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Loading ...BSG Worklog Part 6: Engine Pods
boddaker
Ok, here’s how I made the engine pods. Starting with insulation foam, I cut out the basic shapes for the 4 pods, and used spray adhesive to glue the two parts together.
I then carved them all down to the rounded shape you see here. I made some paper templates (two large, two small) of the triangular end so they would be the same.
I glued all the pods to a 2×4 to make them easier to work with. Then I brought out the plasti-paste again and gave them all a good coating. I had to do one at a time due to the quick 10-minute setup time. You can see the last one is still setting up.
After hours of sanding, filling, and more sanding, I took them off the board and removed the foam. I destroyed the foam pods cause I had to pick them out in chunks. I’m left with the plastic shells.
Here’s a shot of the pods on the case for a test fit.
After all that work, it was time to hack them up! Instead of adding ribbing and armor paneling over the top of the pods, I elected to cut away parts to achieve the same look.
Then I simply added some styrene backing behind the holes I made. For the exhaust ports, I drilled holes and inserted pieces of hacked up pen casings.
For added detail, I included wood beads in the pen casings to act as the nozzles.
Primed up and ready for the next step.
To make the pods look more beefy, I made some thicker end caps out of styrene.
sized them to fit, and glued them in.
After a bit of filler and primer, the pods look more uniform and realistic.
I could have gone into more detail, by adding a lit cone inside, but that would have taken a lot more work. So I chose to just add some octagon mesh instead.
After some shaping and cutting, I could fit the cone mesh in from the inside. A little glue set them in place.
Here’s a shot of the completed pods on the case.
In the next post, I will go over the side panels, and how the pods are secured to them. Until then!
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Loading ...Worklog Part 5: IO Panel, Running Lights
boddaker
In order to retain some ques from the original stacker 830 case, I am reusing the stock button assembly and IO panel, almost in the exact same spot.
Positioning the pieces…
Marking it out on a sheet of acrylic…
snug fit.
Bondo applied on top…
…and on the bottom.
After a couple steps of filling and sanding, here is the result:
Now to fill in the sides and below with armor paneling to blend it in with the front panel.
It worked out well using the LCD screen cluster to obscure the mating point.
For the landing deck, I designed a graphic in Adobe Illustrator, using reference pics from the “real” CG ship (special thanks go to Lee Stringer, CG Supervisor at Zoic for providing me with those!). I had the graphic printed out on adhesive vinyl, and applied it to the acrylic sheet.
For the running lights, I purchased a blinky light kit from Qkits. The only things I changed were the leds and their locations.
I simply soldered all the parts provided in the kit to the circuit board.
Then to relocate the leds, I utilized a floppy drive ribbon cable to keep things neat and tidy.
I made a mount underneath the landing deck for the circuit board to slide into, and ran the ribbon cable along the underside branching the individual wires out to the leds. This particular kit lights the leds up sequentially from the center out on the circuit board, so I ran the center wire all the way up to the power button, then worked my way back so that the lights travel into the landing bay. The circuit also allows for speed and duration adjustment, so I could dial it in to my liking.
A final shot of the landing deck during assembly:
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Loading ...Worklog Part 4: Front Panel cont.
boddaker
After the DRADIS screens and DVD drive/ensignia were in place, I could fill in the areas in between with detail.
To give it some depth, I made some conduit modules using wood dowels and acrylic rod.
Underneath the ensignia, I started with a small name badge laser cut from black 1/8″ acrylic (thanks to www.moddersmart.com) . I am constantly amazed at how precise and detailed laser cutting can get without any melting or distortion. The smaller letters are less than 1/4″ in height!
Then it came time to start skinning the aluminum panel with styrene. I left the name badge background bare aluminum.
Here’s a shot of the conduit in place behind the ensignia:
And the conduit continuing up above the ensignia behind the screens. I made a 1/8″ thick styrene cross brace to give the conduit box something to adhere to.
Skinning the side, paying attention to the DVD drive opening.
Once everything was skinned with the .o4 styrene sheet, I went back over it with the .01 sheet for the second layer of armor paneling.
The whole skinning process took me three days to get this far, and I still needed to add some finishing touches. Slow, tedious work, but well worth it in the end!
Rated: 86.67% (3 votes)
Loading ...Worklog Part 3: Windowed DVD Drive
boddaker
So for the DVD drive, I wanted to do something a bit different. I knew I wanted a prominent BSG insignia on the front, but I wanted it to come alive somehow. A spinning optical disc would do the job, so I set about cutting a window into my slot loading drive.
Here I took the cover off to see what I was dealing with.
Marking out the window using a spare disc.
To keep the dust out, and reposition the centering thingy, I glued a piece of clear acrylic onto the cover. I added some L brackets to the front panel framework to mount the drive.
www.moddersmart.com assisted me in some laser cutting and etching for the insignia.
Here you can see a profile view of the drive behind the insignia.
To light it up, I threw in some red 3mm leds behind the “bird” in the center, to give a nice backlit effect and show the drive’s internals.
It took some doing to route out enough material to hide the leds, resistors, and wires and still have the center part sit flush.
A test light:
The wires travel through a hole in the base, then in behind the drive to a distribution block for power.
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Loading ...Worklog Part 2: DRADIS Screens
boddaker
Today we’ll go over the process of making the LCD cluster on the front panel. I wanted to recreate the DRADIS displays seen on the show, hanging above the strategic planning table on the battle bridge.
First I had to modify the original Stacker front door. I removed the mesh and part of the upper portion.
Then I added in my own aluminum framework, using the existing mounting holes on the door.
Designing the bracket. This is one of the rare occasions when I actually had to draw it out on paper first (something I should do more often lol).
After figuring out what I needed to do, I built it.
Then I built the lcd enclosures out of sheet styrene.
Fitting the screen into the enclosure…
…and doing a test fit onto the front panel.
To make it more of a cluster, I added two more dummy screens underneath. These were made from a piece of clear acrylic that was roughed up a bit, with styrene glued around it. A hole was drilled from behind to accept a 3mm white led.
I made another just like it, and connected them with a piece of aluminum.
After the hanging bracket was done, I smoothed it out with filler and primed it.
To finish it off, I printed out a graphic onto adhesive transparent film and stuck it onto the face of the dummy screens.
The three 2.5″ screens have composite input, so I made up a custom cable that split three ways. Then I got a composite to s-video adapter so I could plug it into the s-video out of the video card.
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Loading ...Worklog Part 1: Landing Bay
boddaker
Ok, so being that I’m pretty much finished with the case, these posts will be more of a recap of how I built it. I’ll go by sections, starting with the landing bay:
Carving the shape out of foam insulation board:
I covered the foam with Plasti-Paste (two-part plastic resin that sets up in 10min), then sanded it down smooth.
I added side skirts using the same method, then applied bondo and more plasti-paste to join everything together. A sheet of acrylic was used for the floor, and to square everything up.
After some sanding, filling, and more sanding, I did a test-fit.
Once I was happy with it, I started adding detail pieces and ribbing.
Then I made the armor paneling that was to be glued onto the ribs.
Numerous panels later, I primed the whole thing and put it on the case again for another fit.
The entire landing bay took me about 4 months to complete. I wanted to take the time to get all the details in there, since it was the top of the case and most visible.
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Loading ...BSG Appears on SciFi’s Official Battlestar Website!
boddaker
http://www.scifi.com/battlestar/
It doesn’t get any cooler than that! 
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Loading ...BSG Videos
boddaker
Here are a couple videos to hold you over til I get more stuff up. 
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x1UaIXbt1VA
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=za33Fe5Ygvc
Rated: 100% (1 votes)
Loading ...Worklog Summary Coming Soon!
boddaker
Welcome to my project blog! Although I just finished this case, I will be posting some choice worklog pics here shortly to give you an idea of the process. My full worklog is over 35 pages, so I will just be posting hi-lights here. Stay tuned…
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