Jurassic Park Cryocan Measurements and 3D model

[PhantomForge]

Hi all!
Some of you might have seen my last thread with a review of a cryocan, and I expressed that my frustrations with it made me want to make my own— well, here's my progress on that! Once I'm done, I'm going to try and get this machined in aluminum, but I'll also be sharing the files publicly through this thread for anyone to use.

Also, anybody know if the cryocan is still at the Universal Citywalk in LA? I just moved here and actually seeing the piece in person would be so helpful, but I'm not exactly sure where in the Citywalk I'd need to go and don't want to waste the parking money if its not—but I need to see about how many indents that bottom piece has (I have 22 right now and it looks right, but might be 24? My math might have been off).

All these measurements were made with the assumptions that the diameter inside the can is 65mm and the centrifuge vials are the same size, as those are what I used to make the measurement scale
Here's the measurements made in Photoshop, I used screenshots, the photos taken of the prop while on display, and I started using photos from the Chronicle collectibles promotional photos, but I actually think there are a few things incorrect about the model, so I switched back to only reference from the actual prop:

I see now that a few of the measurements aren't there or are a little off, I made a lot of the measurements on the spot while I was modeling in blender and forgot to write it down, and a lot of the measurements were made for my own reference/notes, so if anything is confusing or if you have questions please let me know!

IMAGES
Here's the progress with the 3D model (yes, I forgot the notch, but I will be re-doing it anyways for reasons stated bellow):

TEST PRINT
I then 3d printed the parts to test if the middle disks would properly screw together, if it would fit inside a barbasol can and if the centrifuge tubes fit. Once I get the bolts and o-ring in the mail, I'll be testing the threaded holes as well as the if the o-ring/o-ring indent is the right size.

1) Does it screw together: despite a faulty STL/print, yes!

2) Does it fit in the barbasol can: Yes! Snuggly.

3) Do the centrifuge tubes fit in the rings? NO. I made the rookie mistake of making it snug to the diameter of the flat part of the tube.

And a side note, I need to make the bottom lip a bit taller

I have some re-modeling to do to fix some of these issues.

MECHANISM
So I want to reinvent the wheel I guess... With the inner tube I'm doing the same sort of channel that I've seen other models use, but I noticed in a lot of screen shots that the cryocan does not have this vent here:

at least not in the spot I see on a lot of the other replicas, if its there at all.

I can't find that vent in a single screenshot, but maybe I'm not looking hard enough. Without actually seeing the prop myself, its hard for me to figure out if it's just always facing away from the camera—so I could definitely be wrong, but might as well try and make a prop without that channel.

SO I came up with this...

...but only after I attached the bottom tube to the bottom disk and it was 2am so I didn't even think about how there would be no way to fit that tube into the base with the disk on top of it. In v2 I'll be fixing that by making that bottom tube a separate piece that screws on (too many parts? Maybe.)


PROBLEMS to be fixed in V2:

• Resize centrifuge holes (bottom disk holes might be smaller than top disk??)
• Add notch to center tube
• Fix threading between disks
• Make tube under the bottom disk threaded and separate
• Recount/recalculate indents on upper base

There are a lot of problems with this model, and the 3D model itself is a bit buggy, with the vertexes all over the place in size and number. This is because I did a lot of overcomplicated methods to get a result I know now I can do in 2-3 steps instead of 6, which is why, along with the errors listed above, I'll be redoing this entire thing, while preserving some parts that are simplified and still work well.

Any advice, critique, and observations would be welcome! Thank you!

 

[Mottrex]

I may be miss remembering (a strong possibility) but that looks like a spring.
Wasn't it sprung when Dennis( the scamp) showed Dodds the cannister at the cafe, I seem to remember it popping up but it's been a while since viewing the movie.

 

[PhantomForge]

View attachment 1489101
I may be miss remembering (a strong possibility) but that looks like a spring.
Wasn't it sprung when Dennis( the scamp) showed Dodds the cannister at the cafe, I seem to remember it popping up but it's been a while since viewing the movie.

Yes! There is a spring in there, but when I say I don't see it in the movie, I'm talking about that vent that SHOWS the spring, not the spring itself. My version still has a hallow section between the central cylinder and that outer cylinder for the spring, but no vent exposing the innards.

I can also very much be wrong about this, I just haven't seen that vent in any photos of the prop at any angle.

 

[Mottrex]

Yes! There is a spring in there, but when I say I don't see it in the movie, I'm talking about that vent that SHOWS the spring, not the spring itself. My version still has a hallow section between the central cylinder and that outer cylinder for the spring, but no vent exposing the innards. View attachment 1489262
I can also very much be wrong about this, I just haven't seen that vent in any photos of the prop at any angle.

Multiple Props used during filming I'm guessing with the Hero prop being the All singing version for close ups..

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Just going through the model I'd mocked up, looks like we were very similar on some of the measurements, which is encouraging! I had 20 indentation on the bottom (2 per vial) but I think my spacing is a bit far compared to your reference pic. I also had mine at 5mm diam, but 6 seems more likely (based on a 1/4" ball-end mill bit).

edit:

Also, on an 'ease of machining' train of thought, my money would be on there being 24, since that'd be 1 every 15°. 20 would be every 18°, but as said, they seem too far apart, and 22 would be 1 every ~16.36°, which sounds like a nightmare to index.

 

[Pyrotechnic]

Had a play with my model tonight. taken some more of my own measurements from various references, mixed in with a few of yours. Using 24 15x5mm grooves:

I then went through and 'inched' them (to the nearest nice mm) as I assume the original will have been spec'ed in imperial, and this is what I have so far:

 

[false teeth tec]

Thank you for all of this info. Very useful measurements. It all looks so good so far. Ive just ordered a barbasol stash can as the outer and waiting for that to arrive before I start making the innards, but these measurements will help a lot, so thanks for that.

 

[false teeth tec]

So after a little play on the lathe and mill I have ended up with this. I used a mixture of both the measurements from phantomforge and pyrotechnic from this thread but had to tweak some of them slightly to fit the whole thing into the stash can. The can looks good but the top isn’t white and the nozzle isn’t blue but that can be painted.

The diameter of the main body is 60mm to fit into the can, since the can already has a removable bottom, the edge is rolled which takes up a couple mm radius.
The centre post is 19mm dia which looks right.
The middle section which houses the spring is 25.4mm, also looks good.
The upper vial holder mid section (above the taper) is wider though as I think the original is, that’s 32mm.
All the taper measurements are as above.
Vial flanges are 4.4mm thick at the moment, I wanted to leave them a little oversized so I can see what it looks like with vials in place before I turn them down to final thickness (vials on order). They look fat at the moment and I was thinking that 3-3.5mm might look the best but we’ll see.
The lower base is 20mm tall total, I think this looks too tall but the rubber o ring might be making it look odd because that is only 2mm (only one I could find right now). I think the o ring should be 3mm and the grooves below it need to be tighter spaced. I think 18mm tall including the bottom rim would look better and a 2mm o ring may sit better with this height.
And finally the middle grooved section. This is all kinds of wrong and I made mistakes here. The height is 22mm and I think that is ok. I tried to make 22 6x18mm grooves but found out that the instructions to my rotary table are wrong. They say it’s a 1:90 ratio table, so I bought some dividing plates and followed the instructions for 22 divisions. Turns out that my rotary table is 1:72 ratio and the instructions useless but I’m an idiot for not checking that before cutting, I ended up with 18 (17.6) sections. So I made the grooves 7mm instead to close the spaces, but I don’t have a 7mm round end mill so had to use a regular end mill just to get a feel for the spacing. It looks totally wrong but this part will be re-done to 22 6x18mm round grooves to see how that looks.

Thanks again for sharing and I hope this is of some use to someone else. I’ll update once the part is redone and vial holes and vials in place.

 

[false teeth tec]

In comparison to the can.

 

[PhantomForge]

It's been a while, but that's partly because after Paragon announced their run of cryocans, I sort of decided to call it a day. The whole point was to make a cryocan as close as possible to the prop as I could get it since no replica on the market really met my expectations— and Paragon filled that void of desire.

BUT after I got the email that the cryocan was arriving soon, I decided I wanted to see how close I got just by looking at photos of the prop/best guesses— AND I was determined to finish this model before my Paragon Cryo arrived. I wanted there to be no mistake that I did NOT copy the model I will be having in-hand in a few days, and once I have it my work on this model is done. If I notice something inaccurate after I get the cryo? Too bad, model is complete and that chapter of my prop replicating endeavors is done.
SO I finished up my 2 year-old 3D model in Fusion 360, and decided I would shoot to make this printable rather than machined in aluminum.

I wanted to print this back when I was planning on getting it machined so I could test the model, but I never imagined I'd be printing FDM rather than SLA— but winning an x-1 carbon has changed things.
With printing in mind, I changed some things up from my understanding of the mechanism— for example, the spring system works with a screw in a hole on the side of the centrifuge holders that slots into a track, but now that I'm no longer trying for an end-all perfect metal replica, I decided to change things up in functionality as well. The screw is now a built in peg on the sliding part of the holder— on both sides to distribute the impact.

Not only that, but I went in and modeled my own centrifuge tubes (3D printing threading is a PAIN)

AND my own barbasol can, which I'm pretty happy with. Never imagined I'd be modeling the can+tubes, but I'm not about to buy $50 worth of centrifuge tubes in bulk for this little side project. Especially when I'm about to receive a high-quality one.

I'm currently working on my own barbasol label based on this vintage can I have, but that's taking some time. I originally scanned it by rolling it over my printer scan bed, but to get a better picture I took a video of it on a rotating display, and have been assembling the flat label frame-by-frame. After that I'll be modifying it in Illustrator/basically just tracing on top of it, and obviously I have to modify it to the "original" red design.

All in all, everything was fitting together quite well (I was pleasantly surprised by how well the printed can fit) and the mechanism was working great (if not a bit strong.)

Then a few hours of printing on the X1 later (and way too many test prints), some primer, paint, some assembly, and there we go!

I was in a bit of a rush so some parts are still drying, fairly messy, and require some touch ups so I'll get some fancy photos here later with the centrifuge tubes slotted in.

It's absolutely no substitute for an aluminum cryo, but I'm pretty pleased with it, and I'm excited to compare it side-by-side to see how I did with photo-based measuring, rather than holding it in hand (which I believe the folks in Paragon got to do?) And I think the coolest thing I might be able to do with these is print a bunch of them and bring them to a con in a leather bag, dressed as Dodgson. If someone says the magic word, they're getting a free cryocan.