Oh!pEnions: That Ultraman Gun

That Ultraman Gun

I am going to put this entry here in my blog instead of in my Website. This was because, in my opinion, this mod failed and is very embarrassing. Sometimes, maybe its experience that gives you the confidence or maybe, its the ego which spurs you on into the unknown, hoping experience will help cover it up if it hits the oh-$h!t mode..

Anyway, it failed because I overlooked two things which to me, was very basic steps to take before doing anything else. The first one is to gauge how well the 'new' LED would light up before going further and the second one is to fully familiarise the whole mechanism, even though mechanics are not my forte. This is because you need to reverse the steps so that you can put the toy back together again.

This is the toy gun in question which I bought it for
a very cheap price from the Litt Tak warehouse
sale years ago.

My 'itchy' hands wanted to change the red LED in
the toy to better more reflect the colours in the
gun's barrel, which has white, yellow & red tubes.
It irks me because when it comes to the White or
Yellow barrel, the red LED in there would destroy
the whole illusion.

See what I mean? This is the White barrel. But
if I were to see the actual show where it comes
from, I could be wrong about all this...

This must be a very complicated toy because it took
me quite some time to remove a lot of screws just
for the sliding cover.

Ah, this is part of the mechanism where when
you slide the cover, the barrels change.

More screws...
I do not like this part because its supposed to
integrate with another toy (which you must buy).
Any slight press to this area will result in a sound
being played. This is very annoying when your
hand-eye coordination goes out of the window
when sliding the toy.

Ok. Now we are at the tri-barrel part.

Notice how the barrel is connected to a long rod?

This is part of the rod. As when the barrel turns, the
gears inside it will affect the two micro switches
which tells the gun what barrel has been chosen,
and what mode/sound it must play.

You know, just by itself it looks more like some
Sci-Fi object. One day, when this gun is *ahem*
not being useful anymore, I am eyeing the tri-
barrel which I want to light it up as some kind
of generator or power cell.

See the three holes? See the middle dimple which
has a screw in it?

See this red LED?

Yep. it came from this area. The 'O' is where
the LED sits and the 'X' is where the tri-barrel's
dimple uses for rotation.

This is another view of the LED. So, my plan is to
convert this red LED to a White one. Alas, it is not
that simple because the 3mm red LED has a very
bright light radiation compared to the white one,
which I discovered later.

This is the front part of the gun which can be
folded towards the grip but it has no lights. It
also makes you swear when you want to fold
it because there is a sliding mechanism you
must engage before you can fold it or else the
gun will snap into two.

See the white dot on the left? That was the 5mm White
LED I replaced. Its too big and the tri-barrel keeps
on scratching it or getting stuck while revolving.
Because of this, I slide too hard and the plastic part is
now almost broken. Still, I am halfway there, might as
well continue.... (Bad mistake)

And the worst part is that the light from the
White LED is still not that bright when it is
at the middle of the barrel. You can see how
bad it is on the yellow mode.

On the white mode, it is not so bad but under
normal light it is very weak.

I then tried with SMD version as this is very bright
and was used for my Iron Man Arc Reactor. But
alas, its too square and also, jams the tri-barrel.

This is how I plan to use the SMD LED but as I
said earlier, its useless for this purpose.

Something about the mechanics in the barrel which
kept it from being able to spin properly. I then
used some spacers made out of stripboard and it
sort of worked...

...but I have to alter the LED's wiring to go around
the part instead of a straight through like the original
red LED

I really wanted to use this SMD LED as this was the
smallest package I could find, where there are
THREE white LEDs in there. You can see the
difference in the brightness now.