Laser Drill

Well, what alien adventure would be complete without a light up pointy thing that shoots laser beams. This is that - it's an alien laser drill. It consists of 5 1" clear tubes. Inside each of these there is a 1/2" tube. A glitter & water solution circulates through the pipes to give the look of movement back away from the tip of the 'drill'. Piping took about four tries to finally get it right. Inside of these tubes is a standard 3' black light tube. It is surrounded by a clear tube that rotates. I put a corkscrew pattern of yellow electrical tape on the black light tube. There is a similar but counter rotating set of black stripes on the 'clear' tube. When it spins it gives the allusion that the whole black light is spinning. With the black light, the water tubes and the spinning cover, it's a pretty impressive effect. To make it work in the script we put it on a yoke made from 1" water pipe and fittings. I made worm gear drives to actuate horizontal and vertical movement. Worm gear drives rule! They have a very steady movement quality and unlike pneumatics, when they stop, they stop instead of flap around. The limit switches are diode wired so that the gun will go to one of two preset positions then stop.

We are still under construction on the whole show but I will post some more contextual pictures once we finish dressing the garage.

Complete This is the completed item hanging in Scotts garage.	Glitter Bucket This is the glitter slurry, note the wires heading down into the slurry to run the bilge pump.	Horizontal movement worm drive	Laser Drill Mounts these are the pipe clamps that hold the drill on to the frame	Drive Motor This is the drive motor box, you can see the drive and transfer gears.
Vertical Motor This is the vertical movement worm gear drive motor. The photo needs to be rotated 90 deg.	Pre-Delivery Here it is nearing completion in the shop.	An old circuit board I just screwed to the side for looks. Always, always, always take free Laser Printers apart for parts.	Plumbing	Ceiling This is the final mounting flange. Note the horizontal movement axis is just the pipe threads.
	Vertical	Plumbing	Drive Motor BTW all of these gears came out of an old laser printer.

The pictures below are interim construction photos of the piping.

There are no words... just yet.