Long Range Shuttle - Surak

Thanks for the feedback guys.
I finished up the shuttle hulls and did a video of the lights. The sequencing is too fast but I sped it up to make it easier to see. The final light pattern will be pretty slow except the top strobe will be timed to match the movie. I don't want a Christmas lights effect.
 
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Killer work - super clean, orderly, and the size/accuracy makes this thing amazing. I hope you bring it to Geek night in November!
 
This is such a beautiful project, and very interesting to be making it using acrylic rather than styrene. Did you find that you needed to account for the kerf of the laser in your blueprints to get everything to fit together properly? I am currently working on a similar prop project in acrylic on the laser cutter and haven't yet worked that part out.
 
Yes, I did account for the width and angle of the laser on all of the framework pieces. The pieces needed to fit together tightly enough that the 1/100th of an inch or so of the laser had an effect. I actually did a test early on cutting out a series of about 20 1" x 1/2" rectangles and pushed them together end to end to measure the resulting width. Measured the reduction in width carefully and divide by 20 to get the width of the laser beam. I then off set all of the drawings of the framework pieces larger by HALF this amount to get them to cut out exactly the size I needed. This worked pretty good. As far as the angle of the cut from the laser... There's nothing I know of to accommodate this. I used 1/8" square acrylic rod glued in along all 90-degree glued pieces to reinforce the joints and find them to be really strong.
Unfortunately most of the surface pieces on this, especially the nacelles are composed of compound curves out of plane with one another. Getting the skins right has been mostly trial and error with the errors being far larger than the width of the laser beam.
 
I've also noted the angle of the beam changes slightly depending on the position on the cutting bed - mostly noticeable on 1/4 acrylic... almost cuts at an angle... but it is pretty amazing the "kerf" change, depending on how you tweak speed/pulse/power. It's an art to get parts cutting the way you "need" them too some times.
 
I've also noted the angle of the beam changes slightly depending on the position on the cutting bed - mostly noticeable on 1/4 acrylic... almost cuts at an angle... but it is pretty amazing the "kerf" change, depending on how you tweak speed/pulse/power. It's an art to get parts cutting the way you "need" them too some times.

Yes, your beam will be focused right at the surface of your material (assuming you focused properly), so on thicker pieces I believe you'll get an upside down V shape to the laser beam's profile as it goes out of focus toward the bottom of the material. I believe it's just a matter of the optics involved rather than necessarily an issue of the position of the bed (though of course misalignment there could also introduce problems).
 
The top and front of the sled are done except for some of the side panels. I made a video of the lighting.

[video]https://youtu.be/yy0oCtAERSE[/video]
 
Update on the sled

2015-08-30 A - Copy.jpg
 
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Finally getting back to this project. After several passes with black to block out light coming through the clear hull and then going over that with white to lighten it up the sled has it's first color pass. One of many shades of pink to come. I'll be matching the original color scheme and weathering as much as possible.

IMG_9361 - Copy.jpg
 

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