Done / Completed Metal fifth element ZF-1 upgrade kit for Jake's kit

[Jamesfett]

Hey guys,
I made the final red button lenses today, I'm pretty happy with the result now, I managed to polish them quickly but pretty nicelly and I put some varnish inside to remove the cloudy effect that I had before.
you can also now see that there are 4 small "indents" on the perimeter of the red lens, just like on the original, those are to attach to the white base. they were not visible before.
took a bunch of photos to show as best as possible what I got:
View attachment 1563291
View attachment 1563292
View attachment 1563293
View attachment 1563294
View attachment 1563295

I hope you'll like it, that the best I could do with the time I had, but i think they turned out pretty OK

I'll be selling those on my website next to the kits for 8€. I hope that's ok, I know this is more expensive than a lens bought on an electronics store, but those are fitting the buttons, pretty accurate and they were quite a bit of work
cheers

 

[Jordicus]

That production lens legit looks like a mass manufactured part. Great work eethan!

 

[OlivierC]

wow! was this lens 3d-printed? I didn't know you could get such clean finish with clear resin

 

[Rex Talon]

"I hope this is okay, It's is the best I could do"

*Posts a perfect copy down to the 100000th*

This guy

 

[eethan]

hey Olivier, yes the lens and white support piece are resin printed, then sanded, polished and varnished on the inside. it's not as clean out of the printer, but yes, it's pretty awesome what you can do with a resin printer now there was no way I could have done my run of death star dome light without for instance

ahah, Sorry Rex Talon, no, but they are not perfect I swear! you can do cool stuff with a resin printer, but they are clearly not industrial quality still!
cheers guys

 

[eethan]

Hey guys,

final run photo!

and some photos of the assembled and painted kit on my ZF-1 to show what it can look like on a basic kit from Jake, not a deluxe! will be even better with the deluxe, imagine that!

Sadly, I can't offer the paint on the kits, I'm really too bad with an airbrush and my result after a lot of struggle is not acceptable for a run. It would also be a LOT of work to paint all the parts for me so I have to abandon that idea, I have done quite a bit of tests showed in my WIP thread, I hope it helps people decide what to do on theirs. I used the Edding blue refill bottle with an airbrush in the end and the result is pretty good, although very fragile. It can also be applied directly with the markers if you want something really easy and want to weather it afterwards, as the finish is not going to be as clean as the airbrush.
Of course, there are lots of other brands of markers, transparent varnishes that can also be applied with the aribrush.
this is a very fragile finish also, so it will either age and weather pretty quickly and you are ok with that, or you'll need to clear coat it I guess.

cheers

 

[eethan]

Studio photos of the final parts:

 

[Jordicus]

eethan That table is an absolute work of art! You've got so far above and beyond, it's truly amazing! Fantastic work, sir. Fantastic!

 

[Generalurko]

Any idea yet on when you're going to actually start allowing us to order these beauties?

 

[eethan]

Any idea yet on when you're going to actually start allowing us to order these beauties?

ahah, very soon, but I try to avoid discussing it in public around the end to avoid snipers to get the kits instead of you guys from the list ;-)

 

[MandoJedi]

Excellent work! I think you just might have this machining thing down pat!

 

[eethan]

hey guys, as just showed on the WIP thread, I did an additional part today and managed to do a few extras to put on my website at the same time as the kits,

Upgrading with metal parts Jake's ZF-1 kit

yes, the 800 should be the same ink, they just have a larger tip. I just checked as well, the orange exists even in the 500 series, it's just not sold by amazon in France so I couldn't order it. and there is not that much of a gradient, it's pretty much a bit darker just next to the base, maybe...

www.therpf.com

small little buggers! they were a bit more involved to do than I imagined, as always.
they will be available as a set of 4 for 30€
same as the other yellow parts, they look great with a bit of yellow marker
cheers

 

[Jordicus]

eethan , you read my mind! I was wondering how the color match was going to go with the yellow, if all the other yellow pieces were metal and this one was 3d printed! Great work sir, I hope they weren't too complicated!

 

[eethan]

eethan , you read my mind! I was wondering how the color match was going to go with the yellow, if all the other yellow pieces were metal and this one was 3d printed! Great work sir, I hope they weren't too complicated!

well there you go!
well, they are not really difficult but they are quite involved in number of opperations and the number of time I had to change from the lathe, to threading, to cutting on the circular saw, back to the lathe... and there are 4 per set, so quite a number of parts to make! so all that considered, I managed to do only 4 sets for sale and one for me today, I was hoping to do more!
But yeah, i'm personally happy to have that on my ZF-1 so I hope others will enjoy as well
cheers

 

[Generalurko]

Oh yeah, definitely like those. Put me down for a set.

 

[eethan]

Hello guys,
the first half of the kits is sold, thank you very much,
I'm really sorry if this wasn't the organization you were hoping for, I'm a really small company and just doing my best to please everyone, I handled the notice for the first sale by PM with everyone from the list in order to avoid anyone exterior to be aware and snipe a set and I thought this was the best solution.
Someone really didn't like it and i'm really really sorry, this was really not my intention and I was really thinking this was the best way.
I arranged a lot of group buys for that projects to try to make it easy for everyone and bought everything that people from the list told me they wanted, this is a big risk for me as anything unsold because someone changes his mind, is on me after the facts. I'm just taking that risk on me because this was all fun to me and I was trying to make a good experience for everyone, I'm so sorry if this wasn't the case for anyone.

I'm sorry that the first half sold out so quick if you missed out, but there will be 9 more as soon as I receive the extra clippard parts that I'm waiting for.
I decided at first to do 18 kits without knowing the full interest as it was a bit slow to come; and at the end, I had exactly 18 people on the list. One of the 18 people hasn't been responding for a while so there has always been enough for everyone normally and I didn't expect any drama.

I'm doing this job for the fun of it and to bring really exciting props to the community, I'm really all about the positivity of that, I quit my old job for that because it wasn't fullfilling so trust me about that

I hope most of you guys will still enjoy and I'm so sorry for any stress this might have caused. I said by PM that I would work with you for any issue and I will!

cheers and thank you all for your continued support all along that run, it meant a lot to me
Matthieu

 

[Generalurko]

Hmm... yeah, don't know how to "fix" this either. Most sellers just PM the people on the list and then they pay. Because you want us to go through your website, that opens up a whole new can of worms, I guess.
There's always a chance someone happens on it when you release a batch and buys one, and then one of the 18 people are SoL. Or if someone on the PM list tells someone that's not on the list and THAT person buys one? I don't know.
Can you tell by the sales if someone not on the list bought one? If so, can you cancel their order?
Or is it just people further back in the queue got their kit ahead of those earlier in the queue? I know this is a "Microwave Society" where everyone wants things NOW, but if everyone who signed up for kits gets theirs eventually, I don't see the big deal. And as long as I get one, I'll be happy to be the last in line.
Maybe you could make a purchase page that's not viewable to the general public and then send the link to just the first 5 people, then once they've paid or been given a fair chance to pay (48 hours?), then send a link (maybe a whole new link?) to the next 5 people, and so on. Just a thought.
Thanks!

 

[eethan]

Hmm... yeah, don't know how to "fix" this either. Most sellers just PM the people on the list and then they pay. Because you want us to go through your website, that opens up a whole new can of worms, I guess.
There's always a chance someone happens on it when you release a batch and buys one, and then one of the 18 people are SoL. Or if someone on the PM list tells someone that's not on the list and THAT person buys one? I don't know.
Can you tell by the sales if someone not on the list bought one? If so, can you cancel their order?
Or is it just people further back in the queue got their kit ahead of those earlier in the queue? I know this is a "Microwave Society" where everyone wants things NOW, but if everyone who signed up for kits gets theirs eventually, I don't see the big deal. And as long as I get one, I'll be happy to be the last in line.
Maybe you could make a purchase page that's not viewable to the general public and then send the link to just the first 5 people, then once they've paid or been given a fair chance to pay (48 hours?), then send a link (maybe a whole new link?) to the next 5 people, and so on. Just a thought.
Thanks!

I have worked extremely hard to try to make possible for everyone to get everything they wanted, including a lot of extra options and real parts that i paid up front for people that wanted them without asking them any money.
I'm sorry that you feel the website thing is complicating things, it is the only legal way for me in France as everything has to be invoiced with sequenced invoice numbers and that can only work through my website. I can never take a preorder because of that for instance and also, will never because that would add too much stress to have money from people up front. I always pay everything up front myself to try to have everyone happy and no one stress because they pre-ordered something that they don't get like we see very often on that forum sadly.

I already did what you are saying for the 5 red buttons that I had, i contacted people one by one, waited for an answer, then moved on to the next in the list, it took me the whole week end for 5 buttons, but I did it! I will not do it again though

anyways, now I realized that I forgot to communicate about that,
for anyone that wanted a red button, the best solution now that they increased so much is to buy them directly through the RS components website, apparently shipping costs is not that much and it will be cheaper that way as I would have to pay import taxes for those myself before re-selling them, you can find them here:

Welcome to RS AMERICA

if you need a red lens, those are available on my website at the same time as the kits themselves.

once again people, I'm really trying my best, i worked extremely hard on this project and added a lot of options as I wanted everyone to get as much as possible for their cool props, and it seems to have back fired sadly.
I hope most of you will be happy, and even if the way I handled that was not perfect, it ensured that no one else got a kit that wasn't on the list since everybody was already signed up to my website a few days ago and only people from the list knew about the date.

cheers

 

[Generalurko]

I personally don't mind going through the website. Though you can probably see where it did complicate things. But if that's what you have to do for all the record keeping and financing that your Government requires, then that's what you have to do. And us crazy prop makers and fans, if we want your AWESOME parts, then we need to follow those steps to get them. ;P
People get disappointed about this stuff. But in the grand scheme of things, does it matter? So having some perspective on this is a good thing. If I don't get a kit, will I be disappointed? Definitely. But compare it to losing a loved one in an accident or from cancer... and it's really no big deal not getting a kit.
If everyone steps back, chills, and actually uses their brain to THINK, I'm sure they'll all recognize the incredible job you did here... not just the actual parts, but the research, setting things up (be it lathes or French-Gov-Compliant record keeping), the communication, and about a zillion other things we don't even realize you're doing. And if someone can't see that, then F-em, you didn't need them.
Hang in there and chin up!

 

[MandoJedi]

I personally don't mind going through the website. Though you can probably see where it did complicate things. But if that's what you have to do for all the record keeping and financing that your Government requires, then that's what you have to do. And us crazy prop makers and fans, if we want your AWESOME parts, then we need to follow those steps to get them. ;P
People get disappointed about this stuff. But in the grand scheme of things, does it matter? So having some perspective on this is a good thing. If I don't get a kit, will I be disappointed? Definitely. But compare it to losing a loved one in an accident or from cancer... and it's really no big deal not getting a kit.
If everyone steps back, chills, and actually uses their brain to THINK, I'm sure they'll all recognize the incredible job you did here... not just the actual parts, but the research, setting things up (be it lathes or French-Gov-Compliant record keeping), the communication, and about a zillion other things we don't even realize you're doing. And if someone can't see that, then F-em, you didn't need them.
Hang in there and chin up!

WHAT HE SAID!