Work in Progress: Neutrino Probe – Molding

tn_neutrino_probe_wip_6

If you want to make more than one unit of any given prop replica, it is inevitable to make molds of all the parts you need. This way you’ll be able to make multiple resin casts of each piece. For the Neutrino Probe, this presented a few unique challenges I had to tackle along the way due to the special nature of the body, its prototype parts and the fact that I wanted to put electronics in there. In this blog post I’ll show you exactly what I thought would work, what did’t work and – most importantly – what I ended up doing. [More…]

Work in Progress: Voyager Desktop Computer

tn_voy_desktop_wip

Following my recent “show-off” post presenting my Voyager Desktop Computer, let’s now have a detailed look at how I built this prop, going through every step, from the raw parts all the way to the finished unit, covering the concepts of different aspects of the prop, the construction of several custom parts, the installation of the electronics and the assembly of everything to bring it all together. Although I didn’t snap an image of every step along the way, it’s more than a hundred progress pictures, so I hope you brought a little time… [More…]

Tools & Supplies: Basic Equipment

There are some basic tools you should always have ready – such as: a pair of small tongs (and a wire cutter), a putty knife, a caliper for precise measurements, a pair of tweezers for whenever your fingers are too big, a sharp precision cutter and/or scalpel (X-acto), an old toothbrush for cleaning purposes, brushes in different sizes for hand painting. [More…]

Work In Progress: ODN Scanner – Part II (Molding)

tn_wip_odn_scanner_2In this second installment of my ODN Scanner progress report I will describe how the finished master model (see Part I) is used to fabricate a silicone rubber mold which then can be used to cast resin kit parts.

Because the finished prop was supposed to contain an electric circuit with a super bright red LED and five green sequencing lights, the mold had to be done in a way so that the [More…]