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lighting

This version was saved 5 years, 10 months ago View current version Page history

Saved by John Wesley Brett
on June 16, 2018 at 10:01:20 pm

Miniature lighting and wiring for projects for dollhouses, room boxes, and dioramas

Links to miniature projects

photo albums, blog posts, web pages

Lamps - from Littleroomers blog

Lamps - by Merja

Lamps - various styles by Potinperä

Blogs

Blogs concentrating on lighting or categories/labels about it in blogs

LED Lighting for Dollhouses - by Judy R

Matxalen/Lamparas

Groups

Discussion groups, forums (or forum categories) and photo groups dedicated to lighting.

Supplies for sale

Supplies needed for making lighting projects.

All Electronics

Battery Powered LED Lights - Victoria Miniland

Creative Reproductions - Jimmy Landers

Digi-Key

Dolls House Mall - Light switches, wall sockets

Eldorado Dolls House - sell electrics and other things the UK

Evan Designs Model Train Software - Hobby LEDs for model trains, RC, diecast.

Jameco

JAR-JAF Miniatures

Lighting Bug Ltd

Little Dollhouse Company

Luminations by Mr. K - Tim Kraft, will do commissions

Manhattan Dollhouse

Matlock -for electrics and lights and transformers

Model Train Software - lights for minis, THE definitive expert on LEDs and adapting them to your dollhouse, room box. The site is very informative.

Ray Storey Lighting - Tudor to Edwardian

Test Probe - for checking connections, from Miniatures.com

Whitstable Scene - sell electrics by Cosy Corners the UK

LEDs

Creative Reproductions 2 Scale - Jimmy Landers uses LED strips to supplement room lighting with fantastic results.

Novalyte - strip lighting, as used here

Real Good Toys - supplies to install supplemental LED lighting and a useful guide for installing LED Extrabrite Quickstrips that is a downloadable PDF.

Solar

Miniatures for sale

Do you have a section for lighting in your shop? Add a direct link to that item here.

Books

Books about miniature lighting projects (also books with chapters about it)

Instructions for miniatures

Miniature printables

Wallpapers

Wallpapers that go well with lighting projects

Other Printies

Book/magazine covers related to lighting

Videos

YouTube videos about miniature projects related to this subject

Tapewire TUT:

There are several how-tos on Youtube about using heat shrink tubing. Once you skim past the initial advertising, this is most informative. For one thing, it answers questions about heat sources and joining wires side-by-side.

Lighting Research/ Inspiration

Old House Lights Antique Lighting Catalogues

Miniature Lighting Tips/Hints

Use drinking straws for running all the electric wires through under the house. Keeps them neat and they don't sag. Glue the straw to the underside of the house
When joining wires, make sure they only touch where they are to be joined. When you have to join two wires, make one shorter than the other so that the joins won't be next to each other, then you know they'll never be able to touch and short out.test each joint before proceeding.
Why are wire gauges numbered backward, larger wires with smaller numbers, and vice versa? A wire's gauge is linked to how many times the wire is pulled through progressively smaller dies, or traditionally holes in draw plates. So that means the 28-gauge wire is pulled through steel plates 28 times to get that small."
The pull tops from dish liquid bottles make good ceiling fixtures. First, separate the up and down "pull" portion from the bottle top. Once that part is removed, it leaves a "stem" that will become the portion of the fixture that attaches to the ceiling. Use LED lighting strips and insert the hardwired strip into the cap, threading the wire through the stem opening in the top where the dish liquid would come out. Just glue the cap to the ceiling and hide your wires as usual and Voila!
You can use an LED for the light transmitter for a fiber optic bundle. There are lots of online tutorials for wiring LEDs and proceed.Cut a piece of solid color heat shrink tubing that will fit over the round type of LED and the end of the fiber optic bundle and shrink it to make the connection. Heat shrink helps keep the light source from being visible as well as holding the fibers against the LED. Plus it is inexpensive and easy to do.Fiber optic strands can't take sharp bends. The minimum radius of a bend they can make depends on the diameter of the fibers. There will be charts online for this if you search for it.Search on Youtube and look at some of the videos on using fiber optic lighting for scale models
Look for LED light holders wherever you buy car parts.They work on 12 volts so are perfectly suited for mini lights. They are also very small and do not heat up, so no fancy insulation tricks are needed. The bulbs last for thousands of hours can be hooked up to an on-off switch. A smallholder that binds all the fiber ends together is placed a few millimeters above the light, and the other end will shine very brightly when the light is turned on.
LEDs are the way to go with fiber optics, and if you wire your own you have all the colors to choose from! Fitting five, 5mm LEDs (red, green, blue, yellow and white) under a 1:12 scale tree isn't difficult. If you have a party or wedding supply store near you, or a "dollar store" you can often find cheap bundles of fiber optics and LEDs sold as play wands, hair clips, etc. and "hack" them for the parts. This is a pretty good way to get low-cost strands, as some of the fiber-optic suppliers charge a fair amount for their strands or cables. For example, an LED wand flashlight for less than $2.00 from a party supply place disassembled, yields a bundle of fiber optic strands, LED, switch, and battery clip. Some of the novelty items in party supply stores even contain modules for flashing lights. Search for LED fiber optic novelty items on the web too, but drawbacks are delivery time, and bulk orders are often required.
The fiber optic strands work best when the ends are cut as straight and cleanly as possible (though they will work with really clean angle cuts, obviously the more light you get into one end of the strand, the more comes out the other end).

LED Battery Life

A quick and dirty estimate of the battery life - divide the battery's mAh (milliamp hours - usually printed on the battery exterior) by 20 (most white LEDs use 20 ma). So if your battery is rated at 980 mAh, then you'll get about 49 hours of use. This is just an estimate!
Run the tape wires along the floor and just run a tape to where you want a light. This works excellent for chandeliers in the room below as well. Drill a tiny hole through the floor/ceiling and pull the wire up through the hole. You don't have to deal with that pesky bit of extra wire or fuss with the chandelier button attachments. Plus, if you don't completely glue down the flooring, you have easy access to the wire if you need to repair.
Another little trick is to run a bit of clear tape over the tape wire....especially the ends, intersections, and especially where a light fixture has been joined. It saves re-connecting if you accidentally pull on the fixture wire while decorating.

Ideas about what is needed for these projects