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Mike Kelt Console for fan vid

Started by lespaceplie, Nov 08, 2014, 07:26 am

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lespaceplie

Nov 08, 2014, 07:26 am Last Edit: Oct 04, 2017, 03:30 pm by lespaceplie
This quick paper test is merely 1:10, but the final model will be a mostly plastic affair. This started as a means of checking the revised plans, but it cried out to be more substantial - ha ha! Laser cutting is definitely my friend.

paper.jpg

Rassilons Rod

The image upload failed, please try again :)
In the cities in the streets there's a tension you can feel,
The breaking strain is fast approaching, guns and riots.
Politicians gamble and lie to save their skins,
And the press get fed the scapegoats,
Public Enema Number One.

lespaceplie

The uploader doesn't work too well from an iPhone, it seems.

Rassilons Rod

In the cities in the streets there's a tension you can feel,
The breaking strain is fast approaching, guns and riots.
Politicians gamble and lie to save their skins,
And the press get fed the scapegoats,
Public Enema Number One.

lespaceplie

Nov 11, 2014, 07:51 pm #4 Last Edit: Dec 15, 2014, 08:19 pm by lespaceplie
I waffled on the scale due to standard material sizes, and it turns out there's a weird scale that makes things very convenient when going from a metric original to a model in inches. Making the scale exactly 31.75 percent the original size puts the dims in rather convenient quarters, eighths and sixteenths of inches! This will save loads of time in some areas of the design without needing to compromise for standard sizes. For instance, the corrugated surface of the panel undersides can be made from 3/16" angles and 1/4" strips. That beats cutting all those little bevels.

I'm not planning to mold or cast anything. It will mostly be acrylic sheet even though that means replication x3 or x6. Even though they're mostly rectilinear, the holes for all the terraced sections of the upper panels will be laser cut. It's worth the extra expense to save time. Of course, the rotor parts will be laser cut as well.

lespaceplie

Dec 31, 2014, 08:01 pm #5 Last Edit: Dec 31, 2014, 08:11 pm by lespaceplie
Well, the waffling continues, but the availability of materials has determined the final scale of this thing. 1:5 it is! I just ordered a 4.5" diameter extruded acrylic tube for the rotor and didn't want to spend much. $10 on eBay fitted the budget better than the plastics manufacturers.

tube.jpg

galacticprobe

Jan 01, 2015, 07:28 am #6 Last Edit: Jan 01, 2015, 07:28 am by galacticprobe
Lespaceplie, I've got to start searching your area of aBay more often! That's a great find! What key words did you search for?

Dino.
"What's wrong with being childish?! I like being childish." -3rd Doctor, "Terror of the Autons"

lespaceplie

Searched merely for "acrylic tube" and found plenty of results - but Boolean out -paint.

tony farrell

I'm looking forward to how you reproduce the column's innards at 1:5 scale. The complexity of the crystaline structure you drew  the other day boggles the mind at full-scale, let alone as a model!
It'll be interesting to see how the laser-cutting turns out..... It costs a fortune on this side of the pond!

galacticprobe

Jan 02, 2015, 06:34 am #9 Last Edit: Jan 02, 2015, 06:35 am by galacticprobe
Quote from: lespaceplie on Jan 01, 2015, 07:49 pm
- but Boolean out -paint.


Thanks for the advice, lespaceplie, especially this part!

Dino.
"What's wrong with being childish?! I like being childish." -3rd Doctor, "Terror of the Autons"

lespaceplie

It's not much of an update, but to move forward in this project (and others), a new tool purchase is required. The time has come for a mini table saw with tilting arbor. The MicroLux Digital Table Saw is quite expensive for what it is, but considering the ease it will lend to modeling projects, it could be worth the investment. Of course, used ones will be considered as well as the discontinued Dremel 580 series. Those angled edges on panels don't cut themselves!

Also, I have figured out how to make the corrugated surfaces of the underside panels. Scale corrugated panel is available, but none of it was the right scale. Right triangular styrene rod could be used, but number of pieces required is expensive. Only Raboesch makes these, and I've found very little inventory in the US. Instead I will construct a very small brake and bend thin styrene sheet, which will be reinforced by bonding styrene rod on the underside. This will only require short pieces near the edges plus a little support in the center. The edges will be cut and filed to fit into the surrounding frame.

lespaceplie

The Dremel 580 has been shipped!

I'm going to have to make one concession (so far) in the rotor. At scale, the closest I could get to fabricating each tier was 1 mm acrylic sheet. Unfortunately, the couple of laser cutting services I have to choose from don't have anything thinner than 1.5 mm. I bought a 1 mm sheet to send to them, but I find it to be lower quality than what the services use. It's too flexible and doesn't wick the light to the edge as well as the thicker sheet. For this reason, those tiers are going to be a little thicker, but I can simply trim the rods a bit shorter. I think maintaining the bright, crystalline appearance will trump getting the exact thickness.

On a related note, the 1 mm sheet would be excellent for fabricating a cylinder for the rotor at a larger scale. In fact, I might make a different console model at 1:3 (or so). The S15 refresh would be quite easy to do now that I have the mini table saw - and what a fabulous toy it would be at such a scale.

galacticprobe

Jan 17, 2015, 05:30 am #12 Last Edit: Jan 17, 2015, 05:30 am by galacticprobe
Lespaceplie, you're making me drool with all of this talk of column cylinders! When I can finally get started on my console, I might get some thin acrylic sheet and use a heat gun to form an 8" diameter cylinder. Only mine will have to be about 3 feet long: not sure how that fabrication will turn out. If you do use that 1mm sheet to form a column cover for a 1:3 scale console, let me know how it turns out and how difficult it was to make that cylinder for it.

Dino.
"What's wrong with being childish?! I like being childish." -3rd Doctor, "Terror of the Autons"

lespaceplie

Feb 02, 2015, 11:40 pm #13 Last Edit: Feb 02, 2015, 11:42 pm by lespaceplie
I'm thrilled to make progress finding materials for this. Would you believe 2.4 mm acrylic tube (as opposed to solid rod)? A lack of certain materials for the rotor have been delaying construction, but I'll finally be able to commit to laser cutting the tiers in a matter of days.

I other news, I might've found a way to construct miniature keyboards. They're too tiny to use adhesive feet as a substitute, and plastic jewels have proven too flat. Instead I could file a small cluster of keys from square rod then make a simple push mold for poly clay or a little resin mold. Miniature CRTs are likely an experiment in vacuum-forming or cutting a section from a shallow disc.

lespaceplie

More talk than photo evidence of progress, but the plan for lighting the rotor is to run EL wire through the tubes. The scale of the tube lights is merely 6 mm in diameter. The central square tube shaft is also 6 mm, which will be tight with 8 lines of EL wire inside. At worst, the red tubes will have to go without illumination, or some hidden LEDs can project onto them from the base (a strategy I would use for lighting the entire rotor in a dinkier scale).