This week's post brings with it some very nice progress on my Space Patrol pistol project with all of the parts having been 3D printed. (All 34 hours worth.) Or at least all of the parts that needed to be 3D printed along with the laser cut Plexiglass parts and various bits of hardware, decals, etc.
With the work that I completed earlier this morning small changes needed to be made to my design of the pistol. In the photo above there is a small vent just above the power control panel on the left side of the model that needed to be changed. Originally I had planned on a small row of columns to make up the inner portion of the vent. This did not work out so well on my 3D printer being as this part was very small and it was hard to get the look that I was going for. So it was modified to what you see in the image above. Much easier to create and still a nice look for the pistol.
To create the body of the pistol I needed to split this portion of the design in half as it would have been near impossible to 3D print it in one piece. This as you will see actually added a little more work to the project and will still look the same once I have it completed. I really like the little extruded spaceship image on the right side of the body along with the control panel for the power display that will be on the left side of the pistol.
The top photo shows the circular indent in the body of the pistol where the vent assembly will be mounted. Also in that photo as well as the lower image you can see the mounting holes on each piece of the body that will hold the body cap in place to the body once final assembly takes place. These parts were sanded smooth at this point to prep them for assembly to each other.
To align both halves of the body to each other I designed the parts to be able to hold a short section of threaded rod in them as alignment pins. The only reason I used threaded rod was that it was spare parts that I had in storage in the shop and were handy at the time. The rods are 1/4-20 threaded rod cut to 3/4 inch in length and epoxied into place. Aluminum rod would have worked too but this served the purpose just as well.
Once I had the pins installed on one half of the pistol body I then laid a layer of micro-balloons and epoxy putty mixture on the joint where the two halves would meet and rubber banded the two halve together to hold everything in place to create a good joint with proper alignment.
Once the epoxy had cured overnight on the body I was able to sand the joint smooth to start getting the body ready for paint. Pictured above is the body along with the body cap. The cap slides into the large opening of the body and is held in place with two 1/4-20 button head bolts and nuts. The cap holds all of the components that make up the front of the pistol that you will see further along in this post.
The photo above shows most of the components that make up the front of the pistol. Starting at the left side is the mounting ball. Inside of this spherical shape is a permanently mounted 1/4" nut that is needed to hold the 1/4" threaded rod shown at the bottom of the photo that holds everything together. The next three white pieces make up the stem of the pistol and placed between these pieces are the color Plexiglass disks.
The thread rod runs through the entire assembly and is mounted to the body cap when the remaining pistol components are added to this part of the assembly.
Here is the final components that will be mounted to the stem assembly and the body cap as well as additional parts that will be added to the body of the pistol. At the upper left is the dish and next to it is the body cone. On the bottom row is the vent shield and ring that will be mounted on to the body of the pistol. The last part is the trigger for the pistol grip.
Here are a couple of good shots of the pistol grip. The larger pieces will be joined together and then painted gloss black. Once this has been completed the textured inserts will be painted red and then also joined to the pistol grip as shown above.
With the Plexiglass disks in place on the stem of the pistol along with the dish you get a much better idea of how the design will look once it has been completed. The pistol grip inserts into a slot on the bottom of the body of the pistol and will be Super Glued into place once the painting has been completed. This will also be the case for the trigger, vent enclosure, and power setting knob as shown in the first photo of this post.
The seam on the spherical ball on the end of the pistol stem will be filled in, then smoothed and then painted gloss black. Along with all of the other components that need to be prepped for paint I will have to track down the button head bolts that hold the body cap to the body and the project will be ready for final display. I will also have to figure out a mount for this pistol similar to the one that I made for my first pistol named the Skrooch gun so that I can easily put it on display. (See December 7th, 2017 post) As you can see I still have my work cut out for me over the next week or so. Not difficult but as usual time consuming and still fun just the same.
The finished pistol will be 13" long and 9" tall. It's impressive already and I don't even have it painted yet. (I'm impressed anyway.) I'll let you know when I get all the painting done and the little details added to this project. Then I can let the dust settle once again in the workshop and set the pistol up to display. Stay tuned for further developments.
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