Drop Pod with LED

So there it is, the drop pod I built for my Grim Angels Space Marine Army. After a close look at the parts of the kit I decided that it should be easy to get some lighting into it. Said and done. I tried to take photos of every significant step.

I decided to put the led below the middle spherelike part to make it shine. That required for a cast in clear resin and a silicone mould. I use he brand Alpa-Sil mainly because it is avaiable form a webstore form a company located in germany and the price is ok.

This kind of silicone is mixed at rate of 50/50 and I use a trustet tootbrush to stear it up.

For my form I use Lego bricks because so you are fexible concerning the size.

It cures in about 15 minutes after it has been mixed.

When opening up my clear resin I had a unpleasent surprise. It has hardened out completely. Obviously polyester cannot be stored for more than a year after it is openend. At least it was cool looking.

Since it was a weekend and I am not a very patient person I decided to experiment with PVA glue which I pured into the first part of the form. After it had dried (one day) I filled the rest of the form with my standard resin. The result was surprisingly working rather well. The pva still is milky and therefore has a deiffuseing effect when the led is lit. I had of course to drill out the inner part of the piece since I only made a one-sided mould.

Then it was time to wire the kit. There is a lot of place in the bottom for my powersource which was looted from a € 1,- keychainlight. (good source)

I made sure that it the lights worked throughout the assebmy stages again and again since I didn't want to end up with a disfunctioning LED.

A switch was added on the undersider of the bottomplate. Therefore I had to make a cut and for a change did not hurt myself- the project was looking good.


Success...one might think. But after priming it it didn't work anymore- and no, I did not spray the led. I fear a soldering joint broke but can not be sure any way. I can not fix this now unless breaking up the whole model which will prove difficult since I use plastic cement for assembly. But as you can see it worked...proof enough.