Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call it.

On Rebeldroids.net, SavageCreature made some plans for a 3Dprinted/flat styrene Fusion Generator so I thought I’d make a build to beta test the plans. That’s resulted in some refinement to the plans and discovery of still a few more quirks that could be fixed, but it’s certainly buildable now. I’ve got a more detailed build log there, but I thought I may as well share here.

Before I back up and mention some details, here’s a pix of how far I’ve gotten so far:
[SUB]
[/SUB] [SUB]
[/SUB]
Here’s an exploded view of the parts for this build (Credit:SavageCreature)

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

First, of course, I took a good look at SavageCreature's plans and tried to understand everything, which led to asking a bunch of questions. Then because I can't leave well enough alone, of course, and because I wanted to cut the flat parts on a laser cutter instead of a CnC, I made my own modifications. I tweaked both the flat parts for laser cutting and the 3D parts, though they're still basically the same as his original plans. I even laser cut the top vanes that he originally called for 3D printing.

The laser cut sheets look kind of cool. This is the first time I've done this, and the styrene cut inconsistently, sometimes burning a little too much. The first attempt had some scaling errors, but eventually we got that all sorted out for some good cuts. Parts were cut on both an Epilog and a Universal laser cutter. (Depending on which was in use on the days I was cutting).



I also sent a bunch of 3D parts to the printer. The colors are pretty random, but it'll all get covered with a primer anyway.



I have a print lab @ work, and also a Flashforge and a CR-10 printer, so the parts came from a variety of printers. I printed some of the greeblies at .1mm, but most at .2mm layer height.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

After some effort fixing the mis-sized bits, the "flat pack" parts went together pretty smoothly. Here I did a test fit of the parts



I'd cut the rings as a single part, so it was pretty straightforward to stick the supports on the base platform, then add the horizontal rings. I used a thin solvent to wick into the gaps and glue those parts together.

After that I wrapped the vertical bands around the sides, holding them with painter's tape to dry.



The trickiest bit was the slanted band. Of course the laser cuts it with a nearly rectangular cross section, but it should be about 45 degrees on the top and bottom edge. So I filed the top and bottom edges by eye until it looked like a parallelogram. It fit reasonably well after gluing.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - Droid Charger

After seeing that the styrene bits were going to fit, I got started on the top section. The top was printed a while back, but I’d held off assembling it because of the original scaling error with some of the styrene flat pack parts. I didn’t want to end up with something that wouldn’t fit!

SavageCreature’s plans have decent top sections, but of course I had to tweak them myself. I wanted tabs to help align the sections better during assembly, so I added a little lip under the top of one edge. Also, I figured that there’s room for an inner ring that would fit inside the styrene ring. In addition I had trouble with some sheering of the ABS on the printer I used, so I’d added some supports, which the lip was one of.



Anyway, when I finally got around to fitting them together,they fit pretty much perfectly. I didn’teven clean up the edges much, figuring my solvent would help seat the tabs. The whole thing held itselftogether. I love it when it works like I expected!

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - Droid Charger

Another point where I deviated from SavageCreature's plans was with the top fins. He'd been printing top parts, and they go on the top, so he just threw them in with the top parts. I realized that they were basically the 3mm - 1/8th" width as the styrene stock, so I decided to cut them with the laser instead. It was certainly faster to cut them than to print them. (I did print a few just because they were there) As you can see, they're very similar either way.

.

I test fit the laser cut vane, it was a little tight, but it fit fine - the solvent I used as a glue helped squish out that little bit extra.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

I got a tiny bit out-of-order there. To assemble and glue the top, I did the test fit, then bonded one panel at a time going around the circle. As the sections dried, I added the vanes a couple sections back. Since I had a couple 3D printed vanes, I decided to use one of those as well, just to see if there's much difference in the final model (I expect it won't be noticeable).



I did end up clamping a few, particularly toward the end. Apparently things got tighter with my gluing. Additionally I kind of messed up because "the plan" for the original model was to have the printed lid rest on top of the styrene part. That way it can be opened to get at the charger or other parts presumed to be inside the fusion reactor. Unfortunately my assembly technique cased the two parts to be bonded together.

You also might note the varied colors of my 3D printed parts. Basically I sent them to a lab on different printers and ended up with random colors. I expect all of that to be hidden by the primer. I'll be OK if there's a little shading or something, I doubt it'll be noticeable.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

http://www.rebeldroids.net/forum/showthread.php?tid=302&page=7Next I spent some time on "the grill" middle section. I was a bit concerned that the flat panel for the middle round bit wasn't round. Especially since when you wrap it up it wanted to bend more on the thin strips than the thicker parts. So, before assembling I pulled the whole thing over the corner of a table edge and pressed it into a little bit rounded shape. That seemed to work pretty well.

Another issue with the grill is that it has 10 rings around it. Most of those are split into 2 halves, but I deviated from the original plans and cut one as a complete circle. SavageCreature glued all the ring halves together and then clamped each one in a process he described as "painfully slow". I tend to prefer to be lazier than that, so I wondered if I could "just" alternate where the ring gaps were. Each halve should hold half of the thing in place, and if that alternates, it seems like the whole thing should be pretty round. Particularly since I was using MEK to "glue" the styrene together (hey, I have a bunch just sitting here) it seemed like that would wick in.

So I went ahead and did that, rotating each ring 1/8th of a turn from the ring before it. The halves fit pretty tightly into the slots, so it worked pretty well. The black marks where my halves are joined (I'd made a half-hearted attempt to glue the rings with the wrong glue, so they're black on the ends even though they didn't stay together).

After pressing them all into place, I applied my nasty chemical to the joins. It worked pretty well and was fairly quick to put together this way.



I did get a little confused by Savage's diagram, so I mistakenly don't have the top ring in that picture, it's supposed to go just under the ring that is (fortunately just resting) on the top.

Of course, after doing that I had to go ahead and stick the top on to see how it's going. The top also has the "window panel" K glued to it and the ring that is resting on the top of the above picture. I'll be able to remove the top at this seem when I'm done (since I screwed up and bonded the top 3D printed parts to the laser cut top panel).



(There's more detail on my Rebeldroids Build Thread)

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

Looks great so far!

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

Thanks!

My next step was slathering everything with filler. I got rather a lot on the body & haven't gotten around to sanding that yet.



Don't have a photo of the bondo on the top, but after sanding I placed a bunch of parts. A couple of them I tweaked from SavageCreature's plans.

It's starting to look like something!



Next step primer. I don't have the bottom lid parts all together as I need to reprint some, so it's only the top for now. The center cap I'm leaving removable in case it's useful for servicing. (I might glue it later)



Starting to get there! I'll be happy if it ends up in the same league as Valor's scratch build.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

this is a reason why i need a 3d printer!! this is coming together awesome!!

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

halliwax said:

this is a reason why i need a 3d printer!! this is coming together awesome!!

Click to expand...

And a laser cutter ;-) Thanks

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

Coming along nicely...it's a much more complex piece than you'd think at first glance and there's so few decent reference pix out there. I scratch built mine from mostly cheapo parts on fleabay.. I found too many of the pieces were not suitable to print or laser cut

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

Thanks!

Yours looks cool. I think Savage's flat pack is pretty good (& the 3D parts). Toughest bit as far as the machining goes is I think the big curvy top parts. Bigger things are always hard to print.

The top of the original is clearly an industrial fan impeller of some sort and we even found several that seem "close", but unfortunately nothing really seemed to be an exact match. I'd've been thrilled if we'd been able to find that! (I mean, it's cool as it is, but it's always fun to find something). I found one thing once...

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

I got distracted trying to find the right size hoses and making sure my printed parts would work, so I also picked up a light. The bottom's still a mess, but I wanted to see how my translucent filament hose couplings would work out... The stills from the movie show that it's glowing a little around the hose, so I was hoping I'd get a little of that effect. I'm really please with how that bit looks, I think it'll be cool.



However this test did make it pretty apparent that I have a few light leaks I need to deal with



Took care of those with a little more paint.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

Ugh, the top got knocked off the table. I thought nothing happened to it, but later I showed it to some folks and saw some cracks. Easy to fix but a little annoying....

I hadn't gotten further with priming because I needed to reprint some of the greebles to fit my new thinking about attaching the hose.



And the base got sanded and filled enough finally that it could be primed as well.



The base has 32 little greebles to place, so I made some templates with a printer and laser cutter to show me some tick marks where the things go. I marked the base with a pencil where those go. I had a minor setback so the greebles aren't there yet.



Some of the base is "rough" - I sort of expected to use more putty, but my wife thought it'd look cool with the weathering, so we'll see. The goal is to have it look like some piece of camping equipment that's been well used, so I think we'll accomplish that.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

This is coming together phenomenal!!!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

A digression of a bit... The reference photos are all mixed up, but Luke did plug in this thing to Artoo. It seems like there's a coiled cable between the two. After poking around a lot, I found this cable.

(Note: this is just for display, not intended for power).

I haven't really found the best "jacks", but for now I'm going to use a 1/4" stereo jack. It's about the right diameter and I can hide the socket for it in the base of one of the hose fittings. It looked like the movie one was just jammed in the tangle of wires somewhere, but I'd like to "plug" it in (even if there's no electricity).

Reasonably pleased with the cord (6' coiled, 15' stretched out). Not as happy with the plugs, maybe I'll find something better.



And here's one of the normal hose fittings next to one of the modified ones intended to cover the 1/4" jack, and showing it plugged into the jack. I'll be able to remove this and plug in the cord, or leave this in and have no cord.

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

Well, oops, the place I wanted to put my socket had one of the internal supports directly behind it. I guess I should've planned better!



And then, of course, trying to dig a spot large enough for that huge socket caused even more damage. Fortunately there was a little left to mount to, and then filled in the rest of the void with putty to make it more stable. (it wasn't this big, the putty goes a little further to even stuff out).

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

So... I mentioned the clear upper hoses and mounts earlier. The upper hoses are "stiff" as they come, but I had the idea of heating it with the hot air gun. That softened pretty quickly, but they stiffened in the right place and don't lift the top any more Top hoses are 7

Re: Kresty's Dagobah Fusion Generator / Reactor / Furnace - whatever you want to call

Daaaaaang! I like that plug setup!


Sent from my iPhone using Tapatalk