Hi all, i had what may be either an odd or already beaten to death thought the other day, it started when i came across my bore light, which is nothing more then a 2 AA cell flashlight with a piece of clear bent plastic on the end to direct the light into the gun bore, the plastic is around an 1/8th" diamater, i have also had one in the past that was around 1/4" diamater that just used room light and worked very well, now the thought is this, could this type of material be bent to conform the a building interior and maybe the end mushroomed out to act as a diffuser to more evenly spread the light? the advantage i see to this would be no more bulb replacment inside a building, i would think you could even mount the light source below the layout if that was an advantage and would make access easier, any thoughts on this? thanks for reading my ramblings.
I bought a big lot of plastic optical fiber on ebay a while ago with the idea of trying it for structure lighting. My thought was to take a smaller diameter fiber and simulate neon lights. The biggest limitation seems to be bend radius. I also got some larger square rods with the idea of putting in a functional skylight at the roof of a multi-story building and using the rod to “pipe” room light down to lower floors to illuminate the interior.
Do a search on “fiber optics” in the forum…you’ll find several posts with good info including sources, etc.
HELLOOOOOOOOOOOO Believe it or not TOP quality very heavy pound test clear or green or muave or magenta etc etc Monofilimant FISHING line works like a charm. Trick is to Razor cut the ends very true to square. (That means the cut is perpendicular to the axis of the length) and have source light close to the receiving end.
The radius of the bend doesnt really matter because the light beam will follow the bend and still bounce off of the walls. You just cant have a 90 degree bend to it cause you wont get a whole lot of light out of the end at all. KB
Seems that MR once published a think piece about running small-diameter fiber-optic lines to animate the chase lights around the borders of a theater marquee - an interesting application with no other practical solution.
For general structure lighting I take two complimentary approaches:
Rig small incandescent bulbs (or LEDs) on ‘poles’ that can be inserted and removed from below ground without touching the building itself.
Run small bulbs on approximately 60% of their rated voltage - which extends their life dramatically while producing the yellowish glow typical of residential lighting.
On a slight tangent, has anyone considered putting a multi-color LED on a random-flicker circuit to reproduce the appearance of television as reflected off the opposite wall? (For transition era, a white LED would do for black-and-white TV.)
I beg to differ. There is something called critical angle and without getting into the physics of optical fiber, too tight a bend, a dent, any discontinuity or nonsquare end will change light transmission to light loss or (if cladded) light absorbtion. Bounces depend on shallow angles and the indices of refraction of the fiber and its surroundings.
End result - tight bend = less light out of the end (which is the practical knowledge that we need to know).
A think piece, nay, it was actually modeled (and frighteningly, almost 2 decades ago) - November 1990, Fiber optics in model railroading by Lee Vande Visse (although He did state he built the scene for the article).
He did bring up the point about avoiding sharp curves in the fiber, and also the light loss due to too many curves in the fiber (I guess that still applies today) - oh, and he stressed checking the fiber cladding for light leaks (due to nicks in the cladding).
The chasing light marquee (on a Burlesque theatre) was lit by several christmas tree lights coming on in sequence, and sequenial bundles on each light, so say bulb 1, 6, 11, 16 in the sign comes on, then bulb 2-7-12-17 and so on.
Anyway, the article covers a few things about the then ‘new’ concept of fiber optics to modeling (at first, when it mentioned Christmas lights, I thought of those fiber optic mini-Christmas trees, but they weren’t invented at that time - or at least not available cheap enough to salvage for parts like nowadays), and closes with the concept (this was a thought concept) of crushing the core ends, so the light would be ‘flaky’ or reflected multi-times, and submerge this fiber in EnvironTex (well, it was 1990) to give off a shimmering sparking wave reflection effect.
I remember reading that piece and thinking that, while the effect would be nice, it seemed like an awful lot of effort to achieve, disproportionately so. That was over 18 years ago!? Yikes, I’m aging before my very eyes.
Actually it doesn’t seem that bad, even back then - get a bunch of fiber pieces, melt the ends a bit, drill lots of holes in the sign (this is still the PITA part), insert fibers through sign holes and bundle them up, every x fiber into one bundle, every y fiber into the next bundle, and so on, one christmas light per bundle. I wonder if you could use the Chopper on those fibers (remember, the ends must be cut straight, no slanty cuts like the Chopper sometimes does).
And don’t feel too bad mononguy, I clearly remember spending a bright sunny day looking through the CD sale racks at the Wiz at the Sunrise Mall (yeah, they finally beat the Wiz years ago) with my then girlfriend, while some great songs from the just released ‘Nevermind’ were playing in the background, like it was yesterday…while the of real yesterday of 19 April 2009, I have some vague memories of posting on here a few times and doing several household chores - bleh…
