Electric Light & Sound

[escortmad79]

Has anyone ever produced modified plates with contacts?

There's the 1x2, 2x4 & 2x8 that TLG produced but want a 6 wide one (either 1x6 or 2x6 & preferably in red)

[Ralph_S]

Has anyone ever produced modified plates with contacts?

There's the 1x2, 2x4 & 2x8 that TLG produced but want a 6 wide one (either 1x6 or 2x6 & preferably in red)

I'm not aware of anybody making their own. Have you considered alternatives? If you can't incorporate a 2x8 for some reason, perhaps you can use two 2x4s overlapping? I have a hard time imagining circumstances where there isn't a fairly easy way around this.

Cheers,

Ralph

[escortmad79]

I was looking at building a 6 wide fire engine incorporating the electric light & sound system but overlapping them would add too much height & look awkward.

May have to look into miniature LEDs/strobes instead

[Ralph_S]

I was looking at building a 6 wide fire engine incorporating the electric light & sound system but overlapping them would add too much height & look awkward.

May have to look into miniature LEDs/strobes instead

So you were planning to mount it across the top of the cab with the lights at the ends, am I right? In that case overlapping plates indeed would be clumsy. However, I see a completely different issue. I too have considered using light and sound to add lights to my minifig scale fire engines, but didn't because I couldn't work out how to make the arrangement that I wanted low enough anyway, irrespective of whether or not 2x6 plates with contacts were available.

If you're happy with globes on top of the truck, simply having the brick sitting on top of the roof would be too tall. The only way to lower it would be to sink the light bricks into the roof somehow. I could think of two ways of doing that. You could use a 1x4 brick with two lights on top mounted inside the roof with only the top of the brick and the two lights sticking out above it. Obviously that would mean that the lights are sitting pretty close together. The second way would solve that issue. By building the top of the cab in white, you could sink 1x2 bricks and the plates with contacts below them into the cab's side walls with only the lights sticking out on top. In that case it wouldn't matter whether you have a 2x6 plate or not, because you couldn't have the arrangement sitting above a window anyway and could stack as many 1x2 and 2x4 plates underneath it as you'd like.

However, most modern-day fire engines have light bars rather than individual globes and have them sitting close to the front of the cab above the driver. The only way to get the lights into a light bar that I could think of was sticking 1x2 transparent bricks on top of them, and that would make the bar too tall to go on top of a minifig scale vehicle no matter where I'd put it. In fact, I think it would be too tall for a vehicle twice that scale. If only they made hollow bricks two plates thick

Cheers,

Ralph

Edited January 13, 2010 by Ralph_S

[Big Cam]

I think you are much better off using LED's instead of trying to incorporating one of those.

[escortmad79]

I reckon so too, the other way would probably be too tall.

Now, where to find LEDs or strobes small enough to be hidden under a 1x1 slope or 1x2 transparent blue tile?

[Ralph_S]

I think you are much better off using LED's instead of trying to incorporating one of those.

For me it meant doing without lights.

I reckon so too, the other way would probably be too tall.

Now, where to find LEDs or strobes small enough to be hidden under a 1x1 slope or 1x2 transparent blue tile?

I haven't used them myself and it doesn't look cheap, but there's a small company called lifelites that makes custom kits with LED lighting for use with LEGO.

Cheers,

Ralph

[escortmad79]

Seen them before. Will see if I can find anything in the UK first but may well be buying a set or two.

[Ricecracker]

Seen them before. Will see if I can find anything in the UK first but may well be buying a set or two.

I've used LifeLites before. The one thing, even with the Jr., is that they are relatively hard to incorporate in to MOCs. I've used them in my Ice/Swift Water Rescue Truck as well as my Toronto ETF Armet Armoured Vehicles Trooper, and in both trucks, the wiring takes up all the space in the back of the truck.

I've met Rob in person, and he's a great guy. I can't guarantee anything, but if you ask him, he might be able to help you with something special.