ISAC/Beacon unit from "Tom Clancy's - The Division"

Hexapuma

Hexapuma

New Member
While I haven't played The Divison (There's no way my current PC would handle the graphics at a reasonable resolution) I've been watching a lot of the videos people have done on YouTube and I've become fond of the way the ISAC unit on the player character's shoulder looks. Not only is it an awesome looking piece of kit, but it might also be handy in the winter weather for being more visible on the streets.

ISAC.JPG

I've been somewhat disappointed with the dearth of references online, particularly with measurements. There are a few out there but not at the level of detail or of the angles I need. As such, I've been modelling my own version in Solidworks from what I can glean online.

Exploded.JPG

I didn't want to do it as a solid piece, both so that the joints look more realistic and so that I can fit the lights and electronics inside. I'm going to be machining the translucent ring out of orange acrylic and install a ring of LEDs below along with a battery pack. The cradle section, which has strap mounts on the bottom, is currently printing and I'll update when it's out of the machine.

I will be doing the antenna, but I'm focusing on the body first.
 
The cradle is out of the printer and ready for sanding and finishing. It's... Smaller than I had visualised. I need to get better at estimating sizes when modelling!

ISAC Cradle.jpg

It's not perfect. The embossing on the left-hand face didn't come out and the stuff that did may get lost in the sanding process. The main body is printing now.
 
Thanks very much! Sadly, I'm not happy with this version of the model. A lot of the models you find online include screws around the lit ring. Now that's not something that appears in the digital model but it makes sense as my original plan made it almost impossible to assemble the lit components and illuminator ring. As such, I've reworked the design and will be reprinting the first pass with a few, minor improvements. Second draft is a go!

ISAC Exploded.JPG

This version removes an internal support which was causing more problems than it solved and brings in the removable ring element. I've also taken the opportunity to enlarge some of the cosmetic detailing that was getting lost during printing due to resolution issues and rounded some corners that were making fitting tight. I've machined the coloured acrylic ring insert and I'm just about to start modelling the antenna parts.
 
Looks even better now the second time around and looking at your model there it make alot more sense in the assembly. Those screws might not be there in the digital version (who needs screws in the digital world anyway?) but it sure looks right to me. I'm looking forward to see how this comes out this time around. Being a vivid "The Division" fan I'm checking in on this every other day.

Keep posting your progress :thumbsup :thumbsup :thumbsup
 
Glad you're enjoying it Mystery!

Well, here's the post-Christmas update!

Body.jpgComponents.jpgRingParts.jpg

The assemblies came out pretty well! They're currently in the sanding stage as they need a lot of cleaning up. Annoyingly the support material didn't come off as cleanly as I'd like but never mind. Everything seems to fit nicely together. I've got some M2 Torx screws to hold the lid in place and some self-tapping screws for the front cover. The bottom cap for the antenna was also printed but has some issues due to the size of the detail. It's a bit fragile. I've got some work still to do on the lathe to make the antenna mount (I'm making as much of it as possible out of stainless steel for strength) and then I just need to form the actual antenna flex.

Then it's all just painting and finishing.

Finally figured out how to fit a power pack inside - the 18650 cell should give a decent life for the LEDs and is easily rechargable.

Watch this space!
 
The LED board is in and I'm testing using external power. The board uses 8 SMT LEDs and gives one hell of a light. It's very bright even on a well lit bench and since it's drawing 170mA at 3.6v I may put in a little trimmer pot to drop the consumption and stretch out the run time. Although this should run for over 10 hours at decent brightness even at this level.

Glow.jpg

I may also scuff up the acrylic diffuser with some sandpaper to see if it will spread the light around a little more.
 
The beginnings of the Antenna...

Ant1.jpgAnt2.jpg

I was originally going to do the antenna out of a 10mm wide, 300mm long strip of thermoplastic wrapped in heat-shrink and then bent at the correct points to give the correct appearance, but while I was researching the structure of the real-live versions of this style of antenna, I discovered that it was based around a sheet of flexible steel very similar to a conventional tape-measure. So what I've actually done is cut a 330mm length of 12mm wide steel from an old tape, coated that in heat-shrink and bent it to the right shape. It actually looks much more like the production art than I could get from the plastic. Currently it's held in shape by some electrical tape to show how it bends, but that will be replaced by either a 3D printed clip or, more likely, one of the little velcro cable ties you get on USB cables and power supplies. If you un-do it then it pings back to its fully extended length just, I suspect, as the one in game would.

Spades.jpg

The two spades you can see with the antenna are approaching the minimum limit of what my 3D printer can handle. The central void is only a fraction of a millimetre thick and doesn't print perfectly so it may require some cutting and sanding. The cylindrical area for the support pin is designed to intrude into the void for the bottom of the antenna blade. I'll be cutting a slot into the support pin to engage with the blade to add additional structural strength. I'd weld the two together if I could but I don't have access to that equipment. I'll probably just use epoxy to make the whole thing into a single unit.

I'll also be printing a small cap for the top of the antenna. You can't really see it when the blade is bent to shape, but for art's sake and to prevent water entering the antenna and making it rust I want to seal over the top.
 
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Next stage - Producing the antenna mount and structure from stainless steel...

AntennaMount.jpgAntennaMount2.jpg

Sadly this didn't go quite as well as I'd hoped. The antenna support rod is fine, I turned the ends of a 6mm diameter stainless rod down to 5mm and threaded them. This screws nicely into the main body and gives a solid mount point. I turned some 10mm diameter bar down on either end to 4mm, leaving the centre section and drilled and tapped a hole through the middle. Unfortunately I don't have a V-Block and tap alignment tool to make sure I got the hole aligned correctly so it's a bit askew. It's hard to tell from the picture, but the top of the antenna is canted out at about five degrees from true. I'm going to be re-making this in the future as the angle will be very obvious once the antenna blade is attached.

I still need to make a cosmetic jacket for the support rod, a cap to hide the outside of the threaded hole in the antenna spine and figure out how to handle the wire from the base unit to the antenna. The battery, switch and wiring still need to go in, but I want to hold off on that until I'm sure I'm done with painting and sanding.
 
Electronics are in and working nicely!

Lit up ISAC.jpgISAC Internals.jpg

I added the variable resistor to allow me to dial the brightness up and down and it works beautifully. I may drill out a hole in the underside so that I can adjust with the backing plate on, but removing that isn't an issue at the moment. Antenna mount still needs work, but I'm still waiting on tools for that.
 
I'd recommend using HDPE instead of acrylic. It does a wonderful job at defusing light and might make it much harder to discern individual LEDs. It'll dim them a bit but it seems like they're more than bright enough as is.

More for my curiosity, is there a reason you chose stainless steel over aluminum? I find it so much easier to work with aluminum that I don't really consider stainless for anything. Did you just feel it fit the aesthetic better?
 
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Hey Striker,
I just happened to have a sheet of acrylic in the right colour, size and thickness sitting in my box of spare materials. It actually works quite well since the LEDs don't line up under the acrylic perfectly, it gives it something of a lens-flare effect.

As for the stainless, I was a little concerned about the strength of the rods that support the antenna elements. The main rod that links to the body would be fine, but the vertical elements are only about 3.5mm in diameter and I didn't want them bending. Not to mention the antenna elements are based on actual RF components that are usually stainless and have have a slightly different look to the oxidised dullness of Aluminium. If I have trouble machining the stainless then I might try alu, but I guess we'll see.
 
looks really great so far, and if you find that you wanna hide the screws it looks like they're counter-sunk enough to easily hide with a little filling and sanding.
 
Very true Klown, but then I won't be able to get to them if I want to make modifications at a later date! When I made the decision to use screws on the top, I dug into my Jar 'O Screws and came up with some Torx ones from an old HDD that look industrial, so I'll probably just paint them black and leave it looking like a design "Feature" rather than a design failure. I may, however, follow your advice on the adjacent sloped cover. I violated good practice when designing the body which left me with a few flaws that are a pain in the arse to fix, so I'm left with four rather ugly screw holes on the front which I may fill and sand.
 
Next up! Antenna is progressing! I tweaked the design of the spade somewhat, lengthening the supported section and adding a central pin that goes through the antenna and ties the two halves of the spade together.

Antenna2.jpgAntenna1.jpg

Apologies for the quality of the photos.

I need to sand the 3D printed parts and join them together. I'm holding off on the fixing as long as I can, because I just know the moment I fix them in place I'll find something I need to alter! Then I'll add the wire from the stub at the base of the antenna that can plug into the body of the unit. I'm going to use a section of optical fibre for that as it happens to be just the right thickness and flex.

I'm currently also remaking the illuminator circuit board for the ring. I want the LEDs to align better with the transparent section.
 
Almost there!

ISAC Almost there.jpg

The antenna unit is now assembled and can be mounted to the body! I still need to add a few minor trim items such as trim cylinders for the antenna central stem and support rod so they only show steel elements and not the whole thing. Plus I want to cover up the central hole in the stem. Some parts of the body need a sand and respray as I'm not fond of the finish and I need to install the newest version of the LED ring. I might cover that with a diffuser, as Striker pointed out earlier in the thread, the acrylic lets you see the LEDs as individual lights rather than as a homogeneous glow. I'm also looking at adding a bluetooth module and Arduino board internally so I can have the LEDs running patterns. I wasn't intending to originally, but it seems like an interesting addition at this point.
 
I've found that nail polish remover works nicely for smoothing out the texture on my prints. It's great for getting into the small areas you just have to be careful to keep your edges sharp
Also I dig the look of the torx screws, they look like they would've been used on the ISAC
 
Klown: I've now got the facilities for doing Acetone vapour baths to smooth the finish on models. Only works on ABS, but that's fine here. Sadly I'd already painted before I got the tools for that one so it's too late. Maybe the next version.

Optimistic: I'm wiring in the Arduino at the moment. Thankfully the board can support a 200mA output and I only need about 160mA. I had thought I'd have to get creative to use both chasing and fading functions, but the board has 6 PWM capable outputs. Sadly, because I used a coloured acrylic insert, I can't do multiple colour LEDs, but maybe I'll try that in the future.
 
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