Been a while since I posted anything here, mostly due to work. Been working on a few projects, the first being construction of some suits of armor for a movie. Took a lot longer then I expected and there were a few hiccups along the way, the main one being that I had to cast everything myself. 6 suits of armor, each composed of at least 25 parts, plus 4 piece guns. Fiberglass. Not fun. Also, a few of the parts had to be reworked, remolded, and recast. I'd rather not talk about it anymore right now.
After that a few things turned up. A set of Sam Fisher's goggles from Splinter Cell. These were a joy compared to the armor. The armor wasn't bad by itself, or if I'd have had some help. It was a learning experience, and the biggest thing I learned is not to touch anything like that for at least 4 times the money, and even then I had better be damn sure I have a working, large, vacuformer with a pile of precut plastic. Ok, back on track. The goggles. They don't do nothing, at least in this case. Built as a private commission they had to work, as in light up. I've seen some of the other designs out there that use LEDs. Not a fan myself, at least of the LEDs for that use. Very intense light reflecting off a lens into darkened tunnel-vision eyesight wandering around, usually at a crowded convention. No thanks. So I got to testing ideas for different means of illuminating them. Prism, nope. Different angle on the LEDs, nope. Polarized filter, nope. I tried a few other things. Nothing was giving me quite what I wanted.
A while back, a local discount/closeout store, Marc's, had those EL nightlights on sale for 2 or 3 for a dollar and Mr. FX that I am grabbed some since I have worked with EL wire before. Ok, worked isn't an accurate description, I have played with and wanted to work with it for a few things. So I pulled out my being seen inverter that I had cut the wire off of and a couple nightlight. Pulled those apart, carefully so as not to destroy the nice small "screen" looking piece that may prove handy for a future prop. I wrapped it into a tube and lit it. A nice glowing effect, especially if viewed from an angle. I put a plastic lens I had here (from the armor) into the tube and I could still see. Hmm, this might work. I had a safety vest from my days at Drifter, that had probably been there a good 10 years that had a thin, much more flexible, and most importantly, green EL strip about 1/2" wide sewn into it. Well, yanked that out and into the tube it went. GREAT!
I'd got the green glow, and most importantly the needed vision. Now it's just time to start building the things. Out came the handy box of left over resin castings. I know I had some of my resin-cast-for-machining-blanks in there. I had made a mold of a few different size PVC pipes that I could pour excess resin into and use those as fodder for the lathe if needed. Well, I turned a few tubes, bored them out with a lip for the lens and a cable routing hole to run the wire through. I also turned a center tube, which wasn't quite up to snuff, so back to the lathe I went and turned another that was much better. The plan was to house the EL inverter, batteries, and much of the cable in the center tube. In the end that worked out just fine, but there were a few tool wielding primates along the journey eager to lend a hand.
So, that's the end of the easy part. My weakness lay ahead, sculpting something symmetrically. Using the infrequently, perhaps twice in a pinch, old style monster makers full head armature I set to work. Thoughts of making a "plate" to mount the tubes on to ensure symmetry, placement, and things like that quickly ended when it became painfully apparent that the goggles were going to be at least 10" off the face going that route. Oh well, off it came with quite a bit of clay. The tubes got slammed into the clay, and things started looking better. So they weren't perfect. They were close enough. Sculpting away I did all the tricks to gain some semblance of symmetry.
Molding came to mind. The tubes I had initially turned, and the initial plan called for a flexible material with the cast resin tubes embedded into it. The tubes had been given a groove around the base to allow them to be held onto by dragon skin, which was the material of choice. Well, that went up in smoke since the plan had changed. OK, I thought. I'll just do a two piece silicone mold, laying some clay in to ensure an even wall thickness. Nope, I had been working off some less then ideal reference photos that I hadn't boosted the contrast enough on to see the large "V" cutouts on the sides. There's no way silicone that thin would have held it's shape. My mind wanders back to the "plate" idea slightly modified. A semi rigid box that would support the tubes, allow the straps to be attached without distorting the silicone under the weight. No, that'd require too much removal of clay to get back to that shape, and time's running out. Not enough time to do that after the mold's done and get it to fit.
Onward I march.
Onward I march.
So now, I've scrapped my initial plan in favor of a "wing it" attitude trying to stay a step or two in front of those primates who I swear I could hear grunting as they heaved their plumbing tools. I'll get the sculpture done, and I guess I'll stick with the two part mold plan. I'll just get something else to cast it out of, something stiffer. Tick. Tick. Tick. CRAP! the clock's going to get me. Get your damn dirty paws off of me! "Or was it From my cold dead hands?" In any case they've got me in their grubby grasp.
So emails back and forth most of this time. The decision comes to just cast them in resin. I REALLY hate, I mean HATE, like even in real life I'm screaming to myself I HATE IT when I disappoint or can't make a deadline or deliver what I said I can. The monkeys begin their funny-if-you're-looking-on-and-not-the-target flailing assault. I agree to the resin, with every intention of casting one, then working out the bugs in time to cast another better one out of something else. So I set out to mold it. The primates plans realized. I make mistake after mistake, some my simple oversight, some truly unforeseen events. Molding takes a bit longer, and uses up valuable materials that fate would leave me throwing clenched first to the air and cursing my shortsightedness over later. The first part of the mold is finally done. Fingers are crossed. Mine that it has come out well, the short hairy ones that they're succeeded finally. Chimps be damned.
The results were a draw. I had mostly outsmarted them, through my own experience or dumb luck, but they had won one major victory. Since the center tube is stepped down at the lens end, and I was making a brush up glove mold, I had tried to keep the silicone thin and even inside the narrow, slightly deep tube while getting enough thickness built up. Imagine a squid's body inside an old coke bottle. You could simply squeeze it out the opening. Well, the silicone had pooled off the walls enough to make a nice solid plug inside the tube. Grandfather time sides with the monkeys and I have to carry on. I'll get a shot or two if this tears I'm going to have trouble, so I carefully cut the original tube out of the mold to avoid any chance of tearing it at this point. Quite a challenge with only two hands. Like wrestling with an anaconda? Have they recruited MORE help? Sneaky cheeky monkeys. Eventually I beat them at this newest game and got it out. Fine, now let's make the second part, the clay just will NOT stay in place, I still haven't figured out why. Perhaps feces flung at the mold? No, I'd have seen that. DAMN, that incessant ticking is getting old. It's not like there isn't a clock two feet in front of my face.
I decide to simply cast the tubes and coat the mold with a very thin, even coat of resin I can just build it up with the shell shock. I've easily got enough for two castings just in case. WRONG. I used most of it for the support shell instead of the dreaded fiberglass (did someone say armor?) Well, now I have to be extra careful and cautious. I made it, with just enough, or just an ounce or so under what would have been ideal. Now, the moment of truth, can I get this out without breaking it, or tearing the mold.... Away I pry, carefully, with compressed air, water, and some blood due to a sharp jagged edge newly created by me snapping a piece of leaked resin off when the wet springy mold got away from me. Pictures get sent out now. I have response. Yes, I'm well aware of those things and will be taking care of them. I do, more pictures. The reply would make it all worth it. I proceed to finish the face piece while attempting another casting in different materials. It doesn't fare as well as the resin cast did. Air bubbles, trouble here, trouble there. Now I fling the feces to the garbage not to be mocked by monkey luck. It'll be resin, that's all. As I trim I really wish I had doe the shell in another material as a few spots look dangerously thin to me. Break out the apoxie sculpt from it's position next to the duct tape in the fix-it toolbox. Build up a couple areas, add a more pronounced "lip" around the edge to glue some foamie padding to so it's a bit more comfortable. Prime, paint, ready to assemble the electronics and get this out.
Now Cornelius, Cheetah, Lancelot Link, and Curious George make their last stand. They put up a hellova good fight too.
The holder/ battery box was a simple item to whip up, I had made the center tube the size it is so I could save a bit of time here and just trim to length, mill and slot a resin blank to handle this. I was able to whip that up lickety split. Crap, I need contacts for the batteries. To the junk boxes! Hmmm, nothing much in the way to contacts that'll work out of the box here. I have a bag of assorted copper clad board material I bought a while ago in the electronics drawers. That'll serve as the negative (bottom) contact here. Did I mention the size limitations and use of cheap button cells? CR 2450s since Pat Catans carries them for use in some of their LED tea lights and a 4 pack runs $1.89 and tax. I had bought some CR2032 holders on the off chance that I'd use them for the availability factor, but looking into it, they probably wouldn't have enough oomph. To the OTHER junk box. Here's where the packrat, get it while you can and find a use later mentality paid off. Some years ago while working stock at a local drug store I had the opportunity to take many displays. One of them was a cosmetic unit that had spring steel coils, like you'd find in a tape measure, to push the product forward. Many years later I had broken the bulk of the plastic display but decide to pull those out and toss into the box for future use. Looking at the 2032 holders, they were essentially close enough for my taste. Quickly cutting off a length I attempted to solder a wire onto it. No go. scuffing it with the dremmel proved to have no effect. Well, I was already paddle-less and upstream where the EL strips came in. Days earlier I had tested with success means for connecting wires to the trimmed strips. Today that method just was not working. I couldn't solder to them for fear of melting the lamination sealing the AC in. I had looked locally for conductive copper tape with no luck. I remembered something I saw online, perhaps on make or instructables. Conductive glue. Maybe I saw it in a store, I honestly don't remember, nor does it matter. Time for some mad scientist type experimentation. Superglue sounded like an idea candidate for the base, and the 2 pounds of aluminum powder I use to dust my molds before casting was within reach. It's aluminum after all. Metals conduct electricity. So, a little powder in the glue, mix, apply to the EL strip and let dry. Now, the moment of truth. Hold the wires from the EL inverter to the hard blobs and hope for the best. Monkeys 1, me 2. It worked like a champ, and what's better I tried to pry it loose and it held fairly well, in fact when it finally did pull loose it took the conductor right off the EL strip. So it worked there, so the next test was connecting it to the stainless spring I'd fashioned from the display part. No problem there either.
With those minor issues worked out I could proceed to disassembling the inverter I had bought for this so I could mount it into the battery/electronics holder. I had to remove the switch since it would be inaccessible when mounted and there had to be an easy way to turn the on and off. Chim Chim has a large lead on third. I managed to get the switch off, but somewhere along the lines of wiring the new one I totally screw up the board overheating it trying to determine which set of the 10 pins of the switch I need to connect to. He steals home to tie the game. The bastard! Actually, I'm not quite sure if that's where I went wrong or if I toasted one of the many SMD resistors. Fine, I've got another. I can still make it. I've got a day left to assemble this, a few wires, some heat shrink, a few hours tops.
King Kong steps up to bat and knocks one out of the park with two outs, two strikes in the ninth. I melt a couple of the copper traces off of this inverter. TIMEOUT COACH! What now? I have to have these out tomorrow at the absolute latest, and even then I'm betting on UPS not screwing me. The fine folks at HobbyTown USA to the rescue. But it's not quite that simple. An accident in front of their driveway, every elderly woman who stereotypically couldn't see over the wheel was on the road and letting the fast and furious types cut into traffic. All this over a sunfire with the hood tacoed up after driving into the rudder of a trailered sailboat. I swear to God. Feces flying in every direction.
God, I should have just got this in the first place weeks ago.. They had one, 1, uno, singular of Miller Engineering's experimenter's kits on their shelf. I will now be buying several more for the simple fact that it saved my bacon. It was meant to use with EL cable, but from the appearance of the kits on their website will also drive about 6 square inch EL panel, so it should be fine for the 4.something square inches of the EL strip I'm using in these goggles. They could have the worst customer service in the world, but compared to a few other places I tried to contact about their products, they'd STILL be better because they sold a product that worked. Just a quick aside to EL companies with slick websites and online stores. If your store software doesn't work with IE or firefox, or is down, REMOVE THE LINK. If something else is up, please make an update to your website, even if you have to hire someone to do it for you. Please don't say you answer ALL emails within 24 hours. Now, back to our story. So, the miller kit comes wired for 2 AAA batteries. That got snipped. Thin wires lead to the EL cable socket. They were plenty long too, so they got snipped, the thing wired up beautifully. In fact, at this point it was just like I had anticipated the electronics would go together. The homebrewed conductive glue worked fine.
The last step, to apply the mirrored window film applied to acrylic lenses and install them. Ah, grape ape hits deep fly ball and the crowd gasps thinking the end is in sight for the home team. The package says not to apply the film to acrylic or Plexiglas. The man working the window and door section at a big orange home center thinks it should be fine. The film's website explains it. Difference in expansion and contraction due to heating of the plastic and glass can cause the film to bubble and peel. Hmmm, these are small areas. Small areas on a sealed black plastic mask worn close to the body. The catcher gives the sign. Screw it, I shake it off and decide to go forward. A little extra film and a few extra lenses go into the box along with the finished goggles, extra batteries, cast strap, as grape ape's fly ball is caught.
57 dollars for next day shipping later the finished goggles are on their way out via UPS. The tracking page indicates they're on their way...to Illinois? Is the umpire trying to rule that an infield homerun? They're headed the opposite direction.
I'm waiting on the ruling from the umps now.
No monkeys were harmed in the composition of this post, but man would I like to take a tire iron the those meddling monkeys.
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