Building a Prime Radiant

Foundation on AppleTV is an outstanding and wildly ambitious adaptation of Asimov’s books and stories. If you haven’t checked it out yet - go ahead and watch it. I’ll wait here.

Welcome back! Season 2 was a real banger and it is going to feel like a lifetime before Season 3 is available to be blasted into our eyeballs. So, maybe a cool prop can help the time go by more quickly?

While the pinball and arcade hobby already had me dabbling with 3D Printing, the Dial of Destiny Prop project really got me interested in building myself more film and television props.

I’ve started a few: An Iron Man Arc Reactor, a Johnny-Five SAINT robot, a few Halloween related things.

In this post we’re going to talk about The Prime Radiant from Apple TV’s Foundation.

The Prime Radiant

src: https://foundation.fandom.com/wiki/Prime_Radiant

In the Foundation Series, the Prime Radiant is an object built by Hari Seldon as part of his research in and development of Psychohistory. It gives people the ability to view the trajectory of cosmic-scale events in the past, present and future. A tool used to determine specific points in the timeline that can be influenced to drive humanity into a brighter future and shorten the dark ages that follow the fall of an Empire.

The book(s) make the object seem rather ordinary but the on-screen imagining of the Prime Radiant is something else entirely. Is it an atomic ash tray? Is it a quantum computer? Is it a tesseract? Maybe it is all of these things, I’m still not sure. I am sure, though - it is extremely cool looking.

Feeling a little bolstered from my Dial of Destiny experience, I set out in Shapr3d to start designing the Radiant.

About halfway to something close during a search session, I found a 3D model for sale that looks really good and is cheap. So $10 shortcut, engage!

I’ve had a few false starts at trying to design the model.

Resin Time

I attempted several FDM prints of the internal latticework using Bambu’s CF-PLA materials but the bridging work is extreme for that setup and the need for supports is going to introduce a challenge. Besides, the tetradecahedron outer shell needs to be clear, so I’m going to have to get into Resin for this project or get really good at cutting acrylics or outsource that part to a glassblower. For this project, I’m using an Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra. For the clear acrylic, I’ve been seeing buzz regarding AnyCubic’s High Clear Resin, so I ordered a case of it work with.

Attempt Number One

This model is divided into the tri-lattice, the quad-lattice, a central core and two shell parts. The lattice is extremely delicate at 100% scale and support removal was a real P.I.T.A.

Attempt 1 Conclusion

Attempt 1 was a 100% scale attempt using AnyCubic’s High Clear resin. It did indeed come out pretty clear following the manufacturer’s instructions but with one giant trade-off. You can never touch it. AnyCubic’s resin is indeed clear and the material properties are pretty good for this application. However, they instruct you to varnish the cleaned and cured model with their resin and a quick cure to bring back the clarity that is lost during cleaning. This varnish step makes the object EXTREMELY tacky and you basically can’t handle the model.

If you ask me that’s a pretty giant omission by all of the shill youtube and 3d print blogs out there gushing about this resin.

As for the $10 model files, it was nice though I’m still inclined to build my own to potentially give myself the chance of breaking the shell components up differently. Maybe in a future attempt as these files are good enough for now.

Attempt Two

In this attempt, I increased the scale of the model to simplify support removals from the lattice. I’m still using the AnyCubic High Clear Resin, I have ten bottles left after all. Instead of the resin-as-varnish process provided by the manufacturer I decided to post-process the shell components in a way that is similar to headlight restoration.

Stepped wet sanding from 200 up to 1500 grit, then automotive clear coat.

Attempt Three

On the third attempt, I scaled the model back down to 110% of the original model. The size gives the internal latticework more substance for easier support removal and feels good as a size. Still fighting clarity issues I thought it might be interesting to pour the model solid with clear resin. That was sort of a trainwreck, actually.

I drilled a small hole in the completed assembly, brushed on some resin and uv cleared it to fuse the shell halves together. I used a ketchup squeeze bottle and a process of fill-flash-fill-flash to try to pour the shell full of resin.

This resulted in a comedy of errors. First was that my resin-sealed shell seems leaked, creating a mess to clean up and borrowing future Dremel processing problems. The other issue was the heat exchange of the resin curing process blasted some of the latticework paint off the lattice.

Attempt Four

On attempt 4, I kept with the scale of above but opted for a different varnish solution. I think Automotive Clear Coat “should” be the best choice but the high humidity of the Alabama summer and doing this in my garage is making for poor results.

This time I used Liquitex Gloss Varnish, available from Amazon, Michaels and Hobby Lobby. It seemed to be a bit more forgiving when applying in multiple coats.

The results were not perfectly clear but by far the best balance of clear but not-sticky and evidently UV resistant to yellowing.

Resin and your Lungs

I did a fair amount of sanding and stripping on the shell halves. At first, to get support marks out and bring out clarity but later using Citris Strip to try to removed failed coats of clear that had surface flaws.

When sanding, I wore a mask and used gloves with the majority that being wet-sanding inside a bucket of water. Some sanding underwater and some sanding above water to observe the high spots and know where to apply pressure.

Note the white residue on the bucket.

This bucket was only ever used when sanding resin (not clear) and this is after it was rinsed with a degreaser and fresh water.

It persists through an industrial degreaser and high pressure water so imagine what it could do in your lungs. Acetone or Naphtha can certainly clean it off the bucket but I wanted to highlight the persistence and long term health considerations of fine resin dust. Be careful sanding! Work in a well-ventilated area, wear a mask or painting respirator and use water to keep the dust down.

DO NOT sand (or any process, really) resin in your kitchen sink or anywhere you may later use for food prep.

Buying a Prime Radiant

Sometimes my own Griswold-esque OCD out strips my own skill and this is one of those times. To get the Prime Radiant I was most happy with, I reached out to a skilled creator on TheRPF forums.

The maker who made this one was extremely fair with his price and did a phenomenal job. He added additional detail to the inside latticework, managed to get a clear poured-solid resin to get the weight right and even had designs laser-etched on the outside. On top of all this he was just a really good guy to talk with.

Dial of Destiny Mark 4 Conversion Instructions

Want to buy one? Click here for ordering options.

Already have one? Welcome! Hopefully the video and resources below cover the bases but if you have any questions, just drop a comment and I’m happy to help.

If your Compass Mount Looks like this:

 

Then, You can carefully unscrew the compass mount like this illustration.

The following video also shows how this assembly can be separated at the 10:20 mark)

(If you’d just like to see how to convert between split and assembled configs, jump to about 10:20 in this video)

 

If your Compass Mount Looks like this:

 

Then your conversion operates like this:

Lift the compass mount off.

Unscrew the center plug

Re-orient the dial parts for the desired split configuration.
Screw the center plug back in to create enough pinching force to hold the halves together.
Re-Install the Magnetic Compass Mount

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Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny Review

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Mild spoilers follow.. you’ve been warned.
TLDR: I liked it, I’ll of course preorder it as soon as I can and I’ll probably see it in Theater one more time. It isn’t perfect, though and as they say: I have notes.

Just to level-set and address the most common comparison: I hated Kingdom of the Crystal Skull; until I didn’t. In recent re-watches Crystal Skull actually changed my mind about that film. I rather enjoy it, now. Crusade and Raiders battle for my number 1 ranking and the rest vary by mood, including this new installment, I suspect.

Driving home from seeing Indiana Jones and The Dial of Destiny, I had a smile on my face. That is: right up until we found the Wallace Tunnel on I-10 in Mobile, Alabama was closed forcing a detour through downtown Mobile. In my opinion the downtown Mobile street layouts are more “gardened” than “engineered.” They just sort of happened over time, less as a result of planning and more out of a protracted timeline of necessity, repair and expansion.

This, I think might be an apt metaphor for about my first impressions of Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny.

Mobile isn’t my favorite place to visit. In many ways it is like its sister city, New Orleans. Parking is a pain, traffic is a consistent problem. There are million dollar homes with historical marker plates within a block of derelict shanty flop-houses. On any given night you have equal odds of an adventurous good time with colorful characters or becoming a crime statistic. In fact, you could almost imagine finding Indy in a back alley brawl or Delta River boat chase over information leading to some ancient relic from early Spanish occupation..

Right before we came onto the tunnel, still smiling, I told my wife:

“You know, that might be my least favorite Indiana Jones movie.”

I need to see it again to settle on a final ranking but just because Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny isn’t my favorite Indy movie doesn’t make it a bad film or even a bad final outing for Indy. From my top 5 flavors of Ice Cream, even the fifth ranked Ice Cream can hit the spot on a hot summer day. So did this last outing with Harrison Ford once again donning the fedora and whip in search of fortune and glory (or perhaps just closure and reconciliation).

As an Indy fan I’m inclined to defend this movie from the click-bait troll reviews that apparently make a living throwing shade at Lucasfilm and Disney leadership and made their collective minds up about this film a year ago before it was even in the can. By contrast, I write here from my phone in meeting-boredom and in organization of my own thoughts and could care less if another human ever reads it. These people don’t need me to defend their choices, so I’m honest and my opinions are my own.

I like the Archimedes prop (alot, obviously) and the fetch-quest was cool. I even like Archimedes as a historical truth-finder similar in some ways to Indy. The Leads were fine. Indy was: Old-Ass ropey-but-strong and still-very laconic and wry Indy. Helena was a perfectly fine roguish co star, maybe a little hyperactive but a fine reflection of modern audiences in contrast to Indy’s pre-adderall generation.

Mild Spoilers

Ford is always great as Indy, even at this age. I suspect this is more that Indy is a facet of Harrison Ford’s personality than a character he’s actually playing. The horseback scene shown in the trailers is thrilling and the de-aged Indy sequence at the beginning is great. The de-aging tech still isn’t perfect but it also isn’t distracting, though don’t look too closely at the eyes. Eyes are still hard: being the window to the soul and all.

Mads Mikkelsen was great, liked seeing Antonio Banderas too.
Phoebe Waller-Bridge and not-Short-Round were fine ensemble cast members.

Though, I don’t think the film does a great job of making either character like-able. Early in the film Helena leaves old-man Indy in a way that earlier films would have rewarded with an insta-Karma booby-trap to the face. For the Teddy defenders out there: How would you feel if Short-Round killed people? Teddy murders a fool. Dude was a nazi and had it coming but still!? The modern story aesthetic Vis-à-vis the quality of human life doesn’t really map well here, in my opinion. I want my kid side-kicks to be edgy lovable scoundrels but Teddy? This makes Teddy too hardcore as a sidekick in my view. I’m just sayin’ that if Teddy’s hanging around my NYC apartment, I’m not leaving him alone with the pets.

FWIW: My daughter really liked Helena’s character and style, so this might just be curmudgeonly 44 year old values talking.

If I’m honest most of the things that make this a good film and not a great film probably happened in the editing bay or might be the result of a last-minute restructure to the original script despite conflicting rumors on the subject. There are some odd ADR lines where a character is talking but apparently via ventriloquist skills because their mouth isn’t moving. The story structure is a little muddied too in that Archimedes’ Dial comes in three parts and you’d expect those parts to map cleanly over a three-act story structure. Instead, the final part - the little compass-like-whatcha-ma-call-it in the center of the dial just sort of “happens” without detailed explanation or much in the way of fanfare.

Mangold and the DP borrowed enough of the Indy style in terms of color palette and set-design and John Williams score does plenty to make this feel like a real Indiana Jones movie but some of the classic Spielberg hip-shots, shadows and framing are missing. ( Level-set, again: I’m not a Spielberg-only Stan - I hate what he did to Ready Player One) Some of the shadows and silhouettes are there but they aren’t allowed to breath. The camera pans and transitions also fail to evoke the old-timey Republic serials that are hallmarks of the franchise. There is a travel sequence. It was updated and probably shouldn’t have been.

Mostly, the pacing is a little odd. The middle of the movie had my eyes wandering from the screen. I feel like the transition through the third act resolution to the finale was rushed and left me a bit disoriented. It wasn’t a fatal flaw but I think in time this transition from the third act pinnacle to the finale will be divisive, maybe even an object lesson. The “Nuke the fridge” of story transitions.

Ultimately I like where they left it, the final scene was touching and nostalgic and worked for the characters.. and I’m happy to get one more outing from Harrison Ford as Indiana Jones. Go see the movie.

Aviation Themed Whiskey Flight Boards

Bars built around aviation are fantastic bits of Americana.   From the tourist restaurant bars of Kitty Hawk to military aviator hangouts festooned with WWII Pacific Theater service patches and plagues, there's just something about a good aviation bar.    One whiff of leather and cheap whiskey and one glance at the warm wood and weathered brass and you can see how the explorers and heroes of generations passed would wind down in places like these after a day on the flight line or in the pilot's seat.

Pensacola Naval Air Station has (had?) a really cool spot like this though eventually all such spots seem to abandon their historicity in favor of tourism and trinkets. Which neatly segues to: Jock Lindsey's Hangar bar in the Disney Springs portion of Orlando.

Jock Lindsey's Hangar Bar surprises in that it shows a surprising amount of restraint for a Disney establishment.  Shaped like a small maintenance hangar and straddling a theme of Indiana Jones and Aviation without ever officially naming Indy, it is understated and simple.   It does a good job of channeling the vibes of a real aviation hangout and the kind of place Indy's favorite pilot probably retired to in his later years.  The kind of place where you just might imagine Indiana Jones popping into to enlist Jock in one last adventure.  Just leave Reggie behind.

The napkins are shop towels.  The Whiskey Flights are served in Glencairn Glasses atop half-propellor-shaped flight boards.   

You made it to the end of the preamble, the princess is in another castle but my take on the propellor-themed whiskey boards is just a quick print away.    Cheers!

3d Model: Download from Printables

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Dial of Destiny Prop Build

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This covers the initial, Mk1-Mk5 builds. For the most recent project updates, check this post.
Already have one and looking for support guides or parts? Click here for assembly instructions.
Want to buy one? Click here for ordering options.

Just here to see what went into making it? Welcome to my first adventure in prop making.

Mark I

Based on a the single still frame of a (mostly) assembled "Dial of Destiny" from the upcoming Indy movie, I wanted to try my hand at creating a basic approximation of the prop for my basement, bar, gameroom.

A few challenges:

  • I only have the single still frame grab from the movie trailer to go by

  • I have a somewhat limited 3d modeling skillset

  • I have a very limited artistic skillset

This is a timelapse of most (but not all) of my first attempt at generating a primitive test version of the prop to hold us over until someone more talented can make a detailed version.

STL Files:
https://github.com/graffitilogic/3dPrintStuff/tree/main/Indy/DoD

Prototypes

Top: 144mm Test, Bottom: 200mm Test

Top: 144mm Test, Bottom: 200mm Test

“Compass Dial” Workaround

The dial for the center compass-like mech is very small and the post that engages from it is entirely too small to reliably function. The first time someone turns it and it catches any resistance, it will snap off. As a workaround for now, I glued a part of a paperclip to the dial.

240mm Build

Even at 240mm I think the dial rod is too small, so “paperclip thing” was used again.

Insets

I’ve always been bad at art..

Assembly Instructions

Mark 1.5ish

Late May 2023 Update - 6 sides, Side details

DOH. It’s not 8-sided.

An anonymous emailer, supposedly familiar with the production told me the prop was going to be octagonal in shape. This rightfully jived with my confirmation-bias as a programmer that likes math-by-eights. This last trailer gives a better view of the assembled mechanism and it uhh… isn’t octagonal. So… yeah.. Need to fix that.

A new promo trailer came out with some new stills to potentially harvest some early details about the prop.

Central glyph disc from the bottom of the Dial? (Or…. map that leads the heroes to parts of the artifact?)

Assuming this is related to the bottom glyph disc of the prop, we can extrapolate some rough sizing estimates..

 

The Upper Compass-like mechanism perhaps?

Additional Side Details

The additional details set me down a path to adjust my own personally-built model above with additional side details and some slight size adjustments.

Told ya by art-fu was weak! :)

The biggest issue that I’ve had with the side details was printing them with supports. The channels are so small between those chiclet pieces that I cut myself a few times on the tiny support wires that were generated to fill the channels.

The May 2023 Dial turned out pretty good., except that its the wrong shape! :\

Mid June Update

To work around the support headache of the side details, I separated the chiclet-box-things into their own prints and left inset cutouts for easy glueing and snapping of the details into the box-sides. In order to accommodate this, it was necessary the expand the box sides a little while trying to preserve the internal scaling ratios.

By mid June, I started trying to add in some of the extra detail from the top of the box design. Each point of the hexagonal box has an elongated pyramid with tiny details. Looks a little like a landscape, sun-ray pictograph to my eyes. If I did the smallest lines as cutouts in the print, I’m not 100% sure it would translate well in larger layer-height and nozzle-size print configurations. For now at least, I’ve added a small cutout in the shape of the pyramid but missing those fine line details. I exported glue-on outset versions of those top details.

 

The early screenshot of the assembled dial also shows perpendicular seams on box. I thought it was odd that these seams were not symmetrical points of the hexagonal structure. I’ve resisted so far the urge to add these cutouts until I can see the film and see how persistent the seams are within the film. I suspect that the assembly in film will slide together and these will be left as seams but not necessary raised relief as pictured here.

At this scale, drawing the little sun + raw pictograph would be a challenge for me. I enabled Archimedean Chords for the top layers and the printer at least gives me this effect. It isn’t perfect but I’ll take it, for now anyway.

As of mid-June I’m starting to run out of ideas for this current design. I’m mostly happy with it, though. The weak spots are my lack of hand-drawn art skills. Once the movie comes out and I can get more detail on the glyphs I might end up trying to build something that is printable for the glyph areas. (Like a transfer sheet or transparent decal)

Mid June Update 2

Well, I put out into the universe that I was running out of inspiration and ideas and the universe answered the call. In a recent Blog Mickey Post, they announced the reopening of the small Indy store at Hollywood Studios as a temporary bar and snack shop. It has been re-christened the Den of Destiny and features a Dial of Destiny Prop giving us plenty of details to obsess over. I’m told this isn’t a film model and that it was made specifically for this Disney Parks location by local talent. The creator(s) are a professional and unable to spill the secrets, specs and dimensions of the model, totally understandable, that.

I think we can infer that this model was likely derived from privileged access to production design notes. While it is possible, even likely that the film model and Parks model might differ in finish and details, I think we are safe to glean some details from this model for our hobby build.

Well, all that detail work.. felt a little like work. But the result is worth it, I think.

 

Splitting the Box

Having recently built the basement bar, I was thinking about the prevalence of jigs, cutouts and other build-assistance. While working out the line pattern in the upper white ring, I noticed that it is also based on a hex shape. So, I started to wonder if this is the answer for the the box split.

I’ve waited this long to tackle this particular problem b/c I think I secretly hoped the box would snap together and the seams would more or less disappear. I don’t think that’s the case, though. In fact I’m mostly sure of it after seeing these photos of the premiere model. I suppose it sort of tweaked my sensibilities that the box would be split where it is split but now I’m thinking this was another hex-jig-derived design decision. It seems like you can work out the cut points to separate the box by overlaying a 1:1 scale hex and positioning it so that the points no longer intersect with the inner inlay rail and rotate it so that it doesn’t interfere with the gear-box-cutout on the bottom side.

Dealing with Spares

At this point, I’ve printed a few prototypes and in some cases have doubled-back on design philosopy. Originally I printed the smallest prototypes on Bambu Iridium Gold Filament. Once complete, I wasn’t thrilled with the color match so I started painting them in either Rustoleum Gold or Krylon Golf Leaf paint. I found a Champagne Silk Gold filament that I liked for the smaller parts but the filament is inconsistently available and the brand name is very um.. Shenzen diversified whitelabel-ish. I’ve also been printing these in Antique Gold Silk Filament after a friend found a roll of something similar at a Thrift Store and sent it my way.

Why so many? Sometimes the filament is too dull or the paint is too shiny or the filament is tonally incorrect and the paint obscures detail work. A necessity of my work and family schedule is I seldom have more than an hour of uninterrupted free time to sit and design or experiment, results in an iterative design process. A byproduct of the iterative process is that I ended up with a scattering of parts printed or processed through varied combinations of material color and paint color choices.

Enough so that counting the three models I’ve printed for my own display since April, I have parts or have built more than a half-dozen of these. What to do with the spares? I gave one to a friend and two out on Indy and prop builder forums. I’ve listed the rest on eBay with 50% going to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the American Cancer Society or American Heart Association. Kind of cool to clean out my parts clutter, deliver some cool props to fellow excited Indy fans and get a little charity feels in the process.

Update 7/16/2023
.. all of the Charity-share auctions sold. Raised a couple thousand for several charities. eBay’s charity fund isn’t quite as automatic and hands-free as I’d hoped. There are steps.. and fees.. so many fees.

eBay Results

The eBay sales of prototypes and partly finished props yielded the following:

1 @ $910 with 50% to American Cancer Society
1 @ $356 with 50% to St. Jude
1 @ $699 with 50% to St Jude
1 @ $245 with 50% to American Cancer Society
1 @ $1225 with 50% to St. Jude
1 @ $305 with 50% to American Cancer Society
1 @ $315 with 50% to American Cancer Society
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$4055 /7 = $579 average

Not bad but I don’t think we’ve solved Cancer with this. Outside of the charity split, I also traded one for a metal-plated Coronado Cross and one for an improved Grail Diary. I’ve given a few away, as well. I started getting 100+ messages per week: “Make me one, sell me one, make me one, ship it to Germany, Italy, Australia, France”. eBay gets grumpy about those side deals, international shipping is atrocious and frankly 100+ messages per week is a bit too people-y for me. I kind of prize my quiet, simple existence.

Scarcity and release timing pushed the average sale per Dial up over $1000/per prop briefly. That’s the cost of scarcity and impatience of early adoption. Which is somehow both too much but also not enough to be worth my time as a side-hustle. 30+ print hours per dial + assembly time and other materials and trying to fake customer-service and sales skills that aren’t in my wheelhouse.

Eventually, I expect the usual prop-making Etsy crowd will start to fill this need with highly accurate original prop designs and prices will stabilize towards more reasonable levels. My plans will become the Great Value alternative to the AAA props. I’m cool with that.

After seeing the movie..

With the film being out and production secrecy embargoes starting to lift, more details of the prop have been trickling in. Folks have sent me stuff from twitter, forums, facebook - one person super sleuthing screenshots during the film which has been really helpful.

Observations looking at these is.. I got that bottom disc wrong, it looks like what I thought was the Glyph disc is actually a different prop from the movie, the Graficos (?) I think they called it. It looks like the glyph disc at the bottom is a fair amount simpler in design but it and the white rings are actually pearl which is a really nice touch and to my mind makes sense thematically. Seafaring ancient Greece would of course use Pearl thanks to its material properties as reasonably hard but still workable. Would could imagine that Archimedes might have come to appreciate pearl for the concentric nature of their development.

The internal mechanisms of the production prop seem reminiscent of a planetary gear, to my untrained eyes. Though, I’m not entirely sure it functions like one, if at all. if you look there are certainly a number of static gears in the assembly that seem to be just there as interesting bits.

working on refactoring the center area, improving the split box design.

Mark 3.5

This iteration smooths the out inset slope, adjusts the ring diameters for lost consistency through over-processing and scaling mistakes and adds some of the side plate details by borrowing from the Disney Parks prop and the film prop. (Their plate layouts are different) Combined with the new compass design and the split build, I think this looks alot like the film prop, minus the internal gearing complexity that doesn’t seem to actually have any function.

Completed Assembly for the Mark 3.5 Design. This is my stopping point for awhile.

Remaking my own Dial based on the new designs.

Side A Print

Side B Print

Outer Inset Ring

Scammy McScam-Face

This site is a scam. It will disappear under this domain and pop up under a new domain with similar style, layout and copy.

An idle Saturday enjoying the backyard with the family while we have a brief reprieve from the extreme temps to just regular jungle-like Alabama normal temperatures. I come in to fetch some ice cream and I see an angry message notification from someone who bought one of my Dial prototypes on a Charity-Split auction on eBay. The person is pissed because they found a site (probably a facebook ad) for a Dial of Destiny Prop for $38. When you click through there are various screenshots of various iterations of the prop harvested from eBay and therpf.com prop builder forums and other sites.

One of the fake reviews if even from: -BillD

must..not..shift..into.. super-asshole mode.

.. a little known weakness to PayPal’s buyer protection is this:

The scam seller can ship an empty envelope or box to anywhere in your ZipCode and that suffices as “proof of delivery” for a giant, understaffed and over exposed payments processing company like PayPal.

July 28th Update

My interest in this has plateaued but I did find a few minutes to tinker around the spiral design. It still isn’t 100% movie accurate but it is an improvement.

Final eBay Activity

I have material enough for maybe 4 or 5 more, 2 of which will go towards funding some printer maintenance and/or a cheaper secondary workhorse printer for future projects, probably a P1P and to pay down my eBay fees invoices. I’m not ordering any more material after this run. Anything I have available should be gone by mid-to-late August but fret not fellow Indy fans, rumor has it in the prop-maker-forums that even more accurate versions are being made and sold, coming soon to the Etsy-verse. That’s awesome.

Fall, 2023: Project Conclusion, Final Thoughts

Time to move on from this project. Had some laughs, learned a few new skills, raised a little money for charity and achieved the primary goal of making a beer-goggles passable Dial of Destiny Prop. There are still plenty of prop details left to resolve and there are some creative and highly detailed props out in the wild from more talented folks on the horizon.

When this project started, I just wanted a thing and couldn’t find anyone from which to buy thing. Over the 3 months of effort, a few meta observations have come into focus.

Acts of pure creation are fun and talented people are amazing.
Just like walking through an arts and crafts festival, poking around the prop maker forums on the internet is a fascinating exercise. The amount of care, time, expense and level of detail that go into these efforts are impressive, if not intimidating. Just like the arcade and pinball restoration scene, actually.

In-group cliques w/ protectionist concerns, outsider-skepticism & fear of commoditization amongst prop builders
Early on, the only Dial for sale on the internet that I could find reference to was located on a private facebook group. A particular subreddit required a portfolio of related work prior to joining. Some forums were more open to outsiders than others. They have their own lexicon, their own set of taboos and their own [implied] blacklists of taboo-violators. There was an underlying theme in these communities of concern about Chinese scam sites like the one above and more generally the commodification of the work as hustle culture and collectibility sensibilities collide.

A narrative of a hyper-competitive, often mean-spirited and darker side of the Etsyverse that I wasn’t aware of formed. I guess it never occurred to me that Etsy sellers would be sniping at each other but they do. Paranoia around trying to maintain artificial scarcity fueled by fear of a diminishing or saturated market keep some of these folks up at night trolling forums in classic keyboard-commando fashion. Just like the arcade and pinball restoration scene, actually. I almost started an Etsy store to sell these things but decided against it. Anything that might invite drama and work opposite of my love for the franchise is a big no-thanks.

Although, zooming out a bit: There is comical irony in a bunch of prop nerds and artists building a recurring revenue stream from recreating replicas of actual Hollywood prop masters who were paid once for their work. Being so precious with their own copy of someone else’s’ original work while being aggressively protective of their own copycat coke formula.

methinks thou dost protest too much.

This, I think is a unique aspect of commercial art vendor circuit. A nugget of a thought that occurred to me walking through the Epcot Arts and Crafts festival watching vendors sell for a premium their own interpretations of other artists’ and animators’ work. I wonder if those original animators (many of whom were laid off a decade ago) are getting a cut of the licensing? You don’t have to hang around long to hear the vendor in one booth talking shit about the vendor from another booth. I guess capitalism isn’t a team sport.

Thinking on the protections that these artists try to mask their work with and all of the signs saying “no photos, please.” That’s ironic right? No photos of my copy of a thing that was derived from something that literally aired on ABC during the Wonderful World of Disney.

People are weird animals.

This is an abstraction of the AI conversation in the current Zeitgeist. If a drawing of a drawing is art, is a photo of a drawing still art? If you stare at enough art, it creep into your own creative output, just like the training data for generative models. These are complex topics for a blog about retro-nerd stuff, so.. I’ll leave it there for now.

Our princess is in another castle
Just my opinion: considering the box-office take of Indy 5 and how promotional budgets in the studios work, I don’t expect to see an official prop anytime soon. Hopefully I’m proven wrong.

Throughout this post and to this point in time, I made a prop that was “close enough” for my own purposes and with enough whiskey your mind will resolve it as accurate, even though it isn’t really accurate. The dimensions were a guess, constrained by build-volume. The glyphs were pixel-peeked from theme park photos and further extrapolated by astrological signs. The internal dimensions were resolved through relational geometry and natural constraints and the hidden internal details of the film prop are far more elaborate.

On the OCD scale, where 1 is a deformed pizza box and 10 is the film prop, this is a 7 by my estimate. Keep an eye out and I’m sure the real prop makers will eventually rise to the challenge.

December 2023: Getting Pulled Back In

I thought I was done! (again). I guess not! (Again)

Social Media. I should stay off of it. Around early December on one typical four-espresso morning waiting on a meeting, my phone vibrated with a social media message from across the Pond. Summarized as follows:

”I’m in [exotic place] (by standards of South Alabama, anyway) I’d like one of your props.. but there are two issues I’m concerned about. Layer Lines and Support Scars. “

In my little mental red flag push-pin map of places that I’d sent Dials, this particular locale spoke to me. I’m being vague here… on purpose. Just to highlight the innovation-motivation without calling attention to an individual in the Indy prop communities.

I know that I could make a Dial without layer lines and without support scars, I made plenty of them but it was hard work; a lot of sanding and post-processing of the parts, which drove the time (and price) up. But, since I took a break over the fall from making Dials, a few things didn’t set right with me about the model as I left it.

Issue: I wasn’t happy with the way the conversion process, particularly the danger of breaking the eyepiece part while unscrewing the compass mount. No one (but me) appears to have broken one but still, I wanted to improve this mount.

Proposed Solution: A slight redesign of the screw-plug to introduce a magnetic coupling. Working on my Johnny Five project, I’ve been experimenting with magnets to give some parts a natural resting position and to aide in disassembly and storage. Its something I saw Titan Ross do over at Titan toys on his smaller J5 builds to hold the arms into the shoulder sockets while still allowing rotation.

Issue: I wasn’t happy with the FDM print process. I mean, the bambu printers are great but the post-processing steps to add weight were cumbersome. When someone would buy a Dial from me, I added pour-channels and plugs to the Side A/B parts and filled them with a concrete-like mixture. The weight was good but the balance was off. Also, it was messy.

Proprosed Solution: (Read in Austin Powers voice) Resin, baby. Yeah.
(Resume normal internal monologue voice of George Carlin) In order to build a Prime Radiant, I finally picked up a resin printer. Then another. Then another. Then another. The full-sized / large Dial wouldn’t fit on my Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra but does work out on an Elegoo Jupiter.

Issue: I know I was missing some details like: the edge ripples on the box and the lines on the viewfinder disc.

Proposed Solution: Adderall and design-focus-time.

Issue: I wasn’t happy with the organization of the project on printables. It was clutterd.

Proposed Solution: Declutter it while also adding additional build sizes. (200mm, 205mm, 210mm)

Mark 5

Mark 4 became Mark 4.5 which became Mark 4.6 which eventually became Mark 5. Mark 5 is the Mark 4 design with a few details added to the box corners and fixes for the 3 items listed above that are backward compatible with the older designs. MODULAR, FTW.

I’ve mailed off a few samples but I’m pretty excited about this update. It just “feels” right.

Mark 4 Corners

Mark 5 Corners

Star Trek Picard Season 3

I previously let my disappointment in some of the modern Star Trek offerings known in what I think was a pretty fair set of opinions.

Picard Season 3 is…. great. Not just great for Star Trek or great by comparison to the cookie cutter sludge factory of streaming television. Its an excellent show, especially if you are a TNG or DS9 fan.

How to summarized this without spoilers…Allegory? Metaphor? I’m not sure that I know the difference..

Imagine you go to a party where most of your pet peeves are on display.

There’s nowhere to park. The music is horrible; flapping its way through a separated speaker on a rattling shelf and filling the room - somehow both too shrill and too thump-y. The annoying and obnoxious close-talking guest that won’t let you get a word in edge-wise and keeps you cornered for the majority of the night. Someone’s snotty teenager keeps going back to the food-table after having sneezed on all of it during his 2nd-and-3rd trips to get at probably: bacteria-infested deviled eggs.

There is more than one Miller-light intoxicated redneck wearing Let’s Go Brandon attire and spoiling for a fight about something. There is more than one liberal-arts major hipster wearing a Rainbow Che Guevara shirt high on edibles and reeking of Body Odor that wasn’t within the masking ability of their homemade soap.

The Business Chads, sales-guy types are in the corner talking about their investment portfolios and island-hopping vacations between bursts of boisterous but totally unconvincing laughter. At least one of them will eat a bullet before Christmas.

Then, on the last 1/3 of the evening it all turns around.

You reconnect with an old close friend from school and their delightful new spouse. You didn’t realize they’d moved nearby and you have a blast catching up, even make plans for coffee or drinks after work next week. While you were sequestered away talking about bygone years the rednecks passed out, the close talker realized he had dog shit on his shoes the whole night and goes home. The hipsters are couch-locked in amazement at the LEDs flickering over the pool and two of the Business Chads are filing out insurance paperwork: apparently one of the Karen’s backed into their new Mercedes, which was a Lease. Even the music and food improved as a Taco truck operator sees the crowd and decides to set up for service.

This, in a nutshell is Star Trek: Picard. Season 3 is a great TNG outing and it does the rare thing of improving the seasons that came before it by firing a concentrated tachyon beam of STTNG nostalgia right into your eyeballs. To say it sticks the landing is an understatement.

I get it though: if you can’t endure Seasons 1 and 2, then just read their synopsis and skip right to the good part of the party. The tacos are worth it.

Home Bar Build: Tiki / Indy Adventure Theme

Tucked away in Disney Springs is Jock Lindsey’s Hangar Bar. A clever little Indiana Jones themed bar themed around Indy’s pilot from the beginning of Raiders. An Indy bar that tries really hard to never mention Indiana Jones… Such a not-brand-aware thing to do for Disney. I sort of love it.

So, what does this have to do with Arcades and Pinball stuff? With the Mario Karts gone and a reduction in games that I’m working on, for quite some time I’ve been wanting to build a Indiana Jones-Esque Tiki Bar in the game room.

There are a few motivations here. One large motivation is that I wanted to change the game room from being a place for collectables to being more of a place to hang out with friends. In a gut-punch, I lost a dear friend to cancer last year and it really highlights for me the need to be better about just “hanging out” instead of being project and career focused all of the time. So, with the bar plan I have in mind I gain additional comfortable seating for 3 plus behind-the-bar space.

Another motivation is.. well.. its cool. Also, I have a decent sampling of bourbons for tasting and I’m pretty sure my wife would love for it to find a different place to live than our dining room.

..so this will be a living blog post, get updated with my progress. If you’ll excuse me I have to go get some man-glitter on me now.

Day Zero - Planning and Staging

Draft plans, Ideas, aesthetics, etc.

I designed a two-wing bar design in CAD with a 42” main bar and two 36” wings at a slight angle. This was pretty great for getting material costs nailed down per section.

For design, I’m sticking with a tiki-theme. Tiki bars are well suited for limited material and finish, the kinds of shipwreck materials one might find at the not-to-plan conclusion of a three-hour tour. :) They will be high-hiding and novice building errors can be mistaken for intentional authentic charm.

For materials, I had in mind two different approaches:
1) Lightweight version - similar to the cheaply made but overpriced tiki bars you see in Home Goods stores
- with construction based more or less on 2”x2” balusters or structural bamboo, this could be cheap to build and easy to move
- it may also be flimsy without engineered cross supports, a maximum load of about 500lbs
2) Medium-Heavy version - constructed from brace-arranged 2x4’s and finished in bamboo accents.

Overall cost was a large consideration. My unfinished basement is a dive and building something too nice doesn’t really make sense for this space.

Placement Test

It will go here.

Bill’s Indy Bar v0.01. A sizing, height and placement test.

A quick zip-tie and clamp placement test taught me a few things:

  • Structural bamboo will be more expensive than 2x4 and add difficulty

  • The baluster construction will be too flimsy, even with an engineered cross-hatch and the rounded edge balusters will be hell to arrange in square braces, even with 3D printed angle guides.

  • The original two-wing design will need to be adjusted for space constraints. It would fit but nothing else would.

Day (Well, Night actually) Zero Point Five - Move Games Around

I really need a lighter hobby. Stamps, maybe?

Mortal Kombat -> Classic Arcade Row
Monster Bash -> Temporary Spot

Mortal Kombat is extremely heavy - especially with the 4 board PCB rack for MK1-4. I sacrificed a couple of those plastic furniture sliders and just brute forced it across the room. Pinball moves within my reduced-height basement are complicated by the fact that the ceiling is too low to provide a natural arc for the head of a pinball to come down. So, I have to get behind the game, remove the back legs, lower the game partially onto the lift or a prop in order to lower the head, then move the game and reverse the process to setback up.

Day One - Saturday Construction Day

Thankfully lumber prices have come down and this non-finish grade treated lumber is all pretty inexpensive.
I used pressure-treated 2x4’ for structure with 1x4’s as slats.

For finish, I picked up two packs of 96” bamboo poles from HomeDepot and an Amazon Warehouse Deal for Bamboo Fencing.
All of this evidently was sourced from the same company: Forever Bamboo / Backyard X-Scapes and some Manila Jute for bundling.

The natural bamboo was nominally thicker than the black bamboo. In retrospect I could have saved some cost by ordering directly from the manufacturer and ordering longer sticks.

I wanted to do an epoxy pour river of 3d-printed artifacts between two pieces of routed finish-grade cabinet wood. After pricing epoxy, I settled on Bamboo countertops from Lowes, that at the time were on-sale for $144.00. At this price and given the nature of bamboo, I fully expect I will need to revisit the epoxy top in the future.

In the interest of conservation of space, I settled on an L-Return design. The barstools that I ordered from Amazon certainly looked the part but both sets arrived damaged AND they were pretty uncomfortable.

Day 1.5 More Game Moves

Heavy hobby is heavy. Okay stamps would be boring. Collect coins maybe?
Indy -> Bar Area
Medieval Madness -> Old Indy Spot
Centipede & Reunion - > Old Monster Bash Spot

Day Two - Sunday Construction

Staging and Bar Overhang Tests

My kitchen counter has an 11” overhang. I decided on a roughly 9” overhang and left opportunities to add a footrail, depending on final stools. More than that would crowd out the walkway in front and weight distribution is a consideration because the bamboo butcher block countertops are about 60lbs each. I wanted to favor stability where a well-served adult might be inclined to push off the bar when standing up. REALLY good thing I went with the heavier brace-arranged 2x4 construction.

Here, I made progress cutting the bamboo fencing down and started trim installation.

Just a side note, during the course of this project I’m remembering how much I love just building things and working with my hands. This is my happy place, I don’t do it enough.

Celebratory drink after a fun weekend of sawdust and sweat. Choose, but choose wisely.

workdays: can’t build things But.. 3D Printer can

Fertility Idol is Fertile.

Shankara Stone. (or Potato?)

Accent Prep

Coasters - Reference design

Indy Bar v1.0

Despite the pivot in design, I’m pretty happy with the result and the idea that I finally get to incorporate some of the design touches that I’ve been holding onto for awhile. For instance: the Dockside plaster to the left of the dorm fridge is something that was hanging in my Grandparents’ basement when I was a kid. The propeller came from Naval Air Station Pensacola.

At the center of this of course was Indiana Jones: The Pinball Adventure - still my top two favorite pinball machines of all time. The bar gives me the opportunity to use some props that I’ve had for quite some time. From the Indy hats acquired during a high school band trip, the Wested Leather Raiders jacket that was a gift and these recent additions.

And.. of course.. bonus to have a place that isn’t our dining room to keep a selection of tasting favorites.

Slight Updates to Lighting and Props..

April - May Updates

Panoramic

Concluding Notes

Well, the space has officially been used.. Drinks with friends, side by side Nintendo Switch Mario Kart antics with my teen boy. I call it a success.

My biggest constraints along the way were budgets of space allocation and cash to spend. The original design ideas that included a two-wing design and a lower prep space behind the bar were sacrificed to leave room for games and space to walk through to the arcades in the back.

On the spend, I spent about $1200 on the project; budget-assists by using Amazon Warehouse finds for some of the bamboo and up-front material calculation to keep my material waste in check. The ability to 3D print crappy props on the cheap also helped. My biggest benefits going in was that I’ve had the Indy pinball for nearly a decade and the slow accumulation of Indy Stuff and Tiki Stuff over the years.

Already having accumulated decent tools whose lithium batteries still work after 10 years, also helped. Dewalt FTW.

Bambu X1C

I got into 3D Printing, late. During the pandemic shutdowns I was inspired by all of the ingenious solutions and crowd-sourcing of missing ventilator parts, masks, shields and supplies for first responders. I blogged about my choice in 2020, the Ultimaker 3.

Since that time I came to appreciate the stability, resiliency and reliability of the Ultimaker but I also became weary of their price point in newer models. I also found the use of 2.85mm filament to be limiting in some ways. At times, I wanted to build a second printer for concurrent print runs but most printers that fit my needs used the more common 1.75mm filament.

Well, I finally decided to take the leap and move to a different printer for primary jobs and prototyping.

About the Bambu X1

The Bambu X1 is a reasonably new middle-priced entry to 3d printing. After starting in a kickstarter-esque preorder scheme, the printer received pretty glowing initial reviews for being fast and well equipped with features.

AMS

The Ultimaker supported dual filament printing through Ultimaker’s dual-extruder print core design. Two feeders would feed filament from spools in the back of the machine to one of two hot ends in the print head. Bambu’s answer to multi-filament printing is AMS. Think of AMS as essentially a multiplexer for filament.

I’m not really interested in writing a full review here there are 100’s of 3d printing sites, channels, blogs and groups where you can find meaningful review. My short update for now is: I Like It. At times I miss the glass build plate and I wish Bambu would have invested in a dual channel / two hotend design to cut down on waste in filament changes. Aside from that, I’m really impressed with the speed to quality ratio of the X1C.