I’m attending several family events this weekend so this entry is a bit rushed, and it also explains why I had no entry yesterday. As you know, I received my MG Gouf Custom a few days earlier and I have been planning something special with it (and bringing it to school with me).
Here is a picture of the MG Gouf Custom. I scratch built it first so the quality is pretty crap. I will be painting it most likely on Monday.
Ever since I started building MGs I’ve never used their clear stickers. For some reason all the zeonic suits’ are made by sticking a piece of red/pink sticker over a piece of clear plastic, which looks pretty bad. My MG Zaku II I painted the lens, and it looks slightly better. For this one though, as it’s an old kit and the quality isn’t up to par with the newer ones, I’ve decided to try something new, and that is to replace the eye with a USB powered LED bulb (Idea came from Gundamaniac’s tutorial, although I did made some changes, wiring the bulb was still thanks to him)
My friend took the pictures of my first trial with this stuff. I’m waiting for the pictures, they’ll go up later. But…lets just say that it didn’t go very well. I used 2V LEDs, and the USB provides 5V. The guy at the electronic surplus store told me to use 330 ohms resistors. That resulted in the bulb not lighting up. I tested the circuit and the bulb burnt out in less than a second. I then hooked up a much weaker resistor and the bulb burnt out as well. After going back to the store and having an hour long argument about this stuff, the guy told me they had 5v bulbs…<insert swear word here>
This is all I had to work with, I gave up working yesterday and had another go today. Since the bulbs are now 5v, they didn’t burn out when I connected it.
All this is all rushed. I will solder the wires together when I have time. Now that the light is connected, the head had to be modded so the light will fit.
Brain surgery can't be THAT hard...
The heads of the earlier Zeonic suits are much simpler compared to the 2.0 remakes. All that’s restricting the LED bulb is that area where the old eye was. So…
As you can see, I ended up cutting the peg supporting the eye to make way for the bulb. The wires can go through the gap at the poly cap where the head joins with the torso. I don’t really feel like modding the torso/backpack, so the wires will be sticking out of the pack of the Gouf’s neck.
Let there be Light!
Yay!
Took me around 10 mins to write this >.> Gotta run. Hope you enjoyed it. Any grammer errors will be fixed when I have time.
Filed under: gunpla Tagged: | gouf, gunpla, master grade
So you ended up buying new LED’s instead of another set of resistors? Well, at least it’s working now. Looks great!
Mod the pack. You’ve come this far already.
Nice!!!!!!
That is actually pretty cool!!!!!
The Zaku head lights up…that is so neat!!!!!!
hey thanks for the plug. great looking gouf. ^^
Man, that’s sick. Very nice mod ^^
the mono eye of a zeon mobile suit strike fear in the hearts of many. nice mod by the way
To everyone: Thanks ^^
Now it looks even more badass than it used to be! Nice one!
I’m still in the process of painting it, hang on for the final product ^^
it looks amaazingggg!!!!!
btw I added you to my blogroll too. Thanks for linking ^^
[...] got money then by all means go for it. But as far as weird USB devices go, I prefer to stick to my USB Gouf Custom (Which is still incomplete, I still need to apply pastels for [...]
Awesome!
Hey, I’m planning on doing this with my mg exia..I might need to use 2 LEDs :O
So do the LEDs stay on as long as your computer is on, or do they eventually burn out if you leave them on for too long?
@Chris: The longest I’ve had it lit up was 12 hours I think. Don’t worry about the bulb burning out, they last quite a while.
A piece of advice for you. Do your best to hide the wires, especially since you’ve got two running out of your model.