Work In Progress: Neutrino Probe – Main Parts

tn_neutrino_probe_wip3After my efforts of starting a Neutrino Probe replica were suddenly brought to a halt last week, I couldn’t do anything but wait for my Dad to repair the lathe which had broke down on us. Fortunately, he was able to find a new capacitor quickly and replaced it in no time at all. So, we could schedule a new session to get back to work. This time, there were no interruptions and I was able to continuously work on the three main parts for two days. [More...]

Work In Progress: Neutrino Probe

tn_neutrino_probe_wip_2Bad News. Today I made my first attempt to use a turning lathe to make the main parts for the Neutrino Probe from wood. For this purpose I went to my parents house where my dad has the required equipment. Well, everything went pretty smoothly at first and while working on a test piece I got confident to be able to shape the wood in such a way to mimic my schematics almost exactly. So far, so good. [More...]

Prop Analysis: Neutrino Probe

tn_neutrino_probe_wipThere is one prop that I wanted to build forever and never got around to it. In fact, this goes back to the early days on ASAP, when I just got into the hobby. At that time, I didn’t have a lot of experience obviously and was just figuring out how to build stuff. So, after seeing this prop in “Star Trek: Captain’s Chair“, my first impulse was to build it because it looked cool and I had recognized it from the show. [More...]

Makeover: Mobile Holo-Emitter

tn_holo-emitterWhen I got my mobile holo-emitter in an exchange deal, there were some things I didn’t like about it: First off, the curcuit graphic which had been made from a gold foil with the pattern printed green on it was not cut out accurately thus being too small for the intended place. This was especially distracting in the upper right corner of the indentation where the gap was really quite big. Second, the surface of the prop wasn’t really worked up to the degree of a smooth finish I would have liked to have. [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...]

Work In Progress: ODN Scanner – Part I (Scratch-build)

tn_wip_odn_scanner_1Welcome to the first part of my progress report covering the creation of my ODN Scanner! In this part I will show you how I scratchbuilt the prototype (the so-called master model) of this prop that I will later cast in resin. Part II and the Tutorial will then cover how I did the silicone rubber mold and how to build up one of the resulting kits. [More...]

Buildup: Small PADD (VOY)

tn_voy_padd_sHow do you build a PADD? Well, it’s easy, if you have the right kit. In this tutorial I want to show you how to build up one of Matt Munson’s small Voyager PADD kits. Although he claims to build these is under an hour, I would recommend to take a little more time… [More...]

Buildup: Type I “Cricket” Phaser

tn_tng_cricketThe Type I phaser from TNG, a prop barely 9 centimetres long. To do a replica of this can’t be much trouble, right? Wrong! The smaller the object is, the finer are the details and the more time has to be spent to make the prop look good. I will describe here what I did to build this “cricket” phaser up. When I got the kit from a member of the ASAP board , it was in a pretty raw shape, which is not uncommon for resin castings however. This meant that the surface had to be smoothed out (especially [More...]