Between Sean’s build, Stu’s build, various other builds I’ve seen online, and countless images of the naked ILM structure, I’ve had plenty to reference and ruminate about in regards to my own build.

I think I’ve said it plenty of times – the challenge with building a replica is that ILM got to make stuff up as they went. The size and proportions of things were the result of impromptu decisions and ad-libbing. A replica seeks to capture all that nuance (within reason) and is of a known quantity. This tends to be a slower process.

Late last year and over the New Year’s holiday I had a chance to put my ruminating to the test with my first full-sized prototype of an armature. For the final model, I want the armature to be light, strong, and resistant to warping, sagging and environmental effects over time. I will make it out our Carbon Fiber plate. In the short-term however, a plywood version of the armature will tell me a lot about how things fit, its stability, and assembly order.

I had all the parts laser cut from 1/4″ and 1/8″ hobby ply and after a few dry-runs practicing assembling things in sequence, got to clamping and gluing in stages.

As each spar is added to the assembly it gets more and more rigid. Even in relatively flimsy hobby ply, this structure is strong enough to stand on.

We build to learn – and I think for the next iteration, I’ll make a pin-registration table to allow me to align the mandibles in space relative to the saucer. I don’t think my plywood build is off by much, if at all, but knowing is better than not knowing. The rods will be 3/8″ and threaded; which will allow me to create height adjusted platforms to stabilize the z-axis as I go.

There are also a few additional spars I’ll add for some extra torsional rigidity.

I had an old Bogen tripod laying around that I used to prop it up for a walk around. This isn’t the actual mounting configuration – there are provisions for a “knuckle” in the centroid of the model that will receive a model mover rod and mounted on an engine stand for greebling.

The next step is to build the domes (ugh – the domes, the bane of any Falconer). The plywood buck will give me something I can hack-up to test fit domes on since I’ll want my final armature to fit the domes, not the other way around most likely.

I’ve been rethinking the sub-frame assembly. Originally I had planned on notching the longitudinal and latitudinal extrusions together, but this may have compromised the strength of both.

Lapping them together with L-shaped extrusions top and bottom may be a better solution. This allows the longitudinal and latitudinal assemblies to float independently of one anther until final assembly – allowing me to pick-up any tolerance build-ups I may encounter.

Here are some of the aluminum parts I’ll be using to assemble the sub frame. I’m still in the planning stages, but you can kind of see where it’s headed.

It’s mostly 1 inch square extrusion that will be notched at the intersections to make the whole thing 1” thick. Two large 0.060” ABS panels in the basic silhouette of the craft will be attached to the dorsal and ventral sides of the sub-frame and the wedges to to those.

With all the CAD work I’ve shown so far, I thought it’d be good to show something in the physical world.

The black block in the upper left is one of my ABS chunks that eventually will be the wedge of the saucer the has the radar dish on it, among other parts.

The little aluminum hex rod in the upper right is my mounting post. This will be part of the stand I’ll use to hold the model up while I work. It threads onto an old camera tripod.

A friend of mine just bought a new CNC mill. He eventually plans to offer machining services as part of his product development firm – but in the meantime, he wanted so practice. That’s where my little project comes in.

This was a practice cut. It’s the rough-in for one of the upper dome wedges. The parts are milled with consecutively smaller an smaller bit’s to capture more detail. This is pretty rough at 1/2” diameter. The interior of the parts are designed to be cut with a 1/4” cutter.

The Material is MDF – but the final pieces will be ABS.