Mount LEDs to a Kato Light Pipe with SoundTraxx Heat Shrink
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- เผยแพร่เมื่อ 6 ก.ย. 2024
- On this week's work bench tip, George has some advise for wiring LEDs in your locomotive. He uses our Shrink Tube Assortment for this quick install tip. Watch now to learn more!'
SoundTraxx Shrink Tube Assortment: soundtraxx.com...
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Love this George. Thanks for sharing your technique👍😃 David
Thanks for the feedback!
Hi George, Is the light pipe you mention similar to a fibre optic. I was hoping to experiment installing fibre optics. Watching this video actually made things easier for me to understand how I should get about it. Thank You.
Faizal, yes, this is their attempt to make a ‘poor-man’s’ fiber optic. The clear plastic doesn’t transmit quite as well as a Fiber, but it works to display some light up front. I usually replace them with smaller LEDs located directly behind the lens (Which if you look closely, the lenses have been cut off the ‘pipe’. Grin!) But you can do this with Biber optics as well. I did a similar install for class lights using Fiber Optics and a single LED. You can slightly drill into the LED and glue the Fiber into the hole with CA then run the fiber where you want. I hope this helps.
nice tip, I've been doing this for years, helps eliminate light "bleed". tell your viewers "don't hold the soldering iron too close/to long on the light tube, it will melt and distort it"
Thanks for the feedback!
George; I share your way of view , installing lights in HO locomotives. I have an HO Scale Trains SP SD40T-2, the 8307, And I would like to install ground lights, that this particular model does not have. Any advise, how to do it.? (it has from factory a LOKSound 5 Decoder) Thank you in Advance.
We cannot offer advice on how to wire LEDs to a decoder that we do not make as we are not familiar with all of their designs, but if you want advice on mounting the LEDs to the model George may have some advice. You can email him at support@soundtraxx.com
An interesting solution. I didn't know about Kato light pipes. I wonder if painting the rest of the length of the tube with silver paint would enhance the light coming out the other end even more.
That is an intersting idea.
George - When are you going to have 1K resistors already built in to your soundboards so we don’t need to spend the time adding resistors to 3V LED’s? Also, adding resistors takes up precious room inside the shell. No one is using 12V LED’s anymore like they did 10-15 years ago. All the miniature LED’s are now 1.5V - 3V. Thanks.
I've always found having full output allows for the most flexibility. I've got some LED's that require 470 ohm resistors and some that go all the way up to 5.6k ohm resistors.
Mike, when you upgrade consider an 21PNEM8 decoder and a Decoder Buddy. The Decoder Buddy has all the resistors onboard and is available from NixTrainz with 1K or custom with resistor values of your choice on each of the 8 outputs. It makes a very slick upgrade package.
The problem with built-in resistors is that they take away some of the freedom for modelers. Everyone is going to have a different opinion about how bright they want the lights and if we add built-in resistors not everyone will be happy with the value we choose.
Nice tip, George. What brand soldering iron do you use? It seems tiny and easy to use with these small spaces we deal with.
look into the weller wtp90. different from what george uses but its amazing
ChipQuik from digikey works great.