Hello all... FINALLY, while I am working on other projects. I have decided to finally start the Borg Cube.
So as some may know I'm loosing my home and will be moving at some point... But the house sale has now been delayed to February so I have decided to get this thing started with the aim to do most of the build over the Christmas period.
This really is going to be a whole host of mix media, ill be making a lot of use of my laser cutter, cutting perspex and mdf parts. Ill also be doing some 3D prints for greebles, ill even be doing some resin pours to make multiples of those greebles.
Im going to be home electro etching brass to make many of the fine detailed brass parts.
And I'm going to make myself go slowly mad gluing everything together and figuring out how to put literally thousands of parts together!
So first things first. Its Studio Scale... ish... From what I understand the First contact filming model was roughly 65CM cubed. Ill be reducing that size a bit to 50CM, as I felt this is a reasonable scale for me to build for.
The goal is to make a First Contact style Borg Cube, as there is so many random details, its going to be impossible to make a perfect replica. So the goal is to make something that actually looks like the model. There have been many born miniatures made in the past by several talented artists, but very few IMHO seem to lack that First Contact aesthetic. This is something I hope to get close to.
Outside of the basic frame and support structure, its going to pretty much artistic licence throughout. Ill be gluing and figuring out where things go as I build it.
This last few years there has been a flood of new high res photos of the filming model, and thanks to the amazing replies in the thread here...
www.therpf.com
Ive been able to start putting a library of greebles and parts together.
Once this is completed Ill be putting a video together to go onto my youtube, and I will make the various design files I've made available through my super support tier on my patreon.
And I will be posting a host of step by step wip photos here
Like I say I will be doing the majority of the work over Christmas. But Today I got started with building the core frame.
Starting with designing the frame in Fusion360, to see how it would all work. I then ordered Alu lengths from B&Q.... and they then delivered the wrong sized L extrusions.... So I had to redesign the core frame Anyway after the changes I messured up, then started cutting the strips. And this evening I managed to braze weld the alu strips into these squares...
Tomorrow I will turn these into a cube!
My blow torch is a bit ****... It actually takes a surprisingly long time to get the alu hot enough for the brazing rod to melt.
The plan so far, is to build this frame and have the protruding rods as seen in the third render.
With right angle brackets attached as seen in the twitter post above, ill have a base to fit a frame structure for each layer of the cube. The internal layers will be fairly basic, with all the real detail being put on the top layer. But some of this will certainly be a case of figuring it out as I go...
I have also traced what I can of the references and built a bunch of A4 brass etch masks that I would use to electro etch...
And yes I know, the masks are currently inverted... Ill fix that soon
There are a few more greebly shapes I need to draw up that I noticed more recently. But I think I have enough to make the model at least convincing...
A bit later I also plan to design and build a motion control rig for a camera, And I will then do some VFX recreations with the model
Anyway thats all for now. I will update as things progress!
So as some may know I'm loosing my home and will be moving at some point... But the house sale has now been delayed to February so I have decided to get this thing started with the aim to do most of the build over the Christmas period.
This really is going to be a whole host of mix media, ill be making a lot of use of my laser cutter, cutting perspex and mdf parts. Ill also be doing some 3D prints for greebles, ill even be doing some resin pours to make multiples of those greebles.
Im going to be home electro etching brass to make many of the fine detailed brass parts.
And I'm going to make myself go slowly mad gluing everything together and figuring out how to put literally thousands of parts together!
So first things first. Its Studio Scale... ish... From what I understand the First contact filming model was roughly 65CM cubed. Ill be reducing that size a bit to 50CM, as I felt this is a reasonable scale for me to build for.
The goal is to make a First Contact style Borg Cube, as there is so many random details, its going to be impossible to make a perfect replica. So the goal is to make something that actually looks like the model. There have been many born miniatures made in the past by several talented artists, but very few IMHO seem to lack that First Contact aesthetic. This is something I hope to get close to.
Outside of the basic frame and support structure, its going to pretty much artistic licence throughout. Ill be gluing and figuring out where things go as I build it.
This last few years there has been a flood of new high res photos of the filming model, and thanks to the amazing replies in the thread here...
Need references! First Contact - Borg Cube
Hi so yeah... I'm going to have a go at this model... Though not just yet. I have at lease one other project to do first and I have some other commitments to do first... But maybe around Christmas or early next year I might be making a start... But here's the thing I'm really short of good...
www.therpf.com
Ive been able to start putting a library of greebles and parts together.
Once this is completed Ill be putting a video together to go onto my youtube, and I will make the various design files I've made available through my super support tier on my patreon.
And I will be posting a host of step by step wip photos here
Like I say I will be doing the majority of the work over Christmas. But Today I got started with building the core frame.
Starting with designing the frame in Fusion360, to see how it would all work. I then ordered Alu lengths from B&Q.... and they then delivered the wrong sized L extrusions.... So I had to redesign the core frame
Anyway after the changes I messured up, then started cutting the strips. And this evening I managed to braze weld the alu strips into these squares...Tomorrow I will turn these into a cube!
My blow torch is a bit ****... It actually takes a surprisingly long time to get the alu hot enough for the brazing rod to melt.
The plan so far, is to build this frame and have the protruding rods as seen in the third render.
With right angle brackets attached as seen in the twitter post above, ill have a base to fit a frame structure for each layer of the cube. The internal layers will be fairly basic, with all the real detail being put on the top layer. But some of this will certainly be a case of figuring it out as I go...
I have also traced what I can of the references and built a bunch of A4 brass etch masks that I would use to electro etch...
And yes I know, the masks are currently inverted... Ill fix that soon
There are a few more greebly shapes I need to draw up that I noticed more recently. But I think I have enough to make the model at least convincing...
A bit later I also plan to design and build a motion control rig for a camera, And I will then do some VFX recreations with the model
Anyway thats all for now. I will update as things progress!
