Scratch Build – In Progress artifact, cooling installed

This is my second case mod project and I am going for an unusual and exciting scratch build, with a time limit of 3 weeks

So, without further ado, I introduce artifact:


At the end, I hope artifact will be an alien device, full of mystery and wonder - although if you read this log I guess there will be no mystery...

I have many, many pages of notes and sketches, but unless people really want to see my scrawl, I won't post them here. I will post the sketchup models, so this is the first part of the project, the internal framework:


The frame is made from 3mm thick, 25mm to a side aluminium channel and angle. The pieces were cut to the right size and shape by this beast:


This is a mitre saw, so it can cut at any funny angle you like, which was ideal for this project where the simplest angle was 35 degrees on the main struts and more complicated from there.

I bought the aluminium cutting blade from Summit Saw Blades, who also sell on eBay and are local to me, so they hand delivered the blade next day to me as I'm in a bit of a hurry! I can't recommend them enough considered how well the cutting has gone.

Using the laser sight to line up a cut:


I cut out 22 different pieces, of 5 different types to build the frame. Cutting the smaller pieces was very hard to do, since the pieces must be clamped *very* firmly to avoid injury when the come flying out of the machine. I only had two pieces come unclamped - one flew 2 metres across my garage, the other is pictured below - it flew out of the saw before the cut was finished, hitting the blade repeatedly which gouged bits out of it all the way along, not good. It also chipped a tooth off the saw blade.


The main struts fit together at the top like this:

The struts will be glued in place with superglue or epoxy if the superglue is not holding well.

Finally, just to show off the precision of my cutting, here is a picture of the 4 lower struts, which are meant to be 200mm long :

 

Day 2ainting prep

Since I want the artifact to appear alien and mysterious, I don't really want the angle aluminium to be seen when looking inside the case. Therefore, I decided I needed to paint the inside of the frame as much as the outside. As the shape is kind of awkward anyway, I figured I ought to paint the frame pieces before glueing them together.

Firstly, filed down all the burrs and cut of the top frame bits at the correct angle (I knew I needed to take a little perpendicular bit off, I just got the wrong perpendicular first time...)

You can see my half moon file in the background, which I'm hoping is the only one I will need.

Next, sanded all the aluminium surfaces with 600grit sandpaper. Some aluminium will be polished and exposed later, so I figured I might as well sand it now.


Sanding is very dull! Next I washed all the pieces and started warming the can of primer, thus saving water


Finally, masking the unpainted bits and the ends of the extrusions - really dull indeed!


Then I painted the first coat of primer, which took about 15 minutes after 4 hours of prep work!!! The cardboard tray serves as a good painting area, and I have another I can put over the top to stop dust and insects sticking to it.

Today, I will be applying more primer and starting on the legs, which will look a bit like this:

 

Very nice so far, like the design.

 

Thank you

 

atleast for me the pictures work fine...

looks like a interesting project, lots of potential, i'll be looking foward to seeing the updates

 

ah....great,an alien theme......

Looking good so far.......I like the design..

Alan

EDIT:Subscribed

 

looking good keep it up

 

Day 3 - 2nd undercoat, cut legs and lighting test

Thanks for the encouragement guys

Got three fairly small tasks done today. Firstly, sanded down yesterday's primer and tidied up some of the masking to ensure all the surfaces were able to receive paint - easier to take it off later than to put more on later. I was a bit disappointed with the amount of metal showing through the first primer coat, so I made some nice little painting stands:


Next, I cut out the tube section for the legs. Nearly bought one trying to put a new blade on my junior hacksaw, but was happy when I did because it made the cutting a lot easier. Tomorrow I will epoxy the legs together into the desired arrangement:


Finally, a little preview of a lighting effect I am going to be using:

This is a clear acrylic rod that has been roughened with 800grit sandpaper and illuminated from one end with a pink LED, and then wrapped in spiral wrap.

Tomorrow I start serious painting and assembling the legs. Hopefully some more aluminium cutting as well.

 

Day 4 - First colour coats, finished lower legs

Not that much to report today, I spent some time doing some concept work for some artwork you are going to like to see tomorrow.

Firstly, sanded down the second primer coat with a nice fine sanding sponge. It was silky smooth and not metal showing when I'd finished, so time for a colour coat:

You can see a pretty sunset reflected in the paint; the actual colour is metallic purple.

All my paint has been applied with a gun attachment on a rattle can. The gun attachment idea is brilliant, makes it much easier to control the direction and rate of spray, without a tired finger:

If you're spray-painting, buy one!

I finished gluing the lower legs together like so:

These will need tidying up and painting, but not before I have finished the whole leg assemblies. I therefore need to do some jigsawing tomorrow

I need to bend some acrylic rod - anyone think this will do the job, or do I really need a heat gun? Would a hair-dryer bend 4mm acrylic rod?


Finally, here is picture from my concept notebook - I have decided to do some stencilling onto the case as it shouldn't be too difficult at this stage.


Can anyone suggest what to cut stencils out of? I am making the letter shapes and painting around them, not painting on the letter shapes (so holes aren't a problem) Lines will be about 2mm thick, tapering to a point in some cases.

 

Day 5 - Prep

Not much to show yet today, just wanted to ask a question and show you some artwork. Firstly, artwork


These are the designs for the four edge pieces of the case, the columns in each corner.
The question is, how can I make stencils of these? I want the stencils to be the purple shapes since I am applying the black over the purple. Each letter is 22mm wide. Any ideas and comments welcome

Also, to get a better idea of how this will look, here is the whole case with this on:


I hope you're frightened.

 

oh yeah, that's gonna be nice! how do you connect the upper parts with the lower parts? (i mean the feet)
cheers

 

There is going to be 7 glowing plastic tubes in each leg, arranged in a hexagon. I need to try and bend into them into shape today - wish me luck! Hopefully have a picture to make it clear later.

 

well that's a great start! The concept is nice, I like the colours as well.

 

Try going to art stores that have supplies for graphic artists. There is some sheet material that has a backing layer with an adhesive layer. You use an exacto knife to cut the design, peel off the parts you don't want. Then press the whole thing in place on your case. Last, peel off the backing layer leaving just the stencils you cut, perfectly lined up just like you cut them. Just like a decal, but the adhesive is designed for easy removal. Don't remember what it's called. You could also get this made at a sign store, but the adhesive would make it more difficult to remove the stencils, unless they can work with the same material (which they probably can't).

 

The hard way

Sadly, my time was short and I couldn't find such a store (UK is terrible for such things, it's like "craft" is a dirty word on the high street.) My solution therefore had three elements:

My dad (thanks!)


Printed paper


And of course pritt stick to hold the stencils in place. Is it spray paint proof? I'll tell you tomorrow! (If I sound crazy, it's because I've spent 5 hours on this stencilling and I didn't even cut out most of the stencils.)

I also managed to get some rods bent and cut for the leg muscles in the legs. Due to the ghetto nature of my heat gun (see blowtorch picture above) and my hot wire cutter (10 watts!):

These pieces didn't work out that well, so I did what Intel does and graded them:


It was then possible to work out which ones fitted together and assemble all 4 legs. To show what these will look like when assembled, here's a teaser:


Phew, that was a long day. I also tried to cut out some leg flanges, but could not cut a line where I wanted it with a jigsaw, so I'm having a rethink of that one. I may have to get the beast circular saw out again.

 

Quick update today, have got a fair bit done.

Marked out and drilled the flanges for the legs:


Next, used this thing, looks like the mole from Thunderbirds, to drill holes for the legs themselves:



Finally, cut them out with a jigsaw (no pics, sorry, it wasn't very interesting, just hard to stay on the lines) and got:


Need to just trim the corners of the triangles off to make a truncated hexagon and they'll be ready for painting.

Speaking of painting, here are some picks of the final paint layer over yesterday's stencils:


I sure hope the paper comes off!

Finally, I have been trying to get a twotone kind of effect on the pieces between black and purple, and actually, I think it's worked:


Hooray, that's one week done, only 2 to go, doesn't look promising, but hoping to work more hours and get there!

 

Day 7 - Clearcoating the stencils and finishing the legs

Another small update today. I paint over my stencils yesterday morning, so figured the paint must be dry this afternoon. The stencils came off really easily with a little water and there had been no bleeding under them, so I recommend paper and pritt stick (water based glue for paper) for stencilling (and it's cheap!)


These then needed sanding down before they could be clearcoated. Unfortunately, it was hard to sand to a uniform matte appearance without going through the black - anyone got any advice on how to avoid that? In hindsight, I should probably have sanded the purple before putting the black over it. You can see the problem I had:


It was hard to get the edges sanded down to a matte texture as the paint seemed thinner there (possibly due to the masking blocking the paint going on.) Still, in the end, here are the finished pieces ready for clearcoating:


Given I clearcoated them today, do you think I'll be able to polish them tomorrow, or should I wait longer before polishing? I'm hoping to assemble the frame tomorrow but I was to polish it first.

I also finished up the leg flanges, cutting off the corners with a hacksaw and filing down all the burrs:


The assembled legs are below. The question is, how should I paint them? I was thinking of black with some aluminium showing through as highlights, but I'm open to suggestions. I could do some more stencilling, but I' don't really fancy it!

 

You kidding me! dude your father is awsome, god keep him for you, nice. your work and father work is amazing nice. I love the overall idea, your lighting plans is nice purper lighting.

Well done.

 

@ComputerKing: Thank you for your kind words to my father and I,he's always been helpful to me. Purple lighting seems comparatively rare, so I thought I'd try and redress the balance It does seem to be getting easier to find purple lights at the moment.

Today I sanded down the clearcoat and polished all the parts. Never realised quite how long that would take! Here are the pictures of the result:


I sanded the clearcoat at 1200 grit until it had a satin finish with no dark spots, then polished with metal polish, then polished twice with car polish, which sees to have no abrasive properties at all, but enhances the reflectivity.

You can see the two tone black/purple in this picture, and also the nice contrast between black and silver:


Tomorrow it gets a lot more interesting, as I glue these parts together and start planning the internal hardware and lighting.

 

WOOOOOOOT, That is a pure Porn as they say! WOW it's so nice. Well done. it came up very nice at the end Well done