The Energon Pub

Wed Oct 12, 2011 7:10 am

So, like many I grew increasingly tired of the inaccuracy of Unicron's Red eyes. Last night I broke out the screwdriver and soldering iron and took care of the problem. My problem though is that the "super brite" 3mm green LED I purchased was in fact not too bright at all. While now he does have green eyes they could stand to be brighter. I was thinking of different methods of achieving this such as blacking out the inside of his head, using reflective material, or using black tape to stop the light from leaking behind the circuit board and pushing the excess through the eyes. I could simply try and find a better LED too. I'll see how it goes and how much I feel like tinkering with it in the next week or so.

If you decide to change your Unicon's LED here are some things to remember:

There is a tiny spring located in the outside button that makes the eyes light up. When taking the head apart be careful you don't lose it. It is located between the brown colored outside button and the little red cyndrilical one.

When soldering the new LED into the circuit board, don't let the solder from the positive and negative ports melt together. This will cause the LED not to work. If this happens, melt the solder again and drag the tip through the middle until you create a pathway. The LED should now work.

The longer post on the LED is usually the positive side.

I'll try to post some video or something tonite of the eye change.

News Credits: 7 · Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:45 am

Also, bear in mind that the wires used for the LED in his head are hair-thin and very prone to crushing / being cut when assembling his head again.
Blacking out the inside of Unicron's face is a good idea in theory, but I found that actually doing it is pretty hard, and you do't want to accidentally color over his eyes!

I used a high-powered (1300 MCD) 3mm green LED which really is super-bright: in the dark the green lights from his eyes do actually create two circles of light on a surface...
For his hand I actually used an even brighter 1600 MCD 5mm green LED: I figured, if you're going to do it, do it right (go figure: a typical indicator LED on an electrical appliance is usually around 50 - 75 MCD).

Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:51 am

I'll look online and see if I can't find one. Hell, maybe even a 2000 mcd rated LED.

Nice touch about the wires being thin. I forgot to mention it. These wires aren't as bad as HFTD Leader Prime's wires though. Those ones are crazy small.

News Credits: 7 · Wed Oct 12, 2011 8:58 am

Just checked... A quick search shows that you can get green 3mm LED's with 10.000 - 11.000 MCD! That'll be a sight to behold (actually, looking directly into that kind of strength LED will damage your own eyes)!

Wed Oct 12, 2011 10:03 am

Sounds like a true Unicron rated LED.

Sun Oct 16, 2011 10:37 pm

Freshly modified with a newer and much brighter green LED.

News Credits: 7 · Mon Oct 17, 2011 4:33 am

Looks completely amazing!
I'd highly recommend changing the LED to anyone.

Thu Jan 12, 2012 9:54 pm

I had my friend Paul King at Defiant Model Creations replace the LED with a green one, but it was still lackluster. He convinced me to let him put in two LED's, one for each eye, and now he looks much more sinister. Light bleed was a concern I had, and he took care of that as well. He also converted the button on his head into a slider switch for "always on" operation of the eyes. None of that blinking crap.