Spacebobs Hal

[spacebob]

I've been thinking of making one of these for years,

I always thought I would probably use a coke bottle lens as they have worked very well on my other droid builds, they look great and of course are very cheap (free)
That is until I came across this in my local £ shoppe.

(Click the picture Dave)

It already looks like Hal, I bought it to see how it would compare to the real dimensions.
It turns out once cut to the right diameter, the plastic lens had the exact curve radius the real nikkor lens has so this build is now on. Sweet

Now I have to say this build would not be happening (in an accurate sense) without AP333s Fantastic research and build.
All dimensions, labels and info have been ripped from his thread Thank you AP.


Back to the £ shop to find something for the lens surround and found this mug with potential. So i chopped it up.


Here the lens is inserted into the cut up cup top, the surround is about 1.5 mm to big so I may have to forego the knurled detail to keep it right overall.
The printed detail is from AP again. Nice.

 

[Wayne R.]

Fantastic idea, I'd seen those in my local £ shop some time ago but wrote them off as every single one had a mark or scuff right in the middle of the dome.

 

[Darth Lars]

Interesting! I am definitely following this thread. Looks great so far!

 

[spacebob]

Well Wayne, most of those marks just wipe of, leaving just a little mark right on the top. That polished out easily just with a piece of clean cotton rag
I still picked the best one I could find though.

 

[spacebob]

Ok updates, yay.

Next I need a main body, I don’t like chipboard or mdf, and as I’m trying to do this on a tiny budget I can’t go for aluminium. The brushed effect I need is similar to woodgrain luckily I found a nice piece of engineered plywood faced with beech in my stash at work.


And cut it up.

Next I started looking for some aluminium lipping and although I had some plain flat bits that would have done,
a friend at work had something better squirreled away to make a new fence for his bandsaw. He had way too much really.


A deal was done.
Cutting it with a carpenters chop saw was a $!&£. I’m swearing.

I now need the turned ring around the main lens.
I have turned hardwoods and ply before but not resin or aluminium.
Apparently you can turn aluminium on a wood lathe but after cutting the edge lipping was so hard I decided to go lo-fi.


Back to the £ shoppe.
A cheap plastic soup mug and some cardboard.


Once the paint is on it will look ok

 

[spacebob]

We continue.
If cutting up the blue soup mug hadn't had the results I wanted, I would have been forced to cut up this.


Luckily for the bird it worked out.

I painted the ply body but the wood grain was to funky.


so i ran rough sandpaper down the edge of a rule to cut new grain, like so.

After painting again it was fine and moved on to fixing on the aluminium lipping.


This worked out nice, even though I had no slotted screws,
torx headed screws look like rivets which seemed better than cross headed ones.

Now its looking like Hal

 

[spacebob]

Ok, its kind of finished



the speaker panel is just a print out, I 'm not sure how to scratch build that yet


Its a real pain to photograph


Iv'e tried different lighting here,
Cheers Spacebob

 

[nick daring]

Love it!

 

[Darth Lars]

Looks great! I have acquired one of those camera dummies and am going to follow your example.

the speaker panel is just a print out, I 'm not sure how to scratch build that yet

The speaker panel reminds me a great deal of stripboard, but stripboard with correct hole spacing does not seem to exist.

 

[spacebob]

Thanks Darth Lars.

This really was a pleasure to make as it only took a couple of weeks of spare time due to AP333's amazing work getting all the research done for all of us lazy guys, but that's what this site is all about

Hal really is my favorite prop at the moment and he's looking at me right now, I'm getting worried, hope your one behaves itself.
If you have any questions or need more detailed pics I'll be happy to post them.

I'm working on converting the new near studio scale hasbro millennium falcon toy, the thread is in general modeling under - New BMF coming.
Lots of us are doing the same thing at the same time so check it out, its going to be a hell of a lot of work compared to Hal.

SB