Thursday, September 8, 2011

A 12 Foot Flying Saucer?

Over the past couple of days I've been working on my Makebot flying saucer.  This is a 10 inch diameter 50's style flying saucer that all started because of a discussion I had with a close friend of mine.  He wanted to know if I could design and build a 12 foot flying saucer for his front yard for Halloween.  His wife and I both shouted "A 12 foot flying saucer?".  

It has yet to be built but the idea stuck in my head so I decided to see if I could build a model of the saucer on the Makerbot.  
 The completed saucer pictured here turned out very well on the Makerbot.  The sign next to it is displayed on my IPad so it give you a good idea how large this model is.  Over the following weeks I smoothed out the body of the saucer using fiberglass resin, painted it and found a clear bubble for the top instead of the solid one and even created a complete cockpit with an instrument panel, gauges, control stick and seat.
 
 The photo above will give you a good idea as to how small the cockpit instrument panel is.  The dot on my finger tip is the decal for one of the gauges in the panel.  I had to use a very large magnifying glass in order to cut out the decal from the sheet it was printed on.  All in all it was worth the effort and will be a nice model to display. 
  The saucer is just the first one that has been made and may lead to other variations other than just being a model.  One idea is to use the design as a desk lamp. Other ideas have come up to improve the model by possibly having working light and actual retractable landing gear.  Stay tuned it could happen here in the coming months along with a longer list of improvements.

By the way this is what a 12 foot flying saucer would look like if you were standing next to it.

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