside the kit.

Also I like using this connection since keeping all LEDs in parallel helps in troubleshooting bad, burnt or broken LEDs.

I hope this tutorial helped you in designing your LED circuits. Again, this is in no way standard practice and feel free to improve on these techniques. Stay tuned for more updates on projects and/or more tutorials.

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[TUTORIAL] DIY Custom peg tutorial

Ever broke a peg on 1 of your kits? Or needed 1 for your custom builds? Here are a few tips that might help you.



First, I prepare the piece where the peg will be placed. For this example, I needed to add another peg between those 2 existing pegs. So I drill a hile on the part. The hole should be the same size as the peg we will be adding.

For this example I used s 3mm rod from a gunpla runner as the peg. I add some cement on the hole and the peg piece then put them together. It is important that the hole should match the peg piece so to have a tight join.

You can see that the peg piece went through the flat piece, and that I made the flat piece a bit thicker by joining 2 runner tabs. The idea here is that the thicker the piece that the peg goes through, the more surface area it can stick to when the glue dries. This will ensure that the peg will be strong.

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[TUTORIAL] HG Geirail Head LED tutorial

Finally had some time for a new post. Here's another sort of tutorial/ guide on how to add LEDs on heads of HG kits. This time, it's the HG Geirail from the Iron Blooded Orphans anime.

Drill a hole on the "main" head frame. This is where I will be attaching the LED. Though the actual sensor of the MS is rectangular, I decided to go with just a small hole for simplicity and since there is still a piece that will diffuse the light.

For this I will be using white 0603 SMD LEDs, wires are 30AWG wires. Total radius of the wires will be 1mm. So I need a 1mm or bigger drill bit. I decided to use 1.2mm to give it a bit of clearance and so the wires don't get stuck in the holes. I mostly get them online since these stuff isn't available locally here where I live.

Once the part is drilled, its time to glue the LED in place.

Next we plan on how the wires will exit the head, towards the body. There's actually plenty of space in the HG Geirail for this.

Testing the LED after putting the head together. It's good practice to test if the LED after putting together a section of the kit. It would suck so bad if you just find out that the LED or wiring broke after putting the whole kit together.

Next would be passing the wires through the body, luckily, plenty of space here.

I decided to stop here, below the body since I still don't have a specific plan for this kit. I can continue passing the wires through to the feet to hide wires while standing display or anywhere where it will not be noticeable.

The red clear piece diffused the light really well giving a cool effect.

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[RANDOM] Gundam Model Kit Contest PH 2017 Part 2

So I've decided to join this year's GMKC even though painting isn't one of my strongest areas. But what the heck right.

So decided to start with something simple, and easy. And since I had a lot of gold paint left from a previous project, I will be using it as the main color for my entry.

And since my personal preference if to follow the original color schemes, I bought the HG Hyaku Shiki revive as my entry. I also got a HG Petit'gguy as a testing kit.

I was very satisfied with the result of the test with the Petit'gguy that I decided that I'll just submit it as an entry too in the contest. 

The paints I used was Zurc's Venetian Gold and Zurc's Hyper Silver. I just miked them to get the shade I wanted. More Hyper Silver, the shade gets lighter, and vice versa.

Zurc's paints is a series of paints produced locally. Though currently a bit small, they're slowly getting attention from the local gunpla community with their wide range of colors, And they're still working on adding more.

So after I finished working on the HG Petit'gguy. It's now time to start working on the Main entry itself.

I'm really satisfied with the result. Though it's quite hard to get the effect on camera, it has the effect similar to the MG Hyaku Shiki 2.0. 

Unfortunately, I wasn't able to get more pics of the kit and even during the submission. I'll try to do a proper photo shoot after the contest..

Since our house is still under renovation, and we're currently living in an apartment, I don't have much space to work on my projects. 

Also it was a bit too late when I decided to join the contest so I didn't have much time to work on the kit and do some proper building techniques. Hopefully I get more time to work on my entry when I decide to join again.

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[RANDOM] Gundam Model Kit Contest PH 2017 Part 1

Finally had some free time to do another post here. I've been busy with a lot of stuff recently that this post got so much delay. 

Anyway, It's high time again for Gunpla fans here in the Philippines because it's the GMKC or Gundam Model Kit Contest sponsored by Bankee/Toy Kingdom. Aside from GBWC, GMKC is one of the major Gunpla competitions here. Unlike the GBWC where anything goes. GMKC focuses on OOB + custom painting. Basic building techniques still apply like seam line removal, v-fin sharpening, and pre-painting mods. Aside from those, nothing else can be done or added into the kit. Only what's included in the kit can be used. No scratchbuilding, no kitbashing. The finished kit should appear as what it is in the box, albeit in a different color scheme (if you want).

This year, I tried my luck and entered the contest. But that will have to be for another post. Here I'll just share my experience during the 1st day of the event.

I arrived tat the event past noon a there were a lot of people that day. The venue has three sections. One side would be the display area where contestants will display their entries.

On the other end would be the merchandise area where people can buy Gunpla kits. There were also event "exclusive" kits available for sale.

The middle area was a display area for winning pieces of past champions and some series being promoted. 

I wasn't able to take more pics of the event specially the entries since there were a lot of people that time and I was a bit in a hurry. I will try to visit again, maybe this week to get a better shot of the event.

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