Sankei Miniatuart kit: Diorama MP03-38 Shrine

[Quinn]

20 hours ago, cteno4 said:

At least the usual Rabbet joint construction of sankei buildings are a bit better than the flat joints of many tomytec (that usually also have small warps in the walls that don’t make them sit perfectly flat all the time at corners).

 

bits of small styrene L stock or folded cardstock can be used to seal corners easily. Turning down leds a lot and using 2or 3 in a building in different areas also helps as well to keep light leaks down as many happen when they are up at full 20ma (ie mini sun level). Also using an smd led and pointing it down with a small shade around it so you get a lot of reflected light bouncing around cuts off down on the large direct light leaks. Also a couple of wall baffles to make different parts of the structure have different lighting, or none.

 

 

jeff

 

I tend to use a few (SMD) Leds in each building, perhaps laziness as it's easier to use different colours without working out other ways to change the colour. My latest build, shop MP03-07 has 5. I usually run them between about 500uA and 2mA. Being shown the calculations, I tabulated resistors for various brightnesses. The lamps have to be split into 2 circuits anyway, daylight with just the shop/factory windows lit and night with other rooms lit along with street lamps. 

 

For sealing I've started to use a mix of acrylic paint with a little pigment powder for paints to thicken it. I hope it won't crack when aged. I tried a Tomytec kit a while ago. It was difficult to get the walls sealed at all because of warps but I won't give up! 

 

Thank you for your advice. 

 

By the way, I've ordered the Shrine set. 

[cteno4]

Quinn,

 

im a big fan of using little variable resistors (trim pots) to set brightness. Let’s you set the level in place easily. 

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/20pcs-RM065-RM-065-Trimpot-Trimmer-Potentiometer-Variable-Resistor-CA/272854797920?hash=item3f8769ce60:m:mBdKN8_fI2ADXa7bVT-yfeA

 

https://www.ebay.com/itm/100PCS-SMD-2K-ohm-3X3-Potentiometer-Trimmer-Resistor-EVM3ESX50B23/291608228569?epid=1948575599&hash=item43e53472d9:g:G6kAAOSw~bFWOjwp

 

to be safe you can wire in a limiting resistor appropriate to your source voltage so that all the way off won’t fry Your led.

 

cheers

 

jeff