Hey, I’m Baaaack!!!
As I was finishing all of the previous items, it was getting too cold in the garage shop to work. Funny how winters in Ottawa get cold like that. I thought, this is a great time to get caught up on some design work for new projects. Design work seems to take the longest time in a project, and the carving time is the shortest. With the winter blues, not being able to work in the garage because of the temp, and isolation because of covid, design work kinda of fell to the wayside as my motivation wained. Then one day surfing the web, I spotted a picture of the USS Voyager (from Star Trek) which someone had made a into a model. Right then I knew I had a new motivation to get something done.
New Software
For this project, I looked online and found a 3d model of the USS Voyager that you could print on your 3d printer (if only I had one) and fly around till your heart is content. However, this was a little, itsy-bitsy model that would fit into the palm of your hand. Who wants that? Not Me!
After scouring You-Tube for ways to manipulate 3d models, I found Denis Van Hoof who is an artist with his CNC. During one of his videos he briefly explained that he used MeshMixer to slice his model of a T-Rex (check out his video, you will be amazed) into slices that he could fit on his CNC. I took this morsel of info and downloaded the software to scale and slice up the bigger model into slices that I could carve on my CNC.
What Denis didn’t say in his video was exactly how to slice up a model. So, yup you guessed it, another learning curve to go along with the original. In order to get the model sliced up into pieces that I could comfortably carve, I sliced the model 6 different times before I was happy with all of the pieces that would produce the outcome that I wanted. Time to go back to Fusion 360 to set up for the manufacturing. But, Fusion 360 really didn’t like the way MeshMixer presented the slices. Don’t forget, MeshMixer is mainly used for 3d printing which is literally the exact opposite of carving.
New Software #2
With Fusion 360 unable to do what I want, it was time to turn to one of the paid software packages designed for CNC work. After evaluating 2 different but very similar packages, I ended up purchasing V-Carve Desktop to do my work. This allowed me to do double sided carvings which was necessary as I needed to carve from both sides in order get the shape of the model. I ended up with 4 slices for the saucer section and 3 slices for the body of Voyager, and 1 slice for the nacelles. For those of you who are not Trekkies, the nacelles are the engines of the starship. The pics below are 3 of the 8 slices.
Needless to say, there was another steep learning curve for V-Carve as well. After months of flattening the learning curve, I wonder why I didn’t purchase the software from the beginning. Oh yeah, I remember why, $400 US. With all the expenses of setting up my CNC, that money wasn’t available at the time.
The total time to carve the USS Voyager was approximately 40 hours, which included 3 pieces carved multiple times in order to get the right fit. After all of the carving, sanding, worrying about the fit, I finally glued everything together for the paint job. So, back to the internet to get the official colours of Voyager. Easy Peasy, right? Wrong!!!!
It turns out, there is no official colour scheme for USS Voyager. One colour scheme that I found was for the model of Voyager by Revel. They had the most complete colour scheme that I could find. Other model manufacturers had different colour schemes, but not as detailed as the Revel. And just about every model that I found online, was painted slightly or completely different than the Revel. Even the guys in the hobby shops couldn’t agree on the colours. So the Revel scheme became MY official scheme, with some variations.
For example, the hull colour is supposed to be light/dark grey mixture. I mixed the colours and painted the hull 3 different times until I got the colour that I wanted. I didn’t paint the hull section lines, because I thought that it made the hull look too choppy and disjointed. I changed the colours of the phaser banks to look more appealing (at least to me) and several of the other colours of the little bits and pieces of the ship. So I guess you could lump my Voyager colours into that group of models that all have their own unique colour schemes.
All in all, it took about 6 months from start to finish to complete the USS Voyager. I did several other projects during the 6 months, so it wasn’t the only thing that I did during that time, but it was my main focus.
Stayed tuned for the next installment of the the adventures of CJ in his WWW.