Teh Evil (Mono)Eye! MG 2.0 LED tutorial
Been working on this Zaku off and on, started it at Gamera's June '08 Build Gathering, with a little more work at following gatherings, and some sporatic work at home. So far I've replaced the stock plastic "power cables" with brass beads and springs, replaced the plastic backpack thrusters with aluminium thrusters, and replaced the spikes with pointy-Adler's-nest-awesome-spikes. I'll show details on those later, This post is about the Mono-eye.
At first I was going to leave the mono-eye stock, cuz all the LED mono-eyes I've seen so far were cool... but still felt wrong to me, mostly because they lost range of motion, or such. Since I haven't been able to set up my spray booth at my new home, and missed the last build gathering due to family, I haven't been able to paint my Zaku, which has been sitting on my desk, staring at me waiting for paint... So, with little else to do, creativity finally hit me, and I figured out the proper way to mount an LED Mono-Eye in a MG Zaku 2.0.
Stock innards, Mono-Eye rotates when head is turned. New parts to shove in thar!
Testing Eye varations with stickytack, brass and aluminium tubes. Had some fun with this, but stuck with a traditional Mono-eye, with some teenie greebies later.
3mm LED superglued inside a bit of 5/32 inch Aluminium Tube, and filed down to size. Be careful to mind the filament here, I lost a LED to overzealous filing. Use superglue to fill in the gaps if necessary.
Drill straight through (vertically) the piece that mounts the monoeye. 1/16 inch drill bit and 1/16 inch brass tube replacement, near perfect fit.
Cut off the mounting nub and drill a 1/16 hole in the same spot.
This piece comes with a pilot hole! Win! ^_^ 3/32 drill bit to finish for a 3/32 brass tube.
Still rotates! And, conductive!
Forgot to get more detailed pics of the next part which is basically cutting off the mounting nub and filing a grove on the front of the part the clear mono-eye originally mounted to, and drilling 1 hole for one of the LED leads to touch the brass tube, and wrapping the other lead around the outside of the part so it stays in constant contact with the other brass tube.
Then its a simple matter of shoving a wire up each tube and running those wires to a battery a switch that I haven't done yet. I know how, just haven't done it yet.
