166 points of light

The prototype’s sign has lights in its frame. My plan to model those is by drilling small holes in the frame where the lights go, inserting optical fibres to represent the light bulbs, and then illuminating the fibres it with LEDs.  The sign is one part of the lighting story on this building: there are also some small spot lights on the front brick wall (which will also be modeled with optical fibres); a small spot over a door on the back wall (again, optical fibres); the entry interior will be lit up with LEDs; and there are some roof mounted lights that hang over the sign that light it and the sidewalk (for these I’ll be using some old, modified Model Power street lights).  This is the first project where I’ve tried to plan the lighting from the outset instead of trying to retrofit it later – and being disappointed with the result. 

The sign lights are 1 mm diameter optical fibres, and the holes for these fibres are spaced 10 mm apart. They were drilled by hand using a suitably sized drill and pin-vise. I thought this was going to be an incredibly tedious task, but once I got into it, it wasn’t too bad. 

For fibre illuminators, I’m going to use some five element LED light bars I bought at a local Dollarama store for $2 each. John tipped me off to these things and they are a very economical way to score LEDs and fixtures. Bundles of fibres will be held onto LEDs with shrink tubing. I have this grand dream of one day replacing those bar lights with some sort of electronic circuit that would create a chase lighting effect – but that’s going to need some research to figure out how to do. Right now I’ll be happy with just constant lighting.

Well, in the next phase, many of the bits and pieces might finally start to come together into something that looks like a building. Also, I’ve got some optical fibre on order to finish cabling in this thing as well as some decal paper in the mail for making the ‘painted on’ signs on the front brick wall.