On mine, the battery is as you say, just stuffed into the grip. The battery cover is just press-fitted into place. I would put a strip of Scotch Tape, or electrical tape on mine to make sure it stayed in place. Mine also uses bulbs from Christmas Tree light strings, so you can pick your color. I believe they later switched to LED bulbs.
The holographic film, I think it used to be called refraction tape, was once very common in auto parts departments in stores and in auto parts stores. Some people would cover their rear bumper with it, and it would blind you when the sun hit it while you were behind them.
David.
Yeah, normally I'm a stickler for staying accurate... but this wasn't a "prop" and it seemed like an opportunity to make a slight improvement!
I found the holo foil at a fishing supply place, where they sold it as a covering for lures. I have so much left over, maybe I should do a run of Arnold Rimmer "H" badges from Red Dwarf, haha.
Christmas tree bulbs? The pointy ones? Are those bright enough? I used a fairly strong LED (a normal one, not a high power).
Hard to believe those clear emitters were printed, they look fantastic!
Thanks. The trick is to coat them with a good clear spray paint or polish the hell out of 'em. Out of the alcohol bath (after print post processing) they come out "frosted".
The pistols, especially the clear emitter are fantastic! I would never have guessed that the emitter was 3-D printed. Would you mind telling which printer you used?
To me 3-D printing like that is pure sorcery.
Looking at some photos from "Trancers" yesterday. What you can see of the pistol grip, it is painted silver with black grip panels. I haven't seen any photos of the pistol grip out of Deth's hand to tell if it is shaped like Coyle's.
David.
For resin printers, I use Formlabs' printers. (Basically the cheapest professional machines you can get, but the engineerings resins for it cost more than their weight in gold, lol.) The newer models are better at printing clear parts due to almost zero risk of dust contamination in the optical path.
It takes a bit of experience to properly orientate the model for printing though... it's easy to get undesirable artifacts.
Are the photos you are referring to online?
I'm not seeing any silver aside from the barrel (which I'm guessing might be aluminum tape), but tan/brown resin poking though where the black paint has rubbed off. Maaaaybe you could make a case for the grip being silver-chrome, and reflecting "brown" light or being heavily weathered. Or maybe it was painted silver, then black, but had most of the black ribber off, then weathed... but it doesn't look like it to me, since the coloring is too even- it's on the front of the trigger guard too. The overall look of the gun doesn't seem to be "weathered" but closer to new. (And Most of Coyles similar ray gun models all have black grips and frames). Almost looks like the same type of resin they used on the Ghostbusters Proton Wand grips!