Fallout 4 Fusion Cell

I figure if I post this thread, maybe I'll follow through on this. That's the theory anyway. I am making a fusion cell from Fallout 4. This in turn will be used in a planned Institute Pistol and/or Rifle. The way the new weapons system works the receiver is the same for both of them, just different attachments. When (if?) that happens I'll add a link somewhere around here.

I took a lot of in game screenshots which instead of helping was actually a pain. A lot of the 3D details are actually just part of the texture (basically just a picture) that is slapped on a much simpler model. Here is what I got after exporting it from NifSkope.


Another issue is what size to make it. I looked at a pepakura for the Fallout 3 version and it gave me the diameter of 52mm and a height of 80mm. Just a hair over 2 inches by 3 inches. That is what I started working with but I kept having doubts about the size. Then I remember seeing a yard stick inside a suitcase (weird). So I got one to use for reference.


So it may not be the most accurate but I went with it anyway and got a diameter of 1 7/8 inches which worked out to just shy of 48mm. I went ahead and rounded up to 48mm.

Most of the cell will be done on my lathe. The hard part will be what I keep calling "nubs" around the anode at top of the cell. If you look around you can see others have had the same fight. Frequently people just have some slots cut into. Looking at the various screenshots I did not want to do that. I had some false starts and started with what I thought was the right plan when I saw what franco358 is going for his project and finally got a handle on it. http://www.therpf.com/showthread.php?t=254971. I did mine slightly different.

I modeled this in 123D Design. It really helped when I found how to change the colors to something close to the in game colors. I have a model I am pretty happy with. I had the wrong mode chosen when I took the screenshots from 123D so some of the diameters look a little off.


Here is also an example of how things get screwy looking at some angles.




Perfect? No, but I think it's close. I may tweak it while I get the equipment ready to make it.

The next step is to actually make this. I do have a 3D printer, but I will end up spending a week cleaning it up. And yes, I know about printing it in ABS and using acetate or using Smooth On XTC-3D, or a few other things. Plus I need to do some work on the printer. Instead I plan to use a CNC mill. But that has issues too. First I have to finish some upgrades I was doing to my Shapeoko and then get it calibrated. The bigger delay is that the CAM plug in (think of it as the slicer for CNC machining) for 123D is currently being worked on so is not available for downloading. I'll have to get another CAM tool to use. So probably no updates for a while. I guess this is a glorified place holder really. But like I said at the start, maybe this thread will keep me from procrastinating.

You could turn the body and endcaps on a lathe, and 3D print the 'nubs.'

That's the plan.

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There's another person (forgot who) that is doing either the laser pistol or rifle that had a pretty good fusion cell. They had the same problems with how it looks vs. the model and came up with a good version.

I got hold of a 3D printer and decided to see how this thing looks in the real world. It turned out pretty good. There is a tiny detail that got lost, but unless you have been staring at screenshots you would never notice. However, I still think the Shapeoko will turn out a better part. But that depends on whether I ever finish getting it setup and calibrated.

Nice, I like the rendering and I have been looking to make a few cells myself along with some holotapes from 4. Good work so far!

I decided to print out the entire green section to see how it looks, so I am going to see how the first print looks after sanding and filling. But first I need to print a spool holder because the spot inside the printer cannot hold 1kg spools.

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Printed out in Hatchbox "beige". Uh, ok. But it turned out pretty nice. It will still need finishing. I did not look at the total print time but it would have been around 3.25 hours. Heck, now I want to model and print the bottom half that I had planned to turn on the lathe.

Printed out the bottom in Hatchbox orange. This one is actually orange! Again, it turned out pretty good. I printed it with no infill on a raft, but the raft did not want to come off. I want to make some changes to it though. The part that goes into the anode was too long making the gap too big. I'm actually going to do away with the gap altogether. So if you want a gap either paint one on or don't put the anode all the way on. It is a very tight fit and at some point this these parts are going to get some high build primer to fill the almost non-existent layer lines and then auto paint for molding, so I need to reduce the diameter slightly and put a chamfer on the the part that goes into the anode. I also want to make a small change to the anode itself. So there is 6-7 hours of printing weeeee!


And yes, I realize after I took these pictures that I had inadvertently created a Fallout 4 themed pill bottle. And I finally turned the page on the calendar in the background.

Looking really good! And yes, it's a good little place to keep your pills. Just remember space for the magnets!

Welp. I've been through a couple revisions and was happy with the latest one. I did some filling and sanding today in preparation of using XTC on the hard to get to details then I could prime, paint, and mold. This afternoon after seeing Civil War I started work on the Institute pistol blueprints. I did a "sanity test" to make sure the dimensions of the cell on its own and when in the pistol matched up. They did not. So I had the cunning plan of using the game model I had exported using Nifskope and then importing it into 123D to do some measurements. The exported model is a weird size to I had to scale it based on what I think the diameter should be, 48mm. I was off on the height by roughly 4mm. Not much but enough to need changes. Grrrr.

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Really nice build. Like your model for the cell, those nubs are the pain for sure.

I'm just starting on something similar. Used a fusion cell model from Thingiverse as a test but the models was not correct. More a test of 3D finishing to see if it was a place to start. The sanding wasn't too bad, used Dupli-Color Filler Primer and Bondo spot putty for smoothing. Want to give the XTC a try next to get the best/easiest 3D print finishing process.

Spent some time in Fusion 360 messing about and it looks like all the heights, widths, and angles are what I want. Now for hours of printing.

Looking very cool! Are you willing to share the Fusion360 project? I have been using it to setup gcode files on my Othermill and would be curious to mill the top piece in aluminum, it seems like a good candidate for that with almost no undercuts.

After that last update I printed out the newest revision.

I suck at doing updates. Anyway, I applied two coats of XTC-3D. This stuff is thin, so go light. To help see if I missed anything I added SO-Strong coloring. First coat was yellow (yellow + blue = green) and the second coat was white.


I sanded through part off the top piece so I tried to fill it with putty. I was not totally happy with the top anyway so I'm going to redesign it.


The bottom is OK.

You know, I did the same thing on my mini nuke that you did on the top half of your cell, sanding away too much on the rim area. If it helps, you can do what I did to correct it. I cut out a hole in a 12x12 square of MDF (by tracing the male end circle), then I took a sheet of sand paper and cut a matching hole. Then set the paper on the wood, lining the cut holes up. You can then insert the male end of the cell half in the hole and twist it to sand it down to a perfectly flat edge. May need slight touch up afterwards, but this worked for me with the nuke. Just thought I'd mention it.

GhostMinion said:

You know, I did the same thing on my mini nuke that you did on the top half of your cell, sanding away too much on the rim area. If it helps, you can do what I did to correct it. I cut out a hole in a 12x12 square of MDF (by tracing the male end circle), then I took a sheet of sand paper and cut a matching hole. Then set the paper on the wood, lining the cut holes up. You can then insert the male end of the cell half in the hole and twist it to sand it down to a perfectly flat edge. May need slight touch up afterwards, but this worked for me with the nuke. Just thought I'd mention it.

Click to expand...

I was actually doing something similar for sanding down the red putty and it does work well.

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New print on the anode (cap). I was able to get a missing detail back in. But for some reason there are holes in the top even though I set it to have a five top layers and the simulation showed five layers going down.

It's hard to say for sure but it looks like those holes may have been caused by a slightly un level print bed? Check out this reference guide by simplify3D, it's really helpful even if you don't use there software (which I highly recommend if you don't already have it);

https://www.simplify3d.com/support/print-quality-troubleshooting/