Atari joystick

This is the Atari Joystick for the blue foam project. I was in a team with Marshall and Josh.
Some techniques we used were: angling the bandsaw table, using sandpaper super77'd to a piece of wood, hand sanding, lathing, hotwire, etc. When we were spackling we trying to keep it simple and just patch holes and smooth planes rather than slathering the whole thing in a million coats of spackle. We used the airbrush to prime it with Killz latex primer, before frantically cleaning it to make sure there was no paint left in there. Oh, and we used mostly Super 77 to bond the blue foam, but the jotstick banana peeled and we used a little epoxy to fix it up.

Sean's Blog Updates

So it appears i missed a few blog posts, so I'll catch up on them just in case.

First is the final pictures of the cardboard project. If you remember, I posted I was doing an AVLB or armored vehicles launched bridge. I was able to get it to work and have a good level of detail, which I was very excited about.

Next is the styrene part project. I don't have a final image of this, and it appears someone picked mine up by mistake. You can guess what it looks like though, since they all look the same. I was happy that I was able to keep mine looking pretty clean. No pencil marks, weld-on fingerprints, etc. I used 60mil for most of it and 20 mil for curves. This gave me a sturdy part and I was able to hide most of the seams. Some light sanding helped also on the edges.

After that is the vacuu-forming. Mine was modeled after an orangina bottle, but slimmer. I used 80 mil, which was pretty risky but I wanted to try it since the curves made for great draft angles. The first pull was ineffective, probably because I didn't let it heat enough. I was able to reuse it by reheating the same piece. It sagged a lot but this pull came out much better. Then to join the two halves I sanded them to match and welded a few pieces on the inside to make it easier to match up. Then the two halves were welded together and sanded.

Next we have the yellow foam flashlight. I lathed out the form, with the sides of the hole area being flat rather than a sphere. I then used a spade bit to make a hole in the flashlight. Then I sanded until it was nice and round. I used spot putty all over, had to do a few coats to lose the bubbles. I spayed it with filler primer, sanded some more, spayed primer sealer, sprayed it silver, and then used Metalcast electric blue over top. Near the head I used a little red under the metalcast to make a dark purple fade. The head was cut from a real flashlight to add to the realism.