Nice work!!Sure. Here is a photo with the body sanded and primed and the machined pieces just held in place to show how things go together.
View attachment 411378
Now I'm just waiting for my vacuum chamber to arrive and I'm going to attempt making some molds. The current styrene build feels a little hollow and I'm looking forward to having a solid resin piece.
Why am I so obsessed with Trek medical tools?
Okay...put me down for I WANT ONE!
Wow! That looks awesome, my friend. You really nailed it, imho. Nice job on the metal work, btw.
That'll be another TMP prop to add to my collection, would look good next to my hero Wrist Comm
Thanks! I think the nozzle could be slightly more accurate, so I'm going to work on that.
There aren't many TMP props in generally really, are there? The tricorder is barely used, and a one-off. No phasers that I can remember. Barely any medical props, other than this one. The art direction was fairly spare/minimalist—in a way that I like.
That is some good looking work!
Great work! And you've picked the most sensible way to approach it -- by the time you de-mold, the hard work is behind you and you have a beautifully simple build. Very smart. Also an excellent beginner's kit if you go that way. I think that and the agonizer must be the two simplest props from TOS (from a building standpoint, not the mastering of course).
Several hours? How are you approaching it? Have you thought of speeding up your auto feed for the majority of the taper, then slowing down again for your finish pass? I don't know what the issue is, so I'm just throwing that out there.
It's probably mostly just because I'm an idiot and haven't quite gotten the hang of production work on the lathe. I'm working with a really old Colchester-Clausing lathe that doesn't have auto-feed on the compound slide, and most of the time is taken up with tool changes (adjusting the angle on the compound slide is a whole annoying operation). I'm trying to figure out how to batch the tasks, but the trouble is that whenever I stick my bar very far out of the chuck, I start getting tool chatter, even when steadied in the tailstock, so that somewhat limits my ability to batch stuff. But I'll figure something out I'm sure. I'm hoping the first one took so long mostly because I had to figure out what I was doing as I went. I'm sure once I write down a list of operations, it'll go must faster.
Yeah, same issue with the Jet lathe at Techshop, no auto-feed on the compound slide, though setting the angle is a snap. The tasks do go much faster after the trial-and-error part is behind you. Trust me, so far my phaser build is more error than trial.
I'm kind of half exited, half full of dread at the thought of turning the engine bells for my upcoming Eagle build. I have to create custom steel tooling for those. Three kinds of bells, interior and outer tools for each -- yep, that still equals six custom tools in tool steel. Thank God for Blender and the Tormach, but all I can hear when I think about it is the sound of expensive high-speed bits snapping...
The bells would be a lot easier if we had a resident expert on the lathe attachment for the Tormach, but apparently the G-code software is some kind of Lovecraftian incantation that summons Cthulhu's cousin Shloim, so nobody's cozied up to it yet even after nine months. Sigh.
No, wait... I forgot about the thrusters and the sensor arrays in the command module... total is nine tools. Yikes.
You couldn't be more right! I've actually got a Ph.D in screwing up, but if I manage to keep all my fingers, I'll be an expert when I grow up!Heh. Yes, life would be much easier if I knew G-code and had a CNC lathe. Someday maybe. In the meantime, challenges like this can be seen as educational growth opportunities.