Wimborne Model Town Projects Forum

I have done some prototyping to discover additional ways of improving the look of the windows in church, chapel and minster.
Prototyping progress went along these lines, chronologically:
Type A
Type B
Type C1
Type C2
Type C2 in situ.

All versions use LED strip for powered lighting, a piece of lithoplate for a reflector and an empty sweet tub to assist with mounting.

Type A is edge lighting with the lights abutting the window.
Type B is edge lighting with the lights abutting the reflector.
Type C1 is reflected lighting with the lights attached to the back of the window, focused at the reflector.
Type C2 is the same arrangement but on a smaller window without stained glass.

Types C1 and C2 are my preferred arrangement because the light source is completely out of sight and produces the flattest illumination.

In daylight, with daylight all around the prototypes, the difference between lights on and lights off is noticeable though not large.
In daylght, with prototype in situ, the difference between reflector in place and reflector absent, is greater than between lights on and off.

Photos to follow.
Ian.

Photos for Type A - Edge lighting, lights abutting window.

Photos for Type B - Edge lighting, lights abutting refelctor.
There is no photo of this type with the lights off. I thought they would look the same as Type A lights off, although in hindsight perhaps it would have been useful to see how visible the LED trips are when not switched on.

Photos for Type C1 - Reflected lighting, same window as tested with Types A and B, i.e. large and with stained glass effect.

Photos for Type C2 - Reflected lighting, similar arrangement to Type C1 but on a smaller window without stand glass effect.

Photos for Type C2 in situ on Wesleyan Chapel - Reflected lighting.
Also included here: test window with no lighting on and no reflector behind, only the empty model interior without existing mini floodlight.

Where I wrote "in situ" I might have better written "in a representative location", as that is clearly a doorway not a window reveal. That would make a descriptive file name quite a typing exercise though, so I'm sticking with "in situ"

Ian

I have tried an alternative reflector material because free or cheap lithoplate is not so easy to obtain due to the decline of lithoplate printing in small print shops. The used lithoplate they called scrap could still be used for many other purposes such as ours.

The obvious choice to me was aluminium foil. The drawback with foil is that it has very little inherent strength so, whereas the lithoplate could be folded into a shape that would stand up without further support, foil will need some kind of backing board.

I have never seen lithoplate polished so am unsure if it can be as bright as brand new aluminium foil. I know that aluminium oxidises to a matt white but do not know how quickly oxidisation will make the surface too dull to be an effective reflector.

Aluminium foil usually comes with one raw and one polished side. I tried only the polished side for maximum difference from the lithoplate.

This configuration is called Type C3.

Attached are two photographs in situ: one with the LED's off and one on.

Hello Ian

Did you reach conclusion on what would work best for us?

A couple of the existing Minster flood light are not working (they are all mains powered currently) and I'm thinking of changing them to 12V dc, in parallel installing a 12V dc power supply to power both the lighting and Quarterjack / sound system.

I need to specify a power supply and though I'd share this in case you had any thoughts.