Polar lights USS Enterprise NCC-1701 Star Trek The Motion Picture Refit 1/350th Scale
Page Number
Grab ya partners and hit the floor people because it's time for...
The Main Deflector Dish Dance!
Yea verily gang it's that time. Welcome back for another round of silliness people. Ok, here we have the deflector housing after a slight cleanup and a
goodly dose of matt gray primer followed by matt white in
the area that needs it.
So that set and sorted, some milling bit blasting and the RCS thruster LEDs put where they should be and secured. A resistor or four with some wire completes the gig. Then a quick test with the small block of 9volts....
Pretty much what I was after. So to the clear dish thingy, this be it with the back given a light sanding to rid it of the moulding disc in the center. Then a coating of glass frosting spray.
Now for a quick test with the LED.
Ah... The inevitable 'hot spot' problem. Well that simply would not do so that had better be cured. Well just one layer of diffuse material isn't going to cut it so best pile it on.
To begin with, a lump of 20thou or there about's clear styrene
and one of the scrap deflector housing casts.
Heated and vac formed to get a dish.
Like so.
A light sanding, a scribe line and some cutting later and we have a dish that sits nicely in the deflector back inside the ring of lights bit. Sliced some circles of diffuse material as well for use.
So glued in, the ring of lights section back painted and some glass frosting sprayed on.
And the inevitable test.
Getting there, getting there. So the two small discs were trimmed to size required and fitted.
Then the deflector dish part was given a dab or three of paint in the right places.
Bit rough in some small areas but i'll take care of that. So dish fitted and a dab of glue here and there to secure the wee devil.
So in short, we have the LED light going through 4 layers of diffusion. Best shown by the quick diagram pic below...
Now granted that the diagram is not exactly engineering drawing quality but you get the general idea. Spacing between the diffuse layers is certainly the key here.
So the mess o' wiring was all gently shoved and prodded to the back of what limited room we have, and the deflector housing glued in to place. After the stay put gunk had cured fully and some cleaning up, we get this...
It's somewhat more diffuse light wise to the naked eye.
And in video format. My camera does pick up the light and makes it appear hotspot like, sorry about that. I need better vid kit...
Somewhere closer to what I had in mind methinks. If the vid is not playing then by all means do the right click, 'Save Target As...' thing on this here waffle.
It's just shy of 2MB size file so hopefully shouldn't take that long to D/L. So all sorted and next: The final getting it all together.
And that's for the
next update people so i'll see thee all then.
Go easy out there now people.
