Booster Unit S-Gundam Booster Unit from Gundam Sentinel, LED lighted

stevethefish

My name's actually not Steve
Joined
Jun 12, 2015
Messages
295
Somebody on here mentioned a Gundam kit they were working on. I can't remember which it was. I'm building and lighting the Booster Unit S-Gundam. This is one of their older kits from the '90s. I'm not done yet, but here is the progress. All of the lighting is from HDA Modelworx.

e029045715d70f5783d9fc60eafd00e2.jpg
Here's the rear view, showing the engines lit up. It has two 2mm LEDs in the butt module. Each booster unites have two 3mm LEDs, each with four 1mm fiber optics feeding to the engine nozzles for a total of 8 3mm LEDs. I had to drill holes through the pegs these attach to feed wires through.

c0c4b8a2b7609a1e2252a0ae61cd5922.jpg
The eyes are lighted with a 1.5mm butterfly LED, dipped in Tamiya clear yellow. I have a warm white SMD in the crest. I dunno if that is supposed to be a camera there or not, but I just thought it would look cool with a light there. The wires for both are fed into the neck peg that I drilled a hole through.

Since this is an older kit, it does not come with clear parts for the eyes. I replicated the face part with using Oyumaru (aka Blue Stuff outside of Japan, IIRC) and UV resin from the craft section of Daiso 100 yen shop. For the crest, I created a mold, drilled a hole and filed the hole to a square-ish shape, and filled it in with UV resin.

The big 01 was a sticker. I used clear acetate from a bento lid or something to trace out the sticker and create a mask. I had painted the area white, put down the 01 masking, then painted it blue. I used Mr. Color's Gundam standard blue, white, and yellow paints for the RX-78 colors and added decals. Some are leftover from my Hasegawa Russian Flanker, while others are generic SF aftermarket decals.

f77530d56035526f5644734702e2f170.jpg
Here's a view from the top. There is a larger-size SMD in the backpack nacelle in the middle. I had glued it into position, painted it with Tamiya Clear green, and filled that square area with UV resin. I then sanded the surface to make it more opaque and diffuse the light a bit. I also added a 33k ohm resister to dim it.

67e2a352849b35b8914c39f93d2e036f.jpg
Here's a look at it in the dark.

e3f4ae34eee2e624bf267392c85009ee.jpg
Another look at the back, in the dark. The lenses for this camera have some dust trapped inside and makes it look awful.
 
Wow! Looks like some pretty intense wiring went into this.
Thanks. Yes, wiring was difficult. I am so glad that I was able to fit them inside to close them up. The process will be shown in the next video on this build I'll upload sometime soon (hopefully). I had ruined a couple of 0402 SMDs when the wires broke off from the lights, but I kept the wires since they are so extremely thin. Better than magnet wire, which can be brittle. I used that wire for the 1.5mm butterfly light I put in the eyes. and led it down into the neck.
 
Dang that's a nice looking model, fantastic lighting, well done!
 

Latest posts

Back
Top