Count Choc ANH E11 aluminum Doopy pipe build (pic heavy)

[count chocula]

Hey everyone! I've been working on an ANH stunt MTK kit and decided it was time to get started on a blaster. Although I think the HFX products look stellar, I really wanted something with light and sound. Also, I kind of enjoy putting things together myself.

 

I looked to doopydoos first, and they were out of the full resin kit. I purchased a pipe kit from them 2-3 weeks ago and am anxiously waiting.

 

I decided to get working on the pipe in the meantime. I purchased a 38.1mm OD aluminum pipe from ebay as this is reported to be the accurate OD of the original sterling (link).

 

 

I also picked up a completion kit from T-jay (thanks T-jay!), a better magazine from gazmosis (thanks gazmosis!), a Disney e-11 blaster toy (link, which I intend to use as a donor for lights/sounds), and 3-d printed parts from shapeways (Hengstler counter, M38 scope, scope lens retainers, power cylinders).

 

One big caveat to all of this is that I don't have a drill press or any heavy-duty machinery tools. Thus I intended to do all of the pipe-work with a dremel. I am fairly handy with a dremel, but it turned out this was much more of a PITA than I had anticipated. In retrospect I may have been better off going with a PVC pipe. That being said the pipe-work is now done and I have several words of advice to hopefully minimize the pain and suffering of others going this route:

 

1. Wear shoes (not sure why I tried to do this barefoot at first, but I ended up tweezering a few metal filings out of my feet) and an apron or clothes than you dont mind covering in metal shards.

 

2. Wear earplugs (it is loud) and safety goggles (pablo's epic e11 build apparently involved a trip to the ER for a piece of metal in his eye).

 

3. I found it useful to wear a latex/nitrile glove on the dominant hand (to keep the metal filings off and dissipate heat from the dremel) and a butcher's glove on the left hand (I kind of dremeled into my left thumb a few times before I started wearing the glove, and after I started wearing it the thumb part of the glove saved me several times).

 

4. Use the appropriate dremel bits. This is probably the most important, as I went through a number of bits and probably wasted a fair amount of time and money before I found something that worked:

 

For cutting straight lines:

 

I tried the diamond-coated cutting wheels. While these work well for initial scoring, they aren't powerful enough to really get through the aluminum without generating a fair amount of heat and bit-wear. I ended up using an ezlock 1.5in metal cutoff/grinding bit for most of the straight-line cutting. This bit is a beast and ground through the aluminum without an issue. Highly recommended. Also works well for grinding the edges smooth after the fact (hold the flat edge of the wheel against the line you want to smooth).

 

For grinding out the vent holes:

 

I tried several diamond-tipped grinding bits for this (I have quite a few laying around from past projects). These were pretty much worthless and were whittled down to baby-smooth metal in a matter of seconds. Don't waste your time. I also tried several aluminum oxide grinding bits. These basically exploded on impact (although they did prove useful for final cleaning-up/sanding of the edges). What really worked were the cutting bits, like this, this, and this, all of which can be found at home depot.

 

I started by cutting the 2-foot pipe down to 18 inches. I measured it out, scored the line with the diamond wheel, and then went to work with a hack saw.

 

 

Templates:

 

There are quite a few out there. I ended up using these templates from zeroroom (see post #99) in 38mm letter format. Printed them out, cut them to size and stuck them to the barrel with sticky spray glue.

 

 

 

I started with the ejection port and bolt areas, scoring the straight lines of each with a diamond wheel and then cutting all the way through them with the heavy-duty grinding-cutoff wheel.

 

Here's what they looked like after initial scoring:

 

 

I then finished off the curved edges with a rounded/ball cutting bit and turned to the vent holes.

 

I started by cutting a small divot in each of the holes with the ball cutting bit, then ground down further to make a small perforation in the aluminum in each hole big enough to get the cone bit or other cutting bit in.

 

I then slowly ground the edges of each hole to just smaller than the template line (Took 3-4 hours and I went through 4 or 5 cutting bits). This was what I ended up with:

 

 

 

 

I then cut lines in the template marking the grip, magazine and sights before soaking the whole thing in a warm, soapy-water bath for half an hour and sandpapering off the template:

 

 

 

 

 

Some of the edges were a little rough. I finished them off with various grinding/sanding wheels/bits to get this:

 

 

Not perfect, but I'm fairly happy with it. There are a few stray dremel grind marks on the surface which I'm thinking will disappear with priming/painting. I tried using a certain dremel bit with an outer diameter of around 1cm to make all of vent holes even, but the aluminum seemed to be grinding the bit moreso than the bit grinding aluminum. Still, the grinding bit did help to clean up the flash/edges and I think the holes look relatively even.

 

Hoping doopy claus visits me soon with a pipe kit...

[I'm Batman[501st]]

Nice work. It is satisfying when you see the end result, isn't it?

 

I've done my fair share of aluminium holes too (LOL if you've seen my sniper rifle build), and my wife goes off at me all the time about the metal shavings. She's a little easier on me know that my current project is styrene based

[T-Jay[TK]]

A good start and excellently detailed thread. Curious to see how you will run this build with all your additions...

[count chocula]

Thanks Ian and Tino! 

 

It's means a lot to get feedback from people whose threads you've been reading for so long. You guys are like celebrities to me haha.

 

Ian, I checked out your sniper build and it makes me feel bad for complaining about dremeling out a mere 75 holes on aluminum. That sniper rifle looks awesome.

 

And Tino, the craftsmanship of your phoenix props build is inspiring. 

 

Hopefully with the guidance of people like you I can whittle out something halfway decent. 

Edited April 17, 2016 by count chocula

[kevin926]

Nice work. I too am still waiting on doopy clause. Its been over a month now. I will take your advise on the dremel cutting wheel. I'm cheating though. I do have a drill press with a vise. Keep up the great work, looks like we are making the same build. You may want to check out Aarons muzzle kit. It's an exact cast from the sterling and fits our pipes beautifully.

[count chocula]

Nice. Thanks for the advice, kevin. I'll take a look at aaron's kit. Having someone else making a similar build at the same time will be great for bouncing around ideas. 

[T-Jay[TK]]

Thanks Ian and Tino! 

 

It's means a lot to get feedback from people whose threads you've been reading for so long. You guys are like celebrities to me haha.

 

Ian, I checked out your sniper build and it makes me feel bad for complaining about dremeling out a mere 75 holes on aluminum. That sniper rifle looks awesome.

 

And Tino, the craftsmanship of your phoenix props build is inspiring. 

 

Hopefully with the guidance of the people like you I can whittle out something halfway decent. 

 

Thanks for your words, Sean. You did everything right by starting a build thread, because THIS is what really helps.

 

Most people on the FISD are friendly and ready to help. The comments and critics you are going to receive here, might push you for even higher details...

 

Good luck with this build.

[kevin926]

Nice. Thanks for the advice, kevin. I'll take a look at aaron's kit. Having someone else making a similar build at the same time will be great for bouncing around ideas.

 

most definitely! I may give an aluminum build a go, meaning I would like to have my folding stock, trigger handle assembly and mag holder in aluminum as well. I have a decent set up in my garage as far as tools go. Just don't want the finished look to suffer so if they don't look right, they won't be a part of my finished product.

[TK bondservnt[501st]]

#d printed scope is the incorrect shape.  The rear foot is wrong.  nice build.

[count chocula]

Thanks for pointing that out, Vern. I was already a bit suspicious that some or all of the shapeways-printed parts I've been purchasing may be a little off. I actually haven't received the printed scope yet. Maybe this is something that can be remedied with a bit of sanding/modeling...? Will have to take a closer look at M38 scope specs and see how off the shapeways scope is.

[count chocula]

Vern and others:

I got my shapeways scope (link) in the mail and am having trouble figuring out exactly what is wrong with the rear foot. I took some pictures of the scope and compared them to some pictures of real scopes I have seen and don't really see much of a difference. Does it have to do with the little indentation/scoop at the top of the rear foot?

 

The shapeways scope rear foot:

 

 

Real m38 scope:

 

 

 

I've searched pretty extensively but haven't found any references for the actual dimensions of the m38 scope feet/shape.

 

I'm happy to alter the scope and/or get a different one if this one is glaringly inaccurate...

[T-Jay[TK]]

The digital sideview of the scope you have linked, looks like the rear foot is not close enough to the big lens.

 

Maybe that is just an issue on the shapeway picture and not on your printed scope (hard to see in that first photo).

 

If the rear foot is located like on the real scope (your last picture) then everything is fine.

[count chocula]

Got it. Thanks. I didn't see that before.

 

I measured the shapeways scope. It's about 5 3/8" long. The rear foot sits between ~7/8" and ~1 3/8".

 

 

 

I measured the real scope from the photo. Assuming it is also 5 3/8" long (which may be a big assumption), the rear foot sits between 11/16" and

1 1/8". Thus I will need to move the shapeways scope back a bit.

 

 

 

Maybe a dremel and a little green stuff will do it. I'll update later. Thanks for the help.

[AWOL]

To my untrained it looks like its a 42 rather than a 43 which would be why the rear foot is so close...

 

if it works kick it, if it doesn't work kick it till it does...

Edited March 13, 2016 by AWOL

[count chocula]

On 3/14/2016 at 4:06 AM, AWOL said:

To my untrained it looks like its a 42 rather than a 43 which would be why the rear foot is so close...

 

if it works kick it, if it doesn't work kick it till it does...

 

Interesting thought. TBH I can't tell much of a difference. Here's a picture I found of a variety of M38 scopes and an M40. Hard to tell much of a difference to me, but then again I've never owned any of these scopes.

 

 

Anyhow I decided to try and alter the shapeways scope.

 

I marked out about 1/8" rearward from the rear foot:

 

 

Cut it out with a dremel diamond cutting wheel:

 

 

Rotated the piece 180 degrees:

 

 

Then used this apoxie sculpt "white" stuff to seat it in that orientation. I do have some green stuff from T-jay too, but I wanted to see how well this stuff works and not waste the green stuff just yet.

 

 

 

 

Smoothed out the epoxy with some water.

 

 

 

 

I think the rear foot is now about as close to the rear lens as it is in the real m38 picture.

 

 

Will sand it tomorrow and see how it looks. Happy Sunday to all

[Bulldog44[TK]]

Good job moving the scope foot.

[count chocula]

On 3/14/2016 at 6:19 AM, Bulldog44 said:

Good job moving the scope foot.

 

Thanks, Brian. I'm worried the rear foot may not be the only thing bad about this scope. It's a little thin and flimsy-feeling, too (see pictures below). I may try to reinforce it with some more epoxy and just go with it. Maybe I'll just spring for a real scope. I'll play around with this one first for practice, at least.

 

 

[Bulldog44[TK]]

I think once you get it all painted, add the lenses, maybe some real screws and weathering, it will look nice. I think it is already cool that it is hollow to start with. As you said, just add some epoxy to beef up the walls. 

I am working on making a hollow scope now but not sure what kind of results I will have. Keep up the great work. Love to see more progress when you post it. 

[count chocula]

Scope

 

I'm been working on getting the lenses into the scope (or at least thinking about working on it). I'd like to get the scope to function like one. Thrawn's guard has a great build where he places the prisms from T-jay's completion kit monocle into the scope, diverting light around the bend in the scope, but this results in an inverted image, because of the inverting properties of the smaller, magnifying lens at the end. I think one solution to this would be to add an erecting prism to the mix.

 

Novak Dimon posted some pictures of a partially-disassembled M38 scope, showing clearly the presence of an erecting prism just inside of the larger lens. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

I purchased a $10 pocket telescope off of ebay with a roof prism (a type of erecting prism) inside. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The prism has a complex shape that rotates the view 180 degrees, which is why the telescope is able to project right-side-up images even when using the same magnifying lens as the monocle I got from T-jay. I'm thinking of putting the roof prism in just inside of the larger lens, then using Thrawn's guard's prism orientation just inside of the smaller lens, which I'm thinking will result in an upright, magnified image.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

The Bolt

 

The doopy's kit bolt is too large in diameter for a 38.1 OD pipe. It's also about 5cm short, and just totally unlike a real bolt (although I'm sure it was not intended to be a replica).

 

Doopy bolt:

 

 

V7sg's real bolt photo:

 

 

The Doopy bolt:

 

 

 

V7sg's real bolt:

 

 

I didn't want to pay $80 for a real bolt, so I'm trying to fashion one out of epoxy clay. I first crammed about a baseball-sized amount of epoxy clay into the remnant of the 38mm OD aluminum tube that I cut off at the beginning of the build.

 

 

I forgot to mention that I also purchased a front return spring assembly from Apex. They must have been feeling generous because they included the rear spring and spring cup, too. Anyhow, to get the negative of the front return spring in the bolt, I wrapped the end of the front return spring in plastic-wrap and jammed it up into the epoxy mould.

 

 

 

I tried spraying the inside of the tube with oil before putting the clay inside, but it turned out this didn't help with extraction. I ended up having to dremel the tube open after letting the stuff dry.

 

 

I put more epoxy clay into all of those little filling defects, leaving me after 24hrs with this:

 

 

I sanded that down until the whole thing just barely fit inside of the 38mm pipe:

 

 

Still needs a lot of work, but the front return spring assembly fits inside the rear end fairly well, and when completely compressed the spring cup just meets up with the rear end of the bolt. I will probably cut off some of both front and rear ends of the model to get to the 123.8mm size of the actual bolt and try to make it look a little more square.

 

[AWOL]

 

 

On 3/22/2016 at 11:07 AM, count chocula said:

I'm been working on getting the lenses into the scope (or at least thinking about working on it). I'd like to get the scope to function like one. Thrawn's guard has a great build where he places the prisms from T-jay's completion kit monocle into the scope, diverting light around the bend in the scope, but this results in an inverted image, because of the inverting properties of the smaller, magnifying lens at the end. I think one solution to this would be to add an erecting prism to the mix.

 

Novak Dimon posted some pictures of a partially-disassembled M38 scope, showing clearly the presence of an erecting prism just inside of the larger lens.

 

 

 

 

I purchased a $10 pocket telescope off of ebay with a roof prism (a type of erecting prism) inside.

 

The prism has a complex shape that rotates the view 180 degrees, which is why the telescope is able to project right-side-up images even when using the same magnifying lens as the monocle I got from T-jay. I'm thinking of putting the roof prism in just inside of the larger lens, then using Thrawn's guard's prism orientation just inside of the smaller lens, which I'm thinking will result in an upright, magnified image.

 

 

 

 

I will be following this stage of your build with a lot of interest as I had a similar thought although I thought there were 2 prisms in an M38...

 

if it works kick it, if it doesn't work kick it till it does...

[count chocula]

I don't have an M38, but I think you're right, Kev, that there are two prisms in there. You can see two prisms on Sith Lord's diassembly photo:

 

 

 

And in this paper diagram it looks like both prisms are housed together near the smaller lens:

 

 

 

Apparently there are quite a few different ways of using prisms (one or more together) to invert an image. The monocular that is part of T-jay's kit uses two Porro prisms to invert the image, but these have to be at right angles to one another to work, which make them impossible to fit into the scope.

 

 

The two M38 scope prisms must work together to invert the image and channel it around the bend in the scope in a way similar to what I was suggesting above.

[Pretzel[TK]]

I am amazed... great work

[T-Jay[TK]]

Same over here. For my current build I thought about making this functional, but I doubt it will ever be magnifying because on the blaster we look into the wrong end...

 

Will keep an eye on this until I get to that stage...

Edited August 9, 2016 by T-Jay

[AWOL]

 

 

On 3/23/2016 at 3:19 AM, count chocula said:

I don't have an M38, but I think you're right, Kev, that there are two prisms in there. You can see two prisms on Sith Lord's diassembly photo:

 

 

 

You're putting in a lot of research in this, I'd seen the pics you've posted buy my knowledge of how prisms work is obviously inferior to yours, I'll definitely be putting my scope on hold till you come to a conclusion on what is and isn't possible...

 

Popcorn...

 

 

On 3/23/2016 at 5:22 AM, T-Jay said:

but I doubt it will ever be magnifying because on the blaster we look into the wrong end...

 

Again I've thought similar, but there are a few posts showing the view through a real scope from the wrong end and it looks like a clean view, not magnified but not reduced either which is normal for looking down a telescope the wrong way... but weird but hey ho...

 

if it works kick it, if it doesn't work kick it till it does...

[Bulldog44[TK]]

Just partially disassembled my M38 scope and yes there are two prisms in there. Same as Ian's scope internals. I cannot yet remove the central inner chamber lens because I don't have any tool that can safely remove them without scratching things up. <br>

I am in the process of casting small scope parts and will see if I can cast the part that houses the prisms. It is quite thin in some areas and may be too complex to get aclean cast of it but worth a try. If that works, then it might be possible to buy some simiart size prisms and install them.