10.12.2014

Refinery Plant Update! Lights!

I had to take an unplanned hiatus on the Refinery / Building consolidation project to order and wait for some new SMD LED street lights from WeHonest on eBay in China. These LED street lights look great and are fairly inexpensive - especially when compared to traditional options.  You will need to do a little bit of soldering before you connect them to a standard 12v DC power supply. WeHonest does supply the correct resistor (680 ohm I believe) for these lights.

So that explains the delay! One of the problems with these lights however, is that a there's about a 10mm of brass tubing that goes through the surface.  This is a problem with my little refinery module as I need it to sit flush.
 Fortunately I was able to bend the tube's at a roughly ninety degree angle.
I used my Dremel to cut a bit of a reservoir for the bent tube and applied a bit of hot glue to hold them in place in the slots I created.  After this, its all about connecting the wires!
And...voila! I have a congested, industrial module with multiple lights that is ready to install on a layout (whenever I get started anyway!)....
I added interior and other exterior lights to the module to give it as much dimension as an operating facility would normally have.  Unfortunately, my camera settings aren't great for picking up the lights, but I think you get the idea.
I accidentally burnt out one of the lights (see below on right), so before this is completed, I'll need to other another set of LED's from China! Arghh!  (By the way, I already have a bunch of these, but when I supposedly organized and packed up all my layout supplies and materials during the deconstruction, I apparently hid these in a location which can't be found!)
While I wait for some replacement lights, I have plenty to do to detail, weather, and scenic the mobile.  More details on that on my next post (probably!).