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.Thanks! I'm building on a lot of those that came before, especially the greatly missed Ian Laurence. I'm definitely hoping this improves the look of the windows. Checking my references more closely, I may actually bite the bullet and downsize them, they are TINY on the filming model. Because it's in a smaller scale, I probably can't match them exactly, but I think smaller will be better. I just have to decide if it's worth the extra work of thinning the hull, filling, sanding down and then redrilling. I'm also concerned about getting that many windows placed "just right" and making the long ones straight. Even a slight misalignment of the pilot holes will skew them.
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.Just to throw it out there but what about using brass tubing to scale them down. ???
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.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.
Just to throw it out there but what about using brass tubing to scale them down. ???
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.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.
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
Thanks!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.
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?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.
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.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?
I hadn't heard it until relatively recently either. But I love the term.Funny, I have never heard the term: Monster Maroons, before
View attachment 1826511
Thanks!Nicely done, I will take two for a future build please.....lol.