1/350 Polar Lights Enterprise Refit - Build log
- Thread starter JNordgren42
- Start date
Ryker606
New Member
I am currently building the refit and I frequently reference Ian's work/photos along with several YouTube channels. I am about at the same stage as you for the build. Agree the windows are slightly oversized on the model. On mine, the windows touch the sensor bands on the rim in some places, perhaps the age of the mold or wrongly sized to begin with. I just finished installing acrylic pieces (lazer fire) for the windows on the rim of the saucer. // Just bouncing some thoughts, to downsize the windows it would mean using canopy glue or similar or clear plastic behind the windows. If you fill/sand/ resize I wouldn't trust them to take any acrylic or plastic inside the diameter. I used canopy glue on the TOS 1/350 saucer and it was OK, but it is difficult to obtain a flush fit with the hull using that method and it doesn't dry clear (which is OK, but it is definitely more opaque that what I wanted). Smaller would be accurate, but thats a bullet I wouldn't bite. I would never be able to keep them all aligned and the same diameter when drilling in filled areas, etc. But, thinking like this is what makes your build unique, enjoying the progress and ideas.
division 6
Master Member
Just to throw it out there but what about using brass tubing to scale them down. ???
Ryker606
New Member
Not all of the windows are round and with the shape of the hull/saucer the brass would not set flush with exterior of the hull. Hull is curved.
JNordgren42
Sr Member
I'm planning on using UV resin to fill the portholes, with a backing tape, I'm hoping to be able to get them flush and I'm hoping the resin is tenacious enough to stay in there. I just found some great reference photos from Bill Krause (the two I posted above are part of the set) and was able to scale the dorsal pic to determine they should be about 1.8 or 1.9 mm at 1/350. The existing portholes are 2.1mm, so it's not a huge difference and 1.8 mm definitely looks too small at this scale). The tiny little porthole masks in the Mask Design set are 2 mm, so I may just pop those over the resin filled 2.1mm portholes and call it a day.
JNordgren42
Sr Member
Also not all of them are perpendicular (or at least close) to the hull curvature which distorts the shape of the porthole and contributes to the non scale appearance. Someone on FB suggested trying hollow plastic tube, but that would suffer from the same issue.
JNordgren42
Sr Member
I've been kind of jumping all over the last week. I sanded down the exterior of the secondary hull sides and top and got the walls behind the windows thinned down on one side. I then turned my attention to the warp nacelle lighting. I did a quick test of an acrylic diffuser and the DotStar LED strip, and it worked amazingly well, even considering the fabrication of the test article was extremely rough. I started on the "production" diffusers and got one of them knocked out. I need to pick up some more aluminum tape and decide how I'm going to permanently attach the LED strip.
I also experimented with filling in the grid lines on my test mule secondary hull bottom. I used Perfect Plastic Putty and it was not robust enough to hold up to the scribing. I may give it one more shot with some epoxy putty, or I may just leave the grid lines alone (the softness bugs me, but it may be more work than it's worth and the potential for disaster is high).
Finally, I played around with some of the secondary lighting systems, some things were a success and some were failures. On the success side, I bought some 1.2mm fiber optic strand which fits perfectly in the existing holes for the nav lights. When the ends are rounded and sanded, they make excellent "bulbs". On the failure side, I tried several different methods of lighting the shuttle bay and arboretum, none of which were entirely satisfying. I'm ditching 12V COB strip because I don't want the control and added power difficulties. The RGB DotStars have a light quality issues with white, the RGB mixing always looks a touch off and in places like the shuttle bay and arboretum, you can see the separate emitters, even with a hefty amount of diffusion. I also tried some small Adafruit backlight modules, but they're not bright enough for the shuttle bay (they work OK in the arboretum. Because of these problems, I'm ditching the DotStars for the window and interior lighting. I ordered some RGBW Neopixels, which should solve the white light problem while still giving me the programmability that I want. I will have to run one separate data line for the Neopixels, but they can use the same +5V and ground as the DotStars (and I have plenty of GPIO pins on the Arduino to control them). I'll run some more experiments when I receive them.
Starboard side (thinned) vs. port side (unthinned) secondary hull halves. This is a good example of the difference thinning the walls down makes.
Back side of the starboard hull showing the ground out areas.
Diffuser test. Even with the unpainted grilles and no light blocking it looks really good and is more even to the eye than the picture shows.
Test light module. Again, it looks even better in person.
Test module with the light off. The back and edges are covered in metal foil.
"Production" version of the diffuser. I made them longer and drilled holes to use the glue posts to solidly mount them. I also sanded and polished the edges down to 7000 grit to help eliminate any hot spots from the rough edge tooling on my test. The diffusion side is sanded to 800 grit, and I may spray it with some glass frosting paint (Rustoleum from a rattle can).
Snug in place using the glue posts.
Close up of the polished edge. "Smoove"
Close up of the mounting. I trimmed back the glue post gussets by the width of the diffuser, they make a nice solid stop to positively locate it. The gussets on the other pin sandwich the diffuser in.
Test of the LED backlight module to light the arboretum. The brightness is acceptable here, but it's not enough in the shuttle bay, so I don't think it's worth the trouble to add in another new light type (plus it's not controllable other than PWM for brightness).
Bare backlight module. They come in a couple of larger sizes as well. Even though they don't work for me for this application, they'll stay in my stash and my brain for potential use in other projects.
I also experimented with filling in the grid lines on my test mule secondary hull bottom. I used Perfect Plastic Putty and it was not robust enough to hold up to the scribing. I may give it one more shot with some epoxy putty, or I may just leave the grid lines alone (the softness bugs me, but it may be more work than it's worth and the potential for disaster is high).
Finally, I played around with some of the secondary lighting systems, some things were a success and some were failures. On the success side, I bought some 1.2mm fiber optic strand which fits perfectly in the existing holes for the nav lights. When the ends are rounded and sanded, they make excellent "bulbs". On the failure side, I tried several different methods of lighting the shuttle bay and arboretum, none of which were entirely satisfying. I'm ditching 12V COB strip because I don't want the control and added power difficulties. The RGB DotStars have a light quality issues with white, the RGB mixing always looks a touch off and in places like the shuttle bay and arboretum, you can see the separate emitters, even with a hefty amount of diffusion. I also tried some small Adafruit backlight modules, but they're not bright enough for the shuttle bay (they work OK in the arboretum. Because of these problems, I'm ditching the DotStars for the window and interior lighting. I ordered some RGBW Neopixels, which should solve the white light problem while still giving me the programmability that I want. I will have to run one separate data line for the Neopixels, but they can use the same +5V and ground as the DotStars (and I have plenty of GPIO pins on the Arduino to control them). I'll run some more experiments when I receive them.
Starboard side (thinned) vs. port side (unthinned) secondary hull halves. This is a good example of the difference thinning the walls down makes.
Back side of the starboard hull showing the ground out areas.
Diffuser test. Even with the unpainted grilles and no light blocking it looks really good and is more even to the eye than the picture shows.
Test light module. Again, it looks even better in person.
Test module with the light off. The back and edges are covered in metal foil.
"Production" version of the diffuser. I made them longer and drilled holes to use the glue posts to solidly mount them. I also sanded and polished the edges down to 7000 grit to help eliminate any hot spots from the rough edge tooling on my test. The diffusion side is sanded to 800 grit, and I may spray it with some glass frosting paint (Rustoleum from a rattle can).
Snug in place using the glue posts.
Close up of the polished edge. "Smoove"
Close up of the mounting. I trimmed back the glue post gussets by the width of the diffuser, they make a nice solid stop to positively locate it. The gussets on the other pin sandwich the diffuser in.
Test of the LED backlight module to light the arboretum. The brightness is acceptable here, but it's not enough in the shuttle bay, so I don't think it's worth the trouble to add in another new light type (plus it's not controllable other than PWM for brightness).
Bare backlight module. They come in a couple of larger sizes as well. Even though they don't work for me for this application, they'll stay in my stash and my brain for potential use in other projects.
JNordgren42
Sr Member
It's been a minute since I've posted, but I've been slowly working on a bunch of stuff, mostly nailing the lighting down.
I've got the lighting setup completed for the shuttle bay, it's all RGBW NeoPixel LED strip and I'm super happy with how it's looking. I think I'm going to take another pass at my 3D printed turbolift shafts with some more aggressive light blocking, but other than that there's very little that needs to be done.
Red Alert lighting test:
Observation deck and Workbee cubbies:
Checking the fit and playing with the disco party mode
Warp grill test. There is a little unevenness due to an idle animation I'm playing with. It subtly varies the brightness of the LEDs in the strip in a random wave pattern. It looks really cool in motion.
The warp grill lighting setup. DotStar RGB strip is taped to the outer shell of the nacelle half. There's a diffuser made from white acrylic and fresnel sheet salvaged from a broken TV up against the clear kit grill piece. The TV diffusion sheets work remarkably well as long as there is a small gap between the LED and the diffuser. This is a simplification of my original design with the LED strip at the top of a clear acrylic diffuser and works much better with less weight in the nacelle (which should help to avoid any droop).
After a fair amount of experimentation, I came up with a solution I'm happy with for the nacelle RCS thrusters. I whittled down a tiny scrap of the white acrylic TV diffuser to fit inside the the fin and it spread the light from a single SMD very nicely. With some light blocking it should look perfect.
I've got the lighting setup completed for the shuttle bay, it's all RGBW NeoPixel LED strip and I'm super happy with how it's looking. I think I'm going to take another pass at my 3D printed turbolift shafts with some more aggressive light blocking, but other than that there's very little that needs to be done.
Red Alert lighting test:
Observation deck and Workbee cubbies:
Checking the fit and playing with the disco party mode
Warp grill test. There is a little unevenness due to an idle animation I'm playing with. It subtly varies the brightness of the LEDs in the strip in a random wave pattern. It looks really cool in motion.
The warp grill lighting setup. DotStar RGB strip is taped to the outer shell of the nacelle half. There's a diffuser made from white acrylic and fresnel sheet salvaged from a broken TV up against the clear kit grill piece. The TV diffusion sheets work remarkably well as long as there is a small gap between the LED and the diffuser. This is a simplification of my original design with the LED strip at the top of a clear acrylic diffuser and works much better with less weight in the nacelle (which should help to avoid any droop).
After a fair amount of experimentation, I came up with a solution I'm happy with for the nacelle RCS thrusters. I whittled down a tiny scrap of the white acrylic TV diffuser to fit inside the the fin and it spread the light from a single SMD very nicely. With some light blocking it should look perfect.
Ryker606
New Member
Shuttle bay looks great! I shaped a lighthouse LED via sanding and angled it in place for the nacelle RCS thrusters. Carefully positioned it lights the 4 points pretty well. However, your method with the TV diffuser may be a better approach. IF you don't have a busted up TV, where could one source the TV diffusion sheets? I found the saucer thrusters have a similar challenge, difficult to get equal lighting to all of the thruster points.It's been a minute since I've posted, but I've been slowly working on a bunch of stuff, mostly nailing the lighting down.
I've got the lighting setup completed for the shuttle bay, it's all RGBW NeoPixel LED strip and I'm super happy with how it's looking. I think I'm going to take another pass at my 3D printed turbolift shafts with some more aggressive light blocking, but other than that there's very little that needs to be done.
View attachment 1822593 View attachment 1822596
Red Alert lighting test:
View attachment 1822597
Observation deck and Workbee cubbies:
View attachment 1822598
Checking the fit and playing with the disco party mode
View attachment 1822599
Warp grill test. There is a little unevenness due to an idle animation I'm playing with. It subtly varies the brightness of the LEDs in the strip in a random wave pattern. It looks really cool in motion.
View attachment 1822600
The warp grill lighting setup. DotStar RGB strip is taped to the outer shell of the nacelle half. There's a diffuser made from white acrylic and fresnel sheet salvaged from a broken TV up against the clear kit grill piece. The TV diffusion sheets work remarkably well as long as there is a small gap between the LED and the diffuser. This is a simplification of my original design with the LED strip at the top of a clear acrylic diffuser and works much better with less weight in the nacelle (which should help to avoid any droop).
View attachment 1822601
After a fair amount of experimentation, I came up with a solution I'm happy with for the nacelle RCS thrusters. I whittled down a tiny scrap of the white acrylic TV diffuser to fit inside the the fin and it spread the light from a single SMD very nicely. With some light blocking it should look perfect.
View attachment 1822602 View attachment 1822603
View attachment 1822604 View attachment 1822606
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JNordgren42
Sr Member
Thanks!
As far as sourcing the diffusion material, I looked and found a few plastics suppliers online that have white translucent acrylic sheet, but I don't know how comparable it is and it's generally pretty expensive. If you don't have a dead TV handy, I might check FB Marketplace, Craigslist, or maybe even garage sales in your area. FB shows a bunch of cheap TV's near me and even a few free ones with issues.
A 50/50 mix of white and clear applied by airbrush over clear styrene sheet might be an alternative. Or use tracing paper, unless that's too flimsy?
JNordgren42
Sr Member
Here's a few more things I've gotten done recently:
I painted up some of the Paragrafix PE figures to go in the shuttle bay. Even though I'm going for the TMP paint (no dull coat), I decided to use the monster maroons because... They're just better uniforms.
I also started working on the HDA 3D printed planetary sensor. There are some pretty noticeable voxel lines so I'm sanding those down smooth where possible. I also drilled and filed out the holes for the spotlight. I always hate drilling in resin since it's so brittle, but It came off without a hitch.
And a quick test of the rectangular white LEDs I'm using. The sanding has compromised the light blocking in the planetary sensor and I need to work on placement of the LED, but I'm happy with the initial results. I'm going for 100% direct lighting since I'm not a fan of the Raytheon method, so I'll have to work very carefully on placement and light modifiers.
I painted up some of the Paragrafix PE figures to go in the shuttle bay. Even though I'm going for the TMP paint (no dull coat), I decided to use the monster maroons because... They're just better uniforms.
I also started working on the HDA 3D printed planetary sensor. There are some pretty noticeable voxel lines so I'm sanding those down smooth where possible. I also drilled and filed out the holes for the spotlight. I always hate drilling in resin since it's so brittle, but It came off without a hitch.
And a quick test of the rectangular white LEDs I'm using. The sanding has compromised the light blocking in the planetary sensor and I need to work on placement of the LED, but I'm happy with the initial results. I'm going for 100% direct lighting since I'm not a fan of the Raytheon method, so I'll have to work very carefully on placement and light modifiers.
JNordgren42
Sr Member
Both of those methods work for a lot of situations. The nice thing about the white acrylic diffuser is that it spreads the light from a single point source pretty evenly and in multiple directions. And in conjunction with the diffraction sheet and a gap (as in my warp nacelles), it works really well at diffusing direct light.
Here's a link to a test of the warp idle effect I'm working on and a still from the video: New video by Jason Nordgren
