Dalek Saucer

I love the 1960's dalek movies with Peter Cushing. My favourite dalek spaceship design is the one from "Daleks Invasion Earth 2150 A.D."

As far as I know, there was only one "hero" miniature used in the film. However, just before the ship explodes at the end, it is replaced with a much cruder, pre-cut model.

Note: the model was used in another film. "The Body Stealers" in 1969. Below, is the only shot of the saucer in the film.

Using screen grabs and pictures of the original model as reference, I made a 3D model in Autodesk 123D design.

Below are the component parts of the model.
For printers with smaller build volumes, I made a split version of the main body, as well as the single version.
Note: This build will have interior lighting. The top dome will be held in place with magnets, giving easy access for switches, batteries etc.

The main body parts were printed in Multijet Fusion Nylon PA12.
To smooth this material, I use filler primer, and lots of sanding.

In the pictures below, the top dome is smoothed, and given a coat of grey primer. The main body has had four coats of filler primer. As you can see it still needs more work. This can be a bit tedious, but worth the effort.
Note: I always use a good respirator when sanding and spray painting.

Here the basic clean-up, smoothing has been done. Still some small areas to fix.

I scaled the model so that standard size acylic rod could be used for the round and square openings (4mm round rod and 6mm square).
The rods were cut to length. Then, using a battery drill and sanding sponges, the ends were polished and slightly rounded.

The front grills were printed in polyamide. All the other parts were printed in resin.

The small detail parts were cut from their slab. These, and the bottom scoops were glued in place.
The other resin parts were given a light sanding and a coat of primer. Obviously the windows were not primed. Only the frames of these will be painted.

The parts were test fitted, but won't be glued in place until final assembly.

In the original model, the sections with the round and square "windows", actually rotated. This would be quite difficult to engineer. So I decided to attach LED's to rotating disks inside, to give a similar effect.
In a test, one LED at the right distance, can cover about 7 or 8 windows. There are 70 openings in the dome. So ten LED's, evenly spaced, should give a nice effect.

The landing gear is relatively small and made of resin, so I was concerned it could snap easily. I printed new versions with holes down the center, and super glued in brass rods.

The model was given a coat of white primer. Then the body was finished with Ford Ivory and matt lacquer.

Using an airbrush, the windows were sprayed on bothe sides with pledge floor gloss. This is basically a non yellowing acrylic lacquer.
As well as protecting the resin, it also makes it a bit more transparent.

I wasn't happy with the paint finish. The matt lacquer from the spray can is a bit thick, and is not quite Matt enough.
The model was sanded with 1500 grit sanding sponges. Then it was given a couple of coats of microscale flat, using an airbrush. This gave a much better finish.

I didn't want to glue the landing gear to the body. So I used some magnets to hold them in place.

Instead of using acylic rod for the square and round windows, I thought I would try 3D printed resin. This would save many hours of work.
The printing layers on the ends gave a sort of porthole effect, which I really liked.

I modeled some parts to mount LED's for the lower windows. These parts will also block light from the rotation effect LED's above. I used 3mm, 3 volt warm white LED's, connected in parallel.

The position of the LED's was too high. So I drilled a new set of holes lower, and taped over the original ones.
The LED's were connected to a 3 volt battery pack, via a switch and a 150 ohm resistor.

Instead of rotating a disk with LED's on it, I decided to keep the disk fixed and switch the LED's on and off in sequence. This would be a lot easier to achieve.
I got a couple of sequencers on EBay. These were fixed to the disks, and the original LED's were cut off.
Two LED's were soldered in parallel to each position, and mounted to the disk at 90 degrees to each other. I used 3mm, 3 volt warm white LED's.
The disk in the top dome was glued in position. The disk in the main body is removable, and sits on a brass rod.
A 9 volt battery pack was fixed in the body, for the sequencers.

The lower windows were masked off and painted with Ford Ivory White, and matt lacquer.
The aerials were painted aluminium, and glued in position.

To finish off; Some 2mm acyrlic rod was cut and the ends rounded. These were glued in position for the "headlights".
The hull parts of the landing gear were painted Ford Ivory. The engine intakes and exhausts were painted black.

Here's the finished model. I didn't make it to any particular scale, but it does look about right with the 1/76 scale Morris J-type van.