When I stumbled onto the itty bitty LEDs I hit gold. I have found more uses for the itty bitty critters than I ever imagined. They work great in marker lights and cross arms.
A friend sent me a picture of a guy using a camera with micro LED as the flash. That got me going so I went with a conductor waving his lantern at the engineer from the caboose.
You better have very good eyes and steady hands if your going to attempt the micro stuff. I’m not doing too bad I’ve only screwed up two out of ten 1mm LEDs. Baseball bat size soldering irons don’t work well either.
The lantern is a prewired 402. I bought 20 of the prewired 402s and 120 602s. I got pretty good at soldering the 602s. I also bought some #40 Litz wire, the smaller wire is a lot easier to use than #32.
I mounted the conductor on a filed down male micro connector and installed a female micro connector in the caboose step so he is removable.
Mel
Modeling the early to mid 1950s SP in HO scale since 1951
I like the way You have the plug-in for the conductor…I am using the same plugs, but I’m experimenting with the Nano SMD’s, which are smaller then the LED’s You are using.
The LED in the conductor’s hand is a nano (1mm square) LED, I miss stated it in the title. I dropped the current down to .16 ma with a 10KΩ resistor from a 4 volt source and it’s still a bit bright for a lantern.
I just couldn’t make the change to LEDs for headlights, the 1mm micro bulbs with their lenses look so much more realistic than LEDs. That costs me power for around 95 vehicles running 1.4 volts at 12ma per bulb, most have a third bulb for taillights and running lights. Taillights and running lights are on fiber optics with the ends stained with the proper color.
With well over 300 micro bulbs my 1.4 volt power supply is running a bit over 4 amps.
EDIT:
I use the micro connectors for everything, I buy the 40 pin strips in quantities of 20.
This is my
I know exactly how You feel… I am going to attempt, to try and put two tailights,two headlights and two flashing yellow Mars lights on that white metal casting kit wrecker. The flashing Nano chips are a great size,they are actually way smaller than 1mm, but the built-in bridge rectifier/resistor take up some room…they will run on 4.5 to 19v AC/DC/DCC, they all look to be about correct brightness at 4.5, I can put them side by side in the hood compartment that is hollow…but it’s like trying to put 10 lb’s in a 5 lb bag. Just another thing to add to My craziness. Still havn’t finished putting all the detail in the block of stores yet, along with the neon EL signs…another case of 10 in 5…LOL
BTW: I Always get a kick out of Your quote…at 74…I can relate.[bow]
I have used a combination of LEDs and fiberoptic cable to illuminate vehicles.
This truck cab has all the lights working. What you see is the ends of fiberoptic cable that has been heated with a soldering iron to flare the tip out into a round lens. The actual LEDs are inside or below the cab:
I still use 0603 LEDs because they don’t take up any space. In some cases the LEDs are immediately opposite the lights so the fiberoptic cable is very short i.e. just the thickness of the shell. In other cases like the five yellow lights on the roof, the fiberoptic cables run down the back of the inside of the cab and out the bottom of the truck to a single LED.
The wiring is a bit of a mess coming out the bottom. There are a couple of reasons for having so many wires. One is that the right side front and rear signal lights actually flash, and the other is that there simply isn’t enough room inside the cab to hold all the connections and resistors. Also, the fiberoptic cables can be seen on the far left.
Lighting is a big attention getter on my layout and your super animated tractor trailer will really draw it Dave.
I have kept my vehicle lighting down to two circuits each so that I can easily move them around on my layout. I went with K&S brass tubing and rods for connectors. I adopted a ¼” spacing as a standard for headlights with a third one inch to the rear for emergency lights, i.e. flashing or rotating beacons.
The text in the picture says 1.5 volts but I’m actually running 1.4 volts for longer bulb life.
The only emergency lighting back in the 50s was the two lamp revolving beacons so I built up a bunch of 1.4 volt two transistor flip flops as flashers so that all of my flashing lights are random and not synchronized. Because I’m using incande
