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Zorg Industries ZF1 - Fifth Element film prop replica


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Truly outstanding work! :worthy: :wub:

 

On 10/20/2019 at 11:35 PM, Silenoz said:

most of the last updates have this SPACER.png instead of pictures unfortunately.

 

Looking cool though

Those are animations. Open the image in a new tab and they shown fine!

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The scope has been interesting to say the least!! I knew it was going to be a challenge and it didn’t disappoint.


First I machined me two aluminium lifting arms from 10mm Ali plate.
 

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All pivot points have their own bearings which ensures a smooth movement.

 

I had a load of cheapo spur gears kicking about...

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...so figured I’d put them to use and tuned some metal hubs so they could be secured to shafts.

 

I found an old geared DC motor which fit so decided to use that as part of my test.

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Not bad! The motor only just had enough power to get the shell up. There’s going to be a lot more weight on it so needed to find something with more cojones.

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Oh I do love it when a RS Components package arrives!! This should do.

 

Like the good little tinkerer I am I immediately took the motor apart...

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..and figured out a way to shoehorn it into the frame. Not much space to work with anymore.

 

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I rejigged the gear and drive shaft to account for the extra scope weight and torque of the motor by adding grub screws and other changes.

 

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I also included a feedback potentiometer which is geared directly to the motor..

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..I’ll be able to take readings from this pot to give me positional feedback and so allow me to position the arm accurately up and down. It was that or use micro switches as end stops but that’s boring!

 

My test bits together with push rods turned on my lathe..

 

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..and finally the thing moving!

 

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Next I need to get the motor properly wired up with a PWM signal and a bit of programming so it comes up and drops down at a press of a button repeatably and accurately. No probs!!

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Incredible work Jake!! Fifth Element has always been a longstanding favorite film of mine, and your doing it some great justice with this replica.

10mm ally, all those turned metal parts - how heavy is this looking? Im thinking that even though its made from fiberglass and kit greebles, all those beefy innards will probably end up making it quite an 'accurate' weight! 

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19 minutes ago, Kushan_Farsight said:

Incredible work Jake!! Fifth Element has always been a longstanding favorite film of mine, and your doing it some great justice with this replica.

10mm ally, all those turned metal parts - how heavy is this looking? Im thinking that even though its made from fiberglass and kit greebles, all those beefy innards will probably end up making it quite an 'accurate' weight! 


Let’s just say I won’t be dual wielding two of them anytime soon!!

 

Final weight should be no more than 9-10kg. There’s a reason why Gary Oldman uses two hands to hold it in the movie!

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I got the scope lifting mechanism pretty much finalised this evening. The feedback pot works well and is accurate enough...

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...you can see in the above video the geared potentiometer to the motor shaft, and the rising and lowering values that pot sends my Arduino. When I zoom to the target positions (scopeUp and scopeDown) and their respective values you’ll see that the movement feedback values are pretty damn accurate (the bottom numbers in the list). This is without using complicated PID control and relying solely on the 500:1 gear ratio to stop the motor dead on. You can’t ask for more really!!

 

Anyway all that hassle just to make a bit of Star Trek Voyager model rise up a couple of inches and go back down again.

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I’ve reduced the lowering speed a little too. Mainly because it looks cool but also because gravity is on its side.

 

Next up is to start lighting up the scope and then to install it into the ZF1. Fun times ahead!!

Edited by JakeEaton
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Bit of evening LED sequencing..

 

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I had to stagger the LEDs in order to get the perf board to fit into the scope body.

 

I bought some fairly cheap acrylic rods which act like glass fibres so used them in conjunction with heat shrink tubing to get the desired effect.

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The sequence is obviously as close as I could get it to the film. Interesting how it hangs on the two middle lights.

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Lastly the lights will be seen through a diffuser of some sort. Probably not this but it gives you a general idea. 
 

Next job is to slowly start incorporating it all into the gun!

 

Edited by JakeEaton
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Got the scope pretty much finished. Steel conduit, nylon stand offs and satin clear coat seal the deal. Diffuser plate made from two laminated layers of clear acrylic sanded with 500 grit.

 

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...and mounted to the test stand..

 

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..two Arduinos now power the gun. One slave for sequencing the LEDs and one master for controlling the movements.

 

Time to pop it in the gun.

 

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Messy cabling at the moment but they’ll get cleaned up soon enough. Please bare in mind everything apart from the upper and lower shells and movement hardware has been designed, drawn and made by me. No kits or help involved.

 

Finished result...

 

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...without clothes..

 

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I want the scope and upper weapon bay to raise in a specific sequence as close to the film as possible.

 

In order to achieve this I need to wire them up properly and I’ll need to reprogram most of the movements. I also need to find space for a chunky 12V battery!! Stay tuned folks!

 

Edited by JakeEaton
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Got the whole lot functioning together. 

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I matched the animation to the film.

 

Next I have to tidy up the cabling and start going through my snags list. Then it’s time to send off my drawings and get the frames cut in aluminium.

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  • 4 weeks later...

The next stage was to cram all those electronic gubbins into the gun while trying to minimise what is on display...

 

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..that’s two DC converters stacked (one takes the 12V and boosts it to 17V for the scope raising motor, the other decreases it to 6V for the servos and arduinos), a motor controller and an Arduino.

 

I finished the main electronics by finding a space for the battery, wiring in the yellow button which will now be the on/off button and finally wiring in the charging port for the 12V battery.

 

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Glad it worked!!

 

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I also replaced the scissor lift mechanism with a sturdier, more accurate 3D printed version. It’s much smoother and easier to manufacture whilst also being lightweight and strong.

 

The next task was to make an activation button.

 

 

Edited by JakeEaton
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What better way to do that then design a working trigger mechanism!!

 

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This is effectively just a holder for a momentary push button and a spring.

 

The whole thing was 3D printed on my Prusa i3...

 

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..the spring and button added and voila!

 

The assembly is 12mm wide so I machined out a groove in my resin hand grip...

 

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..and that’s that! Working trigger to activate the moving parts.

 

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After a day spent making the trigger, I next had a list of smaller jobs that needed to be sorted.

 

One was to organise and finish the metal conduit at the rear of the gun.

 

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That was quite an important milestone because for the first time I could hold the gun without bits draping off it.

 

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Another job was this annoying wobble..

 

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I took care of this by tapping the top of the brass part out to an M10 thread, cutting down an M10 bolt and turning a small pin into it.

 

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The upper part had a 3mm hole drilled into it..

 

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...and voila!! 
 

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No more damned wobble!! 

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Next was the scope lighting.

 

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I used a bunch of red and yellow LEDs, one blue LED and a plastic potentiometer knob. The blue screen is made from a 20x20mm chunk of 15MM opal acrylic with a bit of black rubber heat shrink wrapped around it.

 

They were wired into the scope Arduino and programmed to light when the scope comes up.

 

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Pretty neat!!

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I also finally got round to fixing on the lower hand grip.

 

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I used M3 studding cut and epoxied into holes drilled into the black resin.

 

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This thing is approaching about 10kg now so it’s good to have somewhere to hold it!

 

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This is where it currently stands.

 

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..and a side-by-side comparison of where it stood about 6 months ago...

 

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January should see me replace all the white plastic frame parts with laser cut aluminium versions and then the whole thing will be stripped down, some parts will be sent off for anodising and others painted in the spray booth.

 

Not long left to go now!!

 

Thanks for looking!!

 

 

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  • 1 month later...

Kicking off 2020 with style.
 

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I had these parts cut from 3mm + 1mm aluminium. They also include the rocket fins and other important parts.

 

Bent in the old bender..

 

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Taken apart..

 

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..takes about an hour to strip it down to this degree now. Got to ream out all the important metal holes for housing bearings etc.

 

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The 3mm all together!!

Edited by JakeEaton
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Metal frame and wires can be a bad combo so rubber grommets were used where cables ran through parts..

 

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Learning from earlier in the build I also included ports for the Arduino programming lead..

 

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..this saves me from having to take the frame apart to update the Arduino code.

 

Got it all functioning again..

 

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..lovely seeing all those parts I’ve designed running like clockwork.

 

Next job was to fit the 1mm trim.

 

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..a combination of bending and rolling to get the required profile.

 

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A lasercut jig provided a guide.

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Got a couple of layers of white primer down as a base coat, neatened up the edges and tidied the gaps between moving panels with body filler and sandpaper...

 

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..next task is to start laying the tan base coat down, then camo, then a light stipple to blend the colours. 

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