Earth vs. The Flying Saucers is one of my favorite 50's films:
Skyhook Models makes several resin kits from the movie; I have two - the 3" saucer (which scales to about 1/288) and the
mini diorama of a saucer crashing into the Washington Monument.
So why make a 1/350 version? It would match my other 1/350 scale models and I would gain yet more experience in dealing with the materials available at
Shapeways. I used
The Saucer Fleet as a source of the dimensioned drawings of the flying saucer. The drawings are in 1/250 scale, so I scaled them down to 1/350 and used them as a background in Rhino:
This was a quick project, so I didn't use layers or proper drawing guides; a more complicated design would require a more disciplined approach. I used the side views to generate a cross section of the saucer, then offset the curve to make it both printable and sturdy enough to allow rough handling/sanding if necessary. The saucer is 1.5mm thick; this is thick enough to prevent warping.
Unfortunately, a saucer this thick will be quite expensive; so after cutting the slots in the upper and lower sections, I cut out sectors in the areas between the slots. The material here is only 0.5mm thick. This reduces the volume while still providing structural support.
I also made a landing leg/post and a plug that has the death ray dish. The lower saucer has stops to keep the leg or dish disk from going in too far. Here's the exploded view:
You can see one of the cut out segments to the left.
As almost always happens with Shapeways (especially when you're close to their very conservative printing limits), the lower disk with the death ray had problems and wouldn't print. I went ahead and printed the rest.
This is what came back from Shapeways after about a week:
Upper and lower saucer parts. I could have easily made the saucer a single unit, but I wanted to see how good the printing tolerances were:
The fit is very tight; I had to scrape out the hole for the landing leg before it fit. It's pretty delicate and I didn't want to crack it:
And with a 1/350 scale figure. I had take the saucer apart ad didn't do a very good job of squeezing it together, hence the lip on the right:
Even though I had the saucer printed in their highest resolution material ("Frosted Ultra Detail") the surface still has visible printer marks:
Hopefully, most of the surface "noise" will go away after some primer and sanding.
I also resubmitted a slightly fatter version of the death ray disk. Maybe it'll print this time:
And I added these guys, which may not print:
Stay tuned...