As the JACALAR town has come together, I need to add some street lamps into my scenery. Of course, I want them operational. I had a couple of packages of Model Power lamps, but they really aren't to scale. Height-wise, they are fine, but the lamps are huge compared to the people. The following illustrates the issue The lamp area is almost 4 scale feet across! Ngineering also sells a nice SMD LED street lamp kit, but these create "curved neck" lamps, with the bulb facing the sidewalk. Nice, but not what I wanted (here's example from their website) So what to do? Having the Ngineering LEDs, I figured I could come up with a more realistic to scale lamp area. My first two attempts are on the right (lamp only) in this photo Here, I used clear styrene (from windows) to cut the sides of the lamp glass. While the larger one came out looking "ok" (not great), the smaller one (more to scale) came out like crap. These are 0.125" on a side, so getting them cut and built took almost an hour, and still wasn't quite right. I need almost an 1/8" inch for the LED.
Rick, have you considered using a small glass bulb (round) as both the light and the housing itself? Then paint the top black and use a lower voltage, bet it would look sweet!
My next idea was to use styrene tubing, which creates a frosted lamp area, but eliminates the cutting of fine panels. Here we see the concept phase of the lamp Nothing is glued together, yet, hence the angles. This is much more to size, and plenty of room for the LED. The post is 1" of 1/16" metal tubing; with a .156" sq base. A reamed out piece of 3/32" tubing is used as the pedestal, and the lamp area is 1/8th inch styrene tubing. Here we see an LED threaded into the post First power on test shows plenty of illumination from the lamp (no picture of that). Next up will be to glue the pieces together, paint the base black, and then properly install the LED. Stay tuned... more later
I haven't seen any bulbs that are much smaller than a bit more than 1/8" across. Since I have the LEDs, I thought to go that way.
My street light are not lighted, but they are very, very cheap. I use the plastic bristles that make up some inexpensive hair brushes. Once painted they are quite convincing IMHO.
Great idea! I think a round cap on the top would look better. You could also add a smaller beauty ring on the bottom.
I agree on the round cap -- I went square to begin with, since easier. Don't have a good punch, and no way I can cut clean circles with a hobby knife. My plan is to use a small bead on top of the flat square, to add ornamentation. I got the posts and bases put together and painted right before dinner. New pictures in the morning.
Maybe not quite what you looking for, but this is made with a miniatronics bulb with the top glued directly to the bulb. The pole is a brass tube.
Found a punch! My wife had one in her sewing stuff, for leather, and the perfect size! So, here are a dozen of the lamps built up. Tops are not yet fastened to the lamp posts, as I now need to wire up a dozen of the SMD LEDs. These will be Ngineering Yellow-White Micro LEDs, and will have a 1500 ohm resistor for 12VDC current limiting, giving a nice incandescent glow. Unfortunately, my boss has called, and I need to pull some data together for first thing tomorrow, east coast time, so no LED work today. Yes, when final gluing occurs, tops will be "straight"
Got the first 8 onto the layout! Haven't wired them up yet (will do that tomorrow afternoon, after work) - but all the wires are dropped. You can see one of the tall ModelPower lamps in the parking lot (fuzzy - just a quick snap) - since a parking lot light pole is a lot bigger. More photos in the JACALAR thread (and one day, I'll get my website updated, as well)
Excellent work, Rick! So now help us quantify this. What do you think your cost per unit is? How much time per unit? Looks to be a quick and inexpensive build, with great results. Or did you just make it sound easy? Jim
