Blake's 7 Orac - Anyone know how big the thing was?

I've been searching all over for a few days now and I can't find anything on this prop, at all. Does anyone know how big the thing is? I know some blueprints exist in the horizon technical manual 3 but I can't find that either Also a general Blake's 7 prop thread if anyone wants to show off their goodies


Btw, it's asking me to tag the thread with the show title, there is no tag for Blake's 7 and it won't let me make one...

Hey there,

I have the first Tech Manual but no luck there. I'll see if any past searches turned up anything. I would be interested in seeing this one and any other props done. I'll check in again
tomorrow after work.

Umm. Looking forward to seeing what you do. Obviously.

Hi chaps,

New member here - and by chance, Mat Irvine has just held an exhibition in the village hall near his home near Milton Keynes, and he's got his B7 props on display, including Orac and what's left of the original large Liberator...



Mat has his own website, with a public email link (scroll down to the bottom of the homepage). I've mailed him before about things, and he's replied pretty quickly. If you asked him for Orac's dimensions, it wouldn't surprise me if he'd be happy to oblige - can't hurt to ask, anyway. He also owns a Liberator gun, a bracelet and a Federation trooper gun.

FWIW, Orac is now in a much better state than he used to be. Some friends and I interviewed Mat at his home 20 years ago, and we persuaded him to dig Orac out of his garage - the prop was in a very poor state, covered in dust, with cracked panels and with few of the components fixed together. The activator key was long gone even then. At the time, Mat showed little interest in refurbishing him, but obviously he changed his mind! I don't know if he's gone as far as making him electronically functional again though, I would suspect not.

Here are some of the photos from that visit, giving a sense of how poor Orac's condition was. The last photo shows where some of the cracks were patched with black tape, and you can also see the DIN socket that was used to connect a simple on/off remote control when the story called for Orac to power up or down without anyone using the key (which I think most people know really did turn the prop on and off - it was just a simple magnet controlling a reed switch).

Hello there!

The Orac prop measures 18.5 inches wide x 14.5 inches deep x 10 inches high.

I was actually writing that when you beat me to it!


Here is a link to the video of mine anyway .

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BFrTxL4_gUU

I'd seen those dimensions before, but when I did some drawings it just looked totally wrong, so I wanted to double check. Yours looks incredible! Would you be able to upload more pics of it? And what's the size of the borders around the holes?

Hehe this is gonna be expensive, It's gonna be about £130 for the outer case alone laser cut. I might have to try to find a local service that might be cheaper. That price is from Razorlab. I was hoping to be able to make a few, 3 or 4 and sell the others. But I doubt I could afford that now. Would people be prepared to pay upwards of 400 for one of these?

It is quite an expensive project, I made two of them a few years ago (one for myself and one for a friend), the hardest part was trying to find the right 1970's electronic components for his non-working parts. I couldn't always manage it and had to fake some of them or make do with something close. The border around the holes is about 2" deep.

Oooh very nice! Where did you find the circuit boards in the end, and the heatsinks?

Thank you. The end circuit boards were from a wrecked computer, all the other electronic bits could be found on eBay, with a lot of searching and a lot of patience, finding bits probably took as long as putting them together.

KevinD said:

Thank you. The end circuit boards were from a wrecked computer, all the other electronic bits could be found on eBay, with a lot of searching and a lot of patience, finding bits probably took as long as putting them together.

Click to expand...

I think you're my new best friend. Excellent replica!!! Did you come up with schematics for the construction?

Thanks. No, I didn't, I just used photo references.