Dagobah Fusion Reactor-Scratch Build

I’d like to first start off by giving thanks to the following for making this happen:

Savage- for the awesome Fusion Reactor thread ( On Astromech dot net ) with tons of helpful info and reference pics.
Kevin Holme- For having a 60th birthday party in Chicago and inviting me to join.
American Airlines ( And Mike Kelley too for that matter… ) – for the 5 hour layover in Chicago that gave me time to read the 30 something pages of the Fusion thread.


Now … On with the build. I wasn’t going to really document this at first because most everyone is printing these. But, I figured there may be another builder or two that will be scratch building and maybe this might help.

Started by drawing a full size plan and making some ¼’’ MDF templates. I have some ¾’’ Baltic birch that I’ll be using for the base.
Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr
Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Then routed out all my round parts…
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Next up, I spent what seemed like forever cutting out hardwood for spacers. These spacers will go in between each vent to create the illusion of one solid vertical piece when it’s done.
Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Then start stacking….
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Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

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Next, I beveled the base. I took most of the material off with a 45 degree router bit. Then I just belt sanded the rest

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Then stacked em up. Glue and nail gun to get these together.

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

I bought some 4’’ pvc and two caps for attaching the lid to the base. This will later allow me to have something to wrap the LED strips around as well. I forgot to take pics, but you can see that I added large holes in the bottom to later allow the LED orange to escape into the clear tubes coming out the side.
Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Also added threaded rod for the hose attachments
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Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

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Next up is the lid.

Drew it out on ¼’’ MDF

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Cut out a bunch of ribs for the shape of the dish

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Wrapped them around the PVC core

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After gluing the ribs down and shooting them with a micro pin nailer, I filled the gaps with liquid nails

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Then after a day or so of drying, I skimmed it with bondo and sanded it

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Then added the fins and dowels for the greeblies. This will allow the juice caps something to be glued and nailed to.

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

And yeah… those greeblies really did come from my kids’ lunches

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Next up, I added the second row of greeblies to the lid. I used metal tubing, plastic couplers and PVC for the outer layer.

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Mounted another PVC cap under the lid. This will allow the lid to attach to the main housing easily.

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Next up, I made a form to bend some styrene to. This was the only way I could think to make those T nut looking things hanging down from the lid

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Score and snap the styrene into strips with a hole in the middle for attaching later

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Center it over the form and then heat gun it until it’s formable. Press it down against the form and within a few seconds, it dries in place

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Too easy….

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Primer and then a couple layers of aluminum
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Then a heavy layer of black. About 10 minutes later, scuff with a pad in areas to get a slightly weathered look.

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Then I went to Home Depot and looked in the picture hanging area. They sell this copper wire that’s perfect for making your own coils. You need to buy two roles because each coil is about 3 feet of wire.

Just wrap it around a ½” dowel and you can make your own coils easily
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And here it is…

by chris stephens, on Flickr


I bought LED strips on amazon and wrapped them around the PVC. The lens material is just a thin plastic I bought at TAP Plastics. You can get a 2'X4' sheet for around $4. One side was already scuffed up, so I took an orbital sander to the smooth side to make it look better. Also used 2 layers to defuse the LED's

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr

Untitled by chris stephens, on Flickr


And now that it's done, it just sits in the corner with the rest of my stuff not allowed in the house.....

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You know what I’m going to say!! Love it greedo, u are truly an artist!!


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Hey greedo ! WOW! That's a whole lot of cutting out little wood bits! It's amazing how they all came together! I don't know if I'm supposed to be excited for you, or saddened that you have to mope out to the garage to enjoy it? :cry

Your kids must think you have the coolest garage on the planet though! Too bad you can't convince the missus to allow you to put one R2 unit in each kid's room to act as a nightlight or something.

Even though you're finished, I might go back and add some more LEDs to the inside and brighten it up a bit more. Maybe if it threw enough light to eat by you could bring it back into the kitchen again and have Dagobah Dinner Days. Cream of Mushroom soup with asparagus and French Onions, along with beef stew and maybe some Cheddar Bay Biscuits... it'd totally look like a Yoda's Hut Supper and if the kids are young enough you'll get Luke's reaction to Yoda's cooking across their faces when they hear asapragus is on the menu! :lol You can tell them they have to eat the asaragus if they want the biscuits.

Great build! I hope you get to enjoy it beyond the garage floor.

Beautiful, awesome build !!

Very nice build!

R2 in carbonite -

Dan

3DImpact said:

R2 in carbonite -

Click to expand...

Hey 3DImpact ! I think it's R5-D4, the build thread is his signature. Though it looks like @greedo 's got some pic link rebuilding to do.

Ridire Firean said:

Hey @3DImpact ! I think it's R5-D4, the build thread is his signature. Though it looks like @greedo 's got some pic link rebuilding to do.

Click to expand...

Yes.... I need to change my signature to **** you Photobucket.

but yeah... that's an R5 in Carbonite. One of my favorite builds ever. I'll eventually update the thread, but here he is an

RIC by chris stephens, on Flickr

Amazing work Greedo! You always inspire me to go build something.

Awesome job!

great craftsmanship, that came out awesome!! Looks so nice lit up too

That carbonite R5 is freakin' awesome.I love when people make other characters in carbonite. There's someone working on Groot in carbonite that's really great. THe fusion reactor came out really well too.

This is absolutely awesome! been waiting to tackle this project for a while now, hopefully i will follow in your footsteps soon

Smokin'.

Prett-ay prett-ay prett-ay good! That's pretty good!

Most impressive!

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This came out incredible! Do you plan on doing any aging on it? As if it was pulled out from the swamp?

This thing looks TOP NOTCH. I may have to build one myself eventually... Thanks for sharing!


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