Back in October of last year, I posted about the TARDIS model that I'd been working on for 4 years.
I've reached the point where what looks like complicated interlocking wooden pieces aren't really a challenge, and something like the shooter packaging was a quick and easy project in CorelDRAW. I suspect that 4 years of on and off tinkering with my Dr Who TARDIS model has taught me a lot of things. Here's how it was 4 years ago.
It's since got a lot more refined and I'm working on a special commission to create a Christmas present for a friend's Dr Who mad niece. I have one of the old blue painted TARDIS models plus the latest variant on the table display, and they are garnering a lot of interest. A number of commissions for other work has been received based on the client seeing what we could do with simple 1/8" Masonite sheet.
Well, here's a couple of photos of the one I've just made.
There were still a few detail fixes to be done when this photo was taken, but its about 99% completed.
It's almost entirely constructed from LASER cut and engraved pieces that are all cut from a single 610mm by 305mm (2 feet by 1 foot) piece of 3mm thick (~1/8") Masonite. There are a few non-Masonite pieces (a short length of 8mm plastic tube that is cut from the barrel of a Bic pen, 4 toothpicks, some drafting film, a few inkjet printed labels, and a piece of thin foam sheet under the base to protect whatever surface it's placed upon), but essentially it's just Masonite that's been cut, assembled, glued, and painted.
All the trim around the door panels and windows that looks like its an attached wood moulding piece is achieved by using the LASER's 3D mode to carve a 45 degree chamfer into the edge of the Masonite. To get an idea of the scale, each block of 6 windows measures roughly 1 inch high by 3/4 inch wide.
Other than the glue needed to assemble the pieces of the peaked roof and the wooden cage around the plastic tube that makes up the roof light, the whole unit is cut to such tight tolerances that it can be assembled without glue or fasteners. It's all constructed like an intricate wooden puzzle.
The painting takes forever. I'm applying thinned down interior water based paint with a single action airbrush. It needs at least 5 coats of the thinned down paint to get full coverage ... however at that scale, using an airbrush and thinned paint in very light layers means that I have a lot of control over the quality of the paint finish. I use a Binks Wren "B" Airbrush that I've owned for 4 decades. Many cheap plastic single action airbrushes are shameless copies of the Binks Wren design. I have one of those copies as a secondary airbrush.
The model in the photographs has had a hard life, and needed repairs done before it was even finished. We have a 150 pound Newfoundland, and his tail is like a fur covered baseball bat. Things that you think are safe, are still within the range of his swinging tail, and this poor TARDIS was knocked off the table and onto the floor boards ... twice. Fortunately, as long as I had a stock of 3mm thick Masonite, I could make all the replacement parts I needed, and the replacement parts fitted exactly the same as the original parts. Other than lost time, there was no other loss.
The whole project grew out of a couple of Shoji Style Tea Lights that I cut using a file I downloaded from the
Thingiverse web site.
This assembled but unpainted early version from 2010, with an old Nokia cell phone leaning against it as a reference will give you an idea of the physical size.
I can't sell them as I don't have a license from the BBC, so I use the model as a design exercise to show people what I can do with my machine.
Back in late 2010, a business contact took three samples of my models (one kit, one assembled but unpainted, and one fully painted and detailed model) with her when she flew to London for licensing talks with the BBC about expanding her own line of officially licensed Dr Who products.
The news I got back from my friend was that the BBC liked what I'd done, but wanted a lot of changes to the design, and considered that my proposed price for the kit was too high.
I spent some time attempting to implement the design changes the BBC wanted, and eventually decided that it was more trouble than it was worth. My decision was reinforced by my knowledge that there was no way I could cut my costs to the sort of figure the BBC had in mind. The production of a complete kit of parts required just over 30 minutes of LASER cutting/engraving time, and due to the inherent risk of a fire in the LASER cabinet, while a kit is being cut, the LASER can't safely be left unattended.
In the end, other than the occasional tinkering with the files, I pretty much abandoned the project until late 2014.
As I mentioned in my earlier post, a few months ago, a friend asked if I would make a model for her that she could give to her Dr Who mad niece for Christmas. As the old 2010 vintage models were looking a bit tired and I could see so many ways I could improve the design, I used the request as an excuse to revise the cutting files to incorporate all the changes that the BBC wanted, and add more detailing. My end goal was to have display pieces that would better showcase my skills to potential clients of my custom work.
The biggest challenge was going from a simple flat roof to a far more complex but realistic sloping roof. It's only a 10 degree slope on the roof, but cutting the parts with edges that were 10 degrees to the perpendicular was something the LASER was not designed to do. A lot of trial and error over the past 4 years has lead me to a method of cutting small parts on an angle, however the size of the parts and the angles I can deal with are limited by the optical components in my LASER system. Purchasing a longer focal length final focus lens will allow me to deal with larger parts or bigger angles, but it's still just an inelegant workaround and even with the longer focal length lens, the items will still have physical dimension limits.
I'm just about to start the assembly and painting of the new copy for my craft market table display. Here's all the parts needed for assembly, unceremoniously dumped into a plastic 4 litre ice cream container after I took them off the cutting table in the LASER.
