What I really need is a droid that understands the binary language of moisture vaporators.
The Moisture Vaporator from Star Wars: A New Hope is such an iconic set piece. Spread out over the vast desert plain of Tatooine behind the Lars homestead they looked both alien and familiar, being reminiscent of oil wells dotting the Arabian plains. Building a model of the Vaporator seemed to be a good addition to my Star Wars collection.
The first step was research. There aren't a lot of good photos of the Episode Four Vaporators, there are a bunch of the Vaporators from Episode One which are still standing in the Tunisian desert but I wanted to base mine on the original. But they are pretty simple objects and one fairly clear photo provided most of the info needed. There was also a copy of the blueprint for the Vaporator in the Star Wars Blueprints book which helped with overall dimensions and proportions.Using these as guides I created a 3D model of the Vaporator using Rhino modeling software.
The computer model allowed me to work out which parts would be made from scratch and which parts would be 3D printed. In the end most of the structure was built up out of acrylic and most of the detail parts were 3D printed.
There was no particular scale the model needed to be, I wanted it to be large enough to look impressive but not too big as to be unwieldy. Originally I thought about making it 1/6 scale, which would have gone great with Sideshow's 1/6 scale Luke figure. But at that scale the Vaporator would have been 38 inches tall! Too big. I also wanted a scale that would be practical to mold and cast... I mean, what good is a Moisture Farm with only one Vaporator? I settled on 1/12 scale, which made the Vap 19 inches tall, and Bandai also has a 1/12 scale Luke figure that I could display with it for a sense of scale.
The first step was to turn the various round parts of the body out of acrylic on a machine lathe. Rather than turn the sections together I decided to turn each part separately and the stack them together on a core. The cube section was built up out of 1/4 inch thick acrylic sheet.
The fine detailed parts were mostly 3D printed. Some of the parts were attached to the main body to be cast in place while others would be molded and cast separately to be assembled later.
All the main body parts were disassembled, primed and sanded smooth, then reassembled into three major sections for molding,; the Base, the large Main Body and the smaller Upper Body.
Here is are all the pattern parts fit together prior to molding. The three vertical Wing pipes were made out of brass tubing with 3D printed details. It was so cool to see the whole thing together for the first time!
Next step... molding and casting.
The Moisture Vaporator from Star Wars: A New Hope is such an iconic set piece. Spread out over the vast desert plain of Tatooine behind the Lars homestead they looked both alien and familiar, being reminiscent of oil wells dotting the Arabian plains. Building a model of the Vaporator seemed to be a good addition to my Star Wars collection.
The first step was research. There aren't a lot of good photos of the Episode Four Vaporators, there are a bunch of the Vaporators from Episode One which are still standing in the Tunisian desert but I wanted to base mine on the original. But they are pretty simple objects and one fairly clear photo provided most of the info needed. There was also a copy of the blueprint for the Vaporator in the Star Wars Blueprints book which helped with overall dimensions and proportions.Using these as guides I created a 3D model of the Vaporator using Rhino modeling software.
The computer model allowed me to work out which parts would be made from scratch and which parts would be 3D printed. In the end most of the structure was built up out of acrylic and most of the detail parts were 3D printed.
There was no particular scale the model needed to be, I wanted it to be large enough to look impressive but not too big as to be unwieldy. Originally I thought about making it 1/6 scale, which would have gone great with Sideshow's 1/6 scale Luke figure. But at that scale the Vaporator would have been 38 inches tall! Too big. I also wanted a scale that would be practical to mold and cast... I mean, what good is a Moisture Farm with only one Vaporator? I settled on 1/12 scale, which made the Vap 19 inches tall, and Bandai also has a 1/12 scale Luke figure that I could display with it for a sense of scale.
The first step was to turn the various round parts of the body out of acrylic on a machine lathe. Rather than turn the sections together I decided to turn each part separately and the stack them together on a core. The cube section was built up out of 1/4 inch thick acrylic sheet.
The fine detailed parts were mostly 3D printed. Some of the parts were attached to the main body to be cast in place while others would be molded and cast separately to be assembled later.
All the main body parts were disassembled, primed and sanded smooth, then reassembled into three major sections for molding,; the Base, the large Main Body and the smaller Upper Body.
Here is are all the pattern parts fit together prior to molding. The three vertical Wing pipes were made out of brass tubing with 3D printed details. It was so cool to see the whole thing together for the first time!
Next step... molding and casting.