Fiberglas?

[heNk]

Hey all,

 

Should it be possible, lighting buildings, streets and cars, also all the scenery, to realize with fiberglas cable?

I am not very technical, but just before christmas, I bought a battery operated christmas-star at IKEA's, that made me thinking of it.

 

Henk

[JGSDF]

Hello Henk

Surely you can use it for many things, but for buildings i think it is to dark.

Bye JGSDF ( Michael )

[cteno4]

Henk,

 

fiberoptics can be a neat way to do very detailed lighting. Like michael said it does not provide a huge amount of light, but it can deliver it in little bits very well. 

 

this is usually the problem using leds in buildings is that you get way way too bright a light source in one area. tends to blow out the area (and seep through plastic and cardboard walls w/o lots of paint or foil) of your structure with too much light. not realistic. 

 

it would be a pain to really light your structures though with the dozens of smaller points of light most scenes actually rely on. also you cant make sharp bends in the strands w/o loosing a lot of the transmitted light, so it can be hard to get the end of the strand to the proper location (and usually pointing down from the ceiling). They also tend to shine almost all the light straight out the end like a spot light, not a multidirectional like a light bulb, so its only really good for the things that require those pinpoints of light.

 

the cool thing is they will deliver about a standard scale lightbulb's worth of light to a tiny area. many years ago on my first layout at a kid I made a bunch of those big metal shaded external lamps you see that point straight down for my engine house out of plastic fiber optics and 3mm sequins. the little cupped sequins were pretty close to the shade size and shape (just modified with some dabs of paint to round them out some more) and the fiber strand came out of the wall of the building horizontally then i bent it 90 degrees to point straight down and slipped the shade over the end. worked wonderfully making a bunch of interlocking pools of light around the engine house just like the prototype.

 

i could see lighting the interiors of smaller buildings with these carefully to try and get very subtle lighting and reduce leakage. would require some reflective surfaces placed properly inside the rooms to spread the light right, but i think you could get some very detailed lighting effects if you were willing to work at it. again the hardest thing is that you cant do really sharp bends in it w/o loosing most of the light so thats the big challenge. also isolating your light source at the other end so it doesnt pollute your scene as well. usually this is just an led with some heat shrink around it to hold your fibers up against the lit end of the led.

 

Lighting does not scale well for a few reasons. one the intensity drops with the inverse square of the distance so you get mucked with that when scaling. also we tend to look at our models at very different distances than we normally experience things like lighting details. what would be right at scale for lighting would loop pretty dim and drab at the usual distances we look at our models (like 100m away). so there is an issue with the minds eye and usually why folks end up putting in way way more light into the models than really is what would be there at scale.

 

one last thing dont try to use the glass fiberoptic cable. its nasty stuff to cut and can make tiny little slivers when you cut it that if you get into your skin are nasty little buggers. think nasty transparent nasty splinter you cant see meets fiberglass itch, meets a rash. they are not fun. there is a lot of plastic fiber optic cable out there thats cheap and works well. the glass stuff is a bit better light transmitter, but its meant for transmitting hundreds of meters, usually youre just going a few inches so the plastic is fine.

 

there are a number of shops on ebay and the web that sell various thicknesses of plastic fiber optic cable, from tiny to huge. not horribly expensive.

 

most of the products out there that use fiber optics for lighting are plastic you can buy. one little simple one to play with are those little xmas trees lights for your desk. they have one led with batteries and a bunch of fibers that make up the tree. they were cheaper near xmas now $2.50 with free shipping on ebay.

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/7-Color-Christmas-Xmas-Tree-Fiber-Optic-LED-Night-Light-/180743952289?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item2a152dd7a1

 

lots of products like this and the thing you found at ikea to play with. another is a light string of leds and each have a little 2" tassel of fibers off of it. 

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/6W-10m-100LED-Optical-fiber-Fairy-String-Lights-for-Xmas-Christmas-Wedding-Party-/230896907786?pt=US_String_Lights_Fairy_Lights&var=&hash=item35c287360a

 

also if you want to start playing with leds with no wiring and such these little battery powered light strings can be something to fiddle with cheap ($2-3)

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Mini-10-LED-Wedding-Party-Christmas-String-White-Lights-/130833801862?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item1e764d6286

 

http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-AA-Battery-White-3M-30-LED-String-Fairy-Party-Festival-Decor-Light-Lamp-EA-/350684859354?pt=US_Light_Bulbs&hash=item51a6724bda

 

cheers

 

jeff