AFM Saucer Reproduction

I wanted to buy a set of extra saucers and a mother ship so that I could customize the look of them, and still have a set of originals should the day ever come that I wanted to sell the game. I quickly found out that there are none to be found, so I decided to make some of my own. A day or two of quick research, and I decided to use the mold and casting technique. I found most of my materials from a company named Alumilite, they have great insturctions on their website, and a list of dealers in town where I found one of their kits, which also contains excellent directions.

I began with the small saucers. The originals are made with what I assume is injection molding, so they have an undercut (basically the underside is hollow). I decided that the undercut on these is probably only there to save on material, and it would not interfere with the operation of the game if I made my repros solid (plus it would be a lot easier)! So all it comes down to is capturing the detail of the top side of the saucer, and making it the right depth, plus the empty center, and all the little holes, always more than you think! So I went to work with some modeling clay on one of my originals, filling in all the extra areas of the saucer where I did not want mold material to go.

The hardest part here, but not that tough, was making the hole through the middle that needs to be there for the red dome to go through. The next step is to make a mold box. I just cut the bottom off an old plastic tub, then sealed the edges with clay to keep the mold material from oozing out.

Now it's time to mix up and pour my mold material. The mold material included in my little kit is called RTV Quck-Set Silicone. The directions call for you to measure by weight, just a cheapo kitchen scale will work fine. After having done a few of these now, you really only need to get things within a few grams, so you don't have to go buy some fancy scale. I happened to have a nice Ohaus dial a gram on hand (don't ask why), but it's only good to about 300 grams. With larger molds, it would be nice to have something that goes to a few kilos.

In a perfect setup, you would want to use a pressure chamber to get all the air bubbles out of your freshly mixed mold material. Bubbles are only a problem if they form between your original and the mold material. You may also want to sprinkle your model now with mold release, I didn't, and ran in to no problems. Not having a pressure chamber, I just painted the material on my original first, making sure no air bubbles showed. Then VERY slowly pour the mold material in a corner of the mold box, letting gravity spread the material out and eventually the box will fill

In my case, it only took about 4 hours for the material to harden. Silicones vary by brand, so follow the proper instructions for your brand. NOTE* I found that the more commercial materials that I am now using take at least 24 hours to cure, but the molds will last much longer. I then carefully removed my original and there was my mold. It's amazing how much detail shows up, that means it's also important to make sure the surface of your original is very clean!

Now it's time to make a ship. I did some math to figure out the total volume of my new mold. 3.14(pie) x radius (squared) x height = total cubic inches. Then to get the volume of the Alumilite resin I needed, multiply by .554, which is the volume of 1 Cubic Inch. Fortunatly for me, I am math challenged and they had these formuli in the kits instructions. You could just guess a few times too, but once you mix you're commited, and extra will just be waste. The volume for my ship worked out to about a 1 1/2 ounce total mix. The material I used comes in parts A & B, and uses a 1:1 mix, and has a working time of about 2 minutes. I put 3/4 ounce of A & B into two seperate cups, then poured them in to a larger plastic container and mixed them together for about 30 sec. trying not to whip up too many air bubbles. Then as with the mold material, I slowly poured into the lowest corner of my mold and let the resin slowly rise until it reached the top of my mold. In a matter of a few more seconds, the resin starts to heat up and solidify to an opaque cream color.

4 minutes after I began to mix the two parts, I was able to pop out my saucer.

Of course that was soo cool and fast I made about 30 more, total geek out it. My wife just shook her head. Now that I had a pile of these things I still needed to drill some holes and clean them up a little bit.

At this point I remind you. Do you have on your saftey glasses, and when sanding, a good dust mask? I had a recent Cyanoacrylate bottle explosion with my glasses resting on top of my head, that's a good place for them! Glue splatters couldn't have landed any closer to my eyeball! I was REALLY lucky!

Since I had a few of these to now drill, I fashioned up a little jig on my drill press to make quicker work of all those little detail holes around the top of each saucer.

After drilling all the holes, I found that my mold was not perfect. The red dome was just a bit too tight of a fit. So once again I made a little setup on my drill press with a sanding drum to clean up the inside of each model to make a good fit for the red domes.

Now I have plenty of ships to paint as I please. I'm ready to go to paint. I decided to paint a set with a greay base, then work on the detailing after that. I used an airbrush to get a nice smooth cutom color on. I have a pretty nice iwata that I swiped from my wife that we run off a large refillable co2 tank. Remember with airbrush use, a lot of what makes one work well is the air source. The small dissposable cans get cold and pressure can change wildley. I start out at 30psi and adjust from there, of course I only know enough about them to be dangerous, so you may experience different results. I made up a cardboard paint bay and laid down my grey base.

Now I need to figure out how to detail a model well. My first attempt at what I thought I wanted doesn't look too good, so i'm calling in the calvary. I had to do the walk of shame to my wife (artist) and ask for help. She said she would have to fit me in her schedule, so all I have to show so far is my weak attempt. I'll post some new photos when she shows me how to do one correctly.

MOTHER SHIP

The mother ship was a bit more of a challenge. I needed to make a two piece mold as it needs the undercut (hollow underneath) to accomadate the electronics. I decided to mold the top of the ship first. As with the small saucer, I used modeling clay to fill the underside of the ship and to plug the areas I didn't want the mold material to go. Specificaly the center hole, and all the little U shaped cutouts around the outside. I then placed the ship on a bed of clay about 1 inch thick (this is where the second part of the mold will be poured) inside a mold box I made with lego blocks.

Since I don't have a pressure pot to remove the air bubbles from the mold mix, I first brushed the mixture on the model to be sure no bubbles would form on it's surface. I then poured my mix slowly into the corner of the mold box and let it spread over the model. It then needed to cure for 24 hours.

It was now time to do the second half of the mold. On my lego box, I had a couple extra blocks on the corners that I stuck on to keep everything tight. I now removed just these so I had a level surface around the top of my box. I then turned the entire box over, and carefully removed the clay base, and the clay filling up holes on the back side of the model. *DO NOT REMOVE THE MODEL! I now mixed up another batch of mold material, brushed on the model first, then slowly filled up the mold box. Another 24 hours to cure, and I was ready to take apart my mold box and remove my mold.

It's now time to cast a ship. Since this model is so thin, the only way I could figure out to cast it was to use what is called a squish technique. I used the top side of the ships mold as a sort of bowl to hold the resin, and then I squished down the underside of the mold to force the material up and out the sides. I had to fool around with the volume of resin to get the maximum use out of the material, but you do need to use enough of it to squish out the sides to ensure proper coverage.

There will be a certain amount of flash (excess resin) that will be on the new model, but it's really thin and easy to remove with a sharp knife. It's even easier if you remove it right after you remove the model when the model is still warm.

The only part of the mother ship that is not perfect, is the fact that there are a few air bubbles on the underside that you cannot see. and the area around the screw holes on the underside is a little bit strange looking as it's hard for the resin to squeeze in this area. That area cannot be seen and does not seem to hurt the fit. Here is a shot of one of the mother ships and a saucer installed (complete with my lame paint job) for test fit. Also a shot of a mother while painting, where you can see the screw hole imperfections that cannot be seen once the screws are installed.

MATERIALS

For the small saucers, I used the Alumilite Super Casting kit

For the Mother Ship, I used the Alumilite resin, but I used a different mold silicon, GI-1110 that I got from a local plastics store in the Denver area. It's designed to be a lot more flexible and durable for pulling out of undercut molds.

Have Fun!