Monkey540
Sr Member
When I first got into 3D modelling and printing again, I had a few projects that I really wanted to see come to life, so far the Opening Golden Snitch was a success, so here was the next project.
THE UNLOCKING JEDI HOLOCRON
from Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Animated)
The intention was to make the prop be able to be in this orientation:
Then by removing the corners, it would look like this:
Finally, you could reattach the corners to be in the "unlocked" configuration like this:
After a few trys to model the holocron in different ways (interlocking pieces, groups, etc.) it boiled down to 4 unique pieces:
- 1 Core
- 8 Corners
- 6 Side pieces
- 8 Corner Side pieces
I decided to have the core printed via shapeways to make sure I got nice clean edges and got the corners and side pieces printed locally on a home printer.
Here's how the core came out:
The corners and sides came out good, needed some cleanup but good.
The next step was to figure out how to make the corners be able to change from locked to unlocked while remaining hidden...ish. My friend Hydin suggested to me to use magnets and I ran with it and discovered the overlap pattern between the two positions.
I ordered magnets:
Grade N52, 1/16"dia x 1/32" thick Rare Earth Neodymium Disc Magnets
And I got myself a hand drill since I only needed the hole to be about 1mm deep.
Here's before I started up:
I worked on the magnets for a LONG time and finally finished them, and it looked like this:
And the Unlocking worked:
Next step was paint, I painted everything black, then used rub 'n buff gold leaf:
The next part was very annoying and was so much cutting plexiglass, sanded one side, painted it with Tamiya tranparent blue paint, and glued the panels on the inside of the core and corners.
When all but one corner was glued on the core, it looked like this:
I had to figure out something to install the last panel to be inside the pull it up against the inside of the core.
Here's what I did:
I drilled a hole with my hand drill in a position that would be covered by the corner side piece and used an unbent paperclip to position and pull the piece into place.
Well, that's about it, now for the final piece in it's 3 modes:
Locked:
Unlocking:
Unlocked:
A few of the plexiglass pieces cracked a bit, and my gluing skills arn't the best but I'm very happy with the way it turned out, check out my short videos of the modes:
Locked:
[video]https://youtu.be/gJc23P2uyCk[/video]
Unlocking:
[video]https://youtu.be/wPWYwIuto6E[/video]
Unlocked:
[video]https://youtu.be/YCitWhXHN2w[/video]
Here are the STL files I made for anyone who would like to try and make their own, please post if you do.
View attachment Unlocking Holocron STL files by Dan B.zip
THE UNLOCKING JEDI HOLOCRON
from Star Wars: The Clone Wars (Animated)
The intention was to make the prop be able to be in this orientation:
Then by removing the corners, it would look like this:
Finally, you could reattach the corners to be in the "unlocked" configuration like this:
After a few trys to model the holocron in different ways (interlocking pieces, groups, etc.) it boiled down to 4 unique pieces:
- 1 Core
- 8 Corners
- 6 Side pieces
- 8 Corner Side pieces
I decided to have the core printed via shapeways to make sure I got nice clean edges and got the corners and side pieces printed locally on a home printer.
Here's how the core came out:
The corners and sides came out good, needed some cleanup but good.
The next step was to figure out how to make the corners be able to change from locked to unlocked while remaining hidden...ish. My friend Hydin suggested to me to use magnets and I ran with it and discovered the overlap pattern between the two positions.
I ordered magnets:
Grade N52, 1/16"dia x 1/32" thick Rare Earth Neodymium Disc Magnets
And I got myself a hand drill since I only needed the hole to be about 1mm deep.
Here's before I started up:
I worked on the magnets for a LONG time and finally finished them, and it looked like this:
And the Unlocking worked:
Next step was paint, I painted everything black, then used rub 'n buff gold leaf:
The next part was very annoying and was so much cutting plexiglass, sanded one side, painted it with Tamiya tranparent blue paint, and glued the panels on the inside of the core and corners.
When all but one corner was glued on the core, it looked like this:
I had to figure out something to install the last panel to be inside the pull it up against the inside of the core.
Here's what I did:
I drilled a hole with my hand drill in a position that would be covered by the corner side piece and used an unbent paperclip to position and pull the piece into place.
Well, that's about it, now for the final piece in it's 3 modes:
Locked:
Unlocking:
Unlocked:
A few of the plexiglass pieces cracked a bit, and my gluing skills arn't the best but I'm very happy with the way it turned out, check out my short videos of the modes:
Locked:
[video]https://youtu.be/gJc23P2uyCk[/video]
Unlocking:
[video]https://youtu.be/wPWYwIuto6E[/video]
Unlocked:
[video]https://youtu.be/YCitWhXHN2w[/video]
Here are the STL files I made for anyone who would like to try and make their own, please post if you do.
View attachment Unlocking Holocron STL files by Dan B.zip
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