Easy To Make Working Flood Lights
Easy To Make Floodlights
In the previous article we looked at adding miniature lighting to a building interior. For this article we’ll take a look at making a simple floodlight for your layout. So as we covered in the last article we’ll be using a miniature LED light from the MLS001 Pre-Wired Surface Mount LED’s (3.5mm x 2.8mm) – Warm White pack. This set of lights can be found here:
https://www.scalemodelscenery.co.uk/shop/pre-wired-surface-mount-leds-3-5mm-x-2-8mm/?v=79cba1185463
These come as pack of five pre-wired with the resistor. If you’re wanting a more modern bright white light these can be found here:
What else do i need?
Apart from the LED lights mentioned above, you’ll need:
- A small tube with an internal bore big enough to take the wires. I’ve used a light alloy type tube that was kicking about in model bits & bobs box.
- Tube of super glue or similar
- Chocbloc connector
- wire strippers / cutters
- Screwdriver
- Drill & suitable size drill bit to match the size of tube used
- Soldering iron – Plus solder, soldering flux
- 12 Volt transformer – for power supply to the lights
Lets get started…
First decide what height you want your flood light & cut to length. Allow a bit extra length on the tube for inserting into the baseboard. Next drill a hole in the base board to take the tube.
Having drill the floodlight post hole & cut the tube for the floodlight to size we now turn our attention to the red wire on the LED light. In order to get the wires to fit down the tube we need to remove the resistor. So cut the red wire above the resistor between the LED & resistor. Cut a short section of similar sized red wire, this is to extend the red wire from where it’s been cut to clear the end of the tube.
Solder the red wire from the LED onto the extra red wire. Cover the soldered joint with some heat shrink to prevent an electrical shorts. Then feed both the red wire & black wire through the tube. Carefully bend the wires behind the LED to the angle you want the floodlight (I’ve bent mine to between 90 – 45 degree angle) then glue to fix the LED in position.
With both red & black wires now fed trough the tube we now strip a small section of the wire sleeve to expose the wire. Then re-solder the resistor back onto the red wire. Make sure that you cover up the exposed soldered wire joints with heat shrink tube. As seen on the right.
Now feed both the red & black wires through the hole that was drilled in the baseboard earlier. Now add some super glue or similar around the bottom of the tube. Then push the tube into the hole taking care not to trap any wires. You may need to hold the tube of the flood light whilst the glue sets.
With the two wires now fed through to the underside of the baseboard, strip a small section of wire sleeve off the wire ends. Insert into a choc block & tighten the wire holding screws as shown on the right.
From a 12 Volt power supply (I’m using a plug in 12V transformer for my layout lighting power supply) run a red wire & black wire (I’m using 16/2.0 wire) from the transformer to the chocbloc the lights are connected to. Connect red wire (+ Pos) to red wire (+Pos) & black wire (-Neg) to black wire (-Neg). Check all wires are secure & then switch on the power.
From a 12 Volt power supply (I’m using a plug in 12V transformer for my layout lighting power supply) run a red wire & black wire (I’m using 16/2.0 wire) from the transformer to the chocbloc the lights are connected to. Connect red wire (+ Pos) to red wire (+Pos) & black wire (-Neg) to black wire (-Neg). Check all wires are secure & then switch on the power.
If you want to add more flood lights simply repeat the above. Just run the wires to the chocbloc that the first floodlight is connected to. And that’s it one simple floodlight installed on your layout.
Happy modelling.
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