I made a start with lighting today. It's all about improvisation, adaptation and overcoming.
1. Working out the lining for the faceplate. Still some metal edges to shape neat and straight before glueing it in.
2. Set up for a day on the kitchen bench in air-conditioned comfort.
3. Found the most awesome and excellent solid strip lighting that once removed from the housing, is the perfect size for the eyes of the Iron Man face-plate. MEGA bright!
4. LED strip-lighting to go on the inside rim of the Arc reactor. The new soldering station my lovely wife got me for Christmas is an instant hit! The old Bunnings soldering iron was more like a low-heat wood-burning tool, more frustrating than trying to pick a hair off a flea with a boxing glove.
5. I have a power pack of ten 1.5V AA batteries to power the short strip of 12v LEDs.
Although the strip lighting has resistors in between each set of 3 LEDs.
I ran it for a few seconds and found it getting warm. After a couple of minutes it was getting hot.
My stupid memory was jogged by a good man that the current was too much, here's how I fixed it.
AA recharegeable batteries are 1.2 volt each. Off-the shelf batteries are 1.5 Volt, so ten of them gives me too much at 15 volts. (Only need 12 volts.) I've soldered in an extra wire that effectively cuts out two batteries when I am using the higher voltage ones. When I use recharegeables I just use the black wire instead of the grey one to hook up the negative.
I've had it running for ten minutes now and while it is still warm to the touch, it's not hot anymore.
6. Now I've finally got the lighting sorted out in the arc reactor with a big improvement. The cabinet light in the bottom looked great, but even with the laboratory-grade reflective tape lining the inside, the outer opaque ring was not catching the light and illuminating enough. With the LED strip light installed just inside the top, problem solved and looks awesome.
Kitchen lights were on for this photo and is unedited.
