Lit-up Plasma Rifle

Now its time to attempt a lit up plasma rifle. I had done something similar to this before, but this was before I knew how GOOD the flying bases conduct light! However, since I did this before, I already know what bits will fit what and where, if yaknow what I mean.


Here I sanded down a flying base with the sanding drum seen above, carefully sanding it down all around to get a constant diameter smaller than the plasma rifle barrel to be, and high-speed ground the rear end to its smooth finish (high speed cutting wheel actually polishes quite good and quickly)

Then I got a piece of tubular styrene, and reamed the inner diameter out a bit, so that it would fit both the sanded flying base stand, and the 3mm LED bulb.

This piece was going to be the jacket that would fill in the gap between the rifles' barrell and breach/stock... but at the end of things I discarded this piece entirely. I also ground away the rounded tip of the led... this is kindof dangerous (for the LED, not me), as the high temp and vibration can often break the LEDs' internals.


But in the meantime, I fitted everything together, and tested the light after all the abuse I put the LED through


This pic shows the real work part of the project: the barrell. I hollowed it out enough to fit the clear rod. This was time consuming, as I had to be carefull. First, I drilled through the center with a teeny drilbit, then a medium sized drillbit. Then, very carefully, I manually spun the cone shaped router bit through the barrell from rear to front, using the drillbit holes as an auto-centering guide as the teeth slowly dig through. When the tip finally got to the end, I stopped just soon enough so it wouldnt widen the barrell tip, and rounded that area out with the little ball router bit, again manually. Then, With the tiny drillbit, I drilled out the barrell tip vents (cant really call it a recoil brake, seeing as how its plasma), so that the light will come out of there too.



Here we see just how thin the barrell walls are after running the router through it. This light is shining through, and thats with the roughed up plastic rod in the way, so it shows just how good the plastic rod conducts light as well! Plus, you can see how much light shines out in weird place, like the rear! All that is no good for the purposes of this model!


Here I went with a simpler arrangement, after seeing how much room I had in the breach/stock... which was not much! I routered out a good sized cavity, for the LED taps to lie in, and drilled 2 45 degree holes through one of the mounting blocks for the wires. If you look closely, youll see a bit of whire inbetween the wires where the hole is. This is a piece of styrene strip, so that when I cram the LED and taps in the hole, they cant ever touch each other; resulting in a short, resulting in none of the lights working. Also, if you look reeeally close, youll see some milky white stuff. Thats school glue, good ol schoolpaste. I glob this on over all the taps, and cram it all in the hole so the paste fills in the voids, to mount the LED in a temporary way, and to keep things from moving around and possibly messing up inside. Also, in the pic, clearly seen, is the blacked out areas with paint... I left the li of the LED clear so that there will be a glowing ring of green at the point between the barrell and stock, which looks cool and techno. The beginning bart of the barrell is blacked out as well, to cover the LED-clear rod gap, and the clear rod is blacked out as well, but not all the way: I left the tip exposed, for lighting up the vent slots.



These two pics show the gun assembled without teh plastic rod, and this is a close match to my first attempt, and while it looks decent, it seemed... I dont know... fake somehow.


And heres the gun with the clear rod... much much better, in my opinion. plus all the stray light glitches went away, thanks to the black paint.



Now, on a final word: The wires emerge from the arm mounting block in such a way that the wiring can be continued on up the arm, within the arm and out of sight, all the way to the chest. no wires is god wires, in some peoples' opinions.



But maybe I'll have the wires clearly visible: having them serve as modelled power wires for the actual weapons, looping out and around to the reactor in the backpack.



Either way, the Plasma Rifle itself is done, for most parts.