Star Trek TOS Offensive/Defensive Ray Gun - Think Jedi's next work in progress

Think Jedi

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I've always loved the football-shaped ray gun from TOS. Although it's called an "Offensive/Defensive Ray Gun" in The Making of Star Trek and the Star Fleet Technical Manual, it's been featured in several episodes typically as a repair tool or scanner (The Squire of Gothos, Galileo 7, The Doomsday Machine, etc). I love the throwback, Buck Rogers vibe it has, so I've decided to start working on one.

I drew it up in SolidWorks as 4 parts:


  • the main body (the football)
  • a top the screws into place (allowing for fitting/accessing the electronics)
  • the emitter base, which screws into the base above
  • the clear emitter

I went ahead and printed up a prototype on my FDM printer just to get an idea of how it'll look. I took measurements from The Making of Star Trek (the measurements in the Tech Manual are inaccurate). It looks a little cartoony and toyish because of the rough texture and red/blue colors I printed it in, so you have to get past that. Also, the emitter nozzle failed to print the final segment of the tip, but that's fine as this is just a prototype. Imagine this silverish-grey, with a shiny silver emitter base and clear (and complete) emitter nozzle, with amazingly clean, smooth details. The reliefs on the side of the football will be red, as in the original prop. That's what the final product will look like when it's produced on a high-quality resin SLA printer. I will outfit this with a button to light up the tip, just like the original prop. I expect the resin one to be done in about a week and will post pics of it then

In the mean time, check out the pics of the original prop along with the pics of the FDM prototype and let me know what you think!

tJ

raygun9.jpgraygun6.jpgraygun7.jpg

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Just an update: I've had some other projects stacked up on the SLA printer, but I should be getting this one done by this weekend. Watch this thread for pics!

tJ
 
All parts produced and painted. Waiting for paint to dry. I just did some lights for the tip as well. Will be posting pics and vid of the completed prop within the next 2 days.

tJ
 
That is friggin' cool! Always liked that one.

A few years ago, I picked up some Easter egg candy holder things at Walgreens, and also some giant plastic Christmas lights at Menards that had a pretty good shape. I was gonna cut them up, glue, putty, sand.... They're still waiting for that. ;)
 
So I have made some tweaks and have decided that doing the main body in resin is way too expensive to produce. It takes half a container of resin. So I've done a body on an FDM printer with really good results. Cleanup is going well. I will post pics soon.

tJ
 
Have you thought about rotocasting them. It's small enough to do it by hand and it will only take about a fourth of what it would cost in resin as it'll be hollow.
 
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