A Spoonful of Blamite Helps the Ownage Go Down!

[Cereal Killl3r]

Looks cool man,
Pep work... nice!
Needle construction... nice!
Webbing inside the needles... nice! (if there was a way to allow the light to defuse through the whole needle evenly... nicer!)

Great work.
Cereal.

[Katsu]

i know i'm new so i understand if you don't like my ideas or opinions but anyway
1 awesome build i wanted to do one from ce with glowing needles but i decided on the M90b variant and the M6D (shotgun and halo ce magnum)
2 it appears that the webbing (while it may look amazing) appears to be on the outside which will affect the texture
3 the needles in reach also appear to have strange bumps/growths (http://images.wikia.com/halo/ja/images/3/36/Needler.jpg zoom in and you should see it)
4 the needles also appear to not diffuse the light while it should produce a lesser amount of glowiness so tou might be able to sand them or something

keep in mind it's you project so do what you want i'd just like to offer suggestions and that these are ideas and may not work the way you want so don't try this on a needle use a scrap or something good luck

Hey no sweat, I love the input because it helps me see it from another point of view.
1) Go with the guns you like, or whichever are most easily at your disposal, you don't want to get in over your head and give up, so good luck with yours!
2) The webbing is on the inside, it's just a really crap-tacular camera, haha! It does look like they're on the outside though.
3) The bumps and rounding are what make me want to grind these ones so they're less perfect, I totally agree mine are too straight, it will depend on how grinding tests go tomorrow that decides if I stick with straight or try and grind them unevenly.
4) You are right, the needles weren't diffusing light right in those two pictures of it installed in the gun especially. Those pictures were taken before I webbed the inside with hot glue. I didn't notice the excessive glow before though, I will take your suggestion and try and mess with the LED to make it not as intense at the base.

---

Cool project, Katsu. I look forward to seeing your progress with this. It appears you have some pretty neat toys at your disposal (between the wacom, 3D printer, and laser cutter). Do you work with these things as part of your employment or what's your setup?

Can you share the scale you've used? This was pert near my first true model (I can see some issues I'd like to address) and it warms my heart to see her (he, in your case) built. Thank you and good luck proceeding.

Thanks satchmo, great file-maker (you) leads to good products! The wacom is an ooooold intuos3 I got years ago, the other stuff is all courtesy of the TechShop, a fantastic resource if you live near one (though they have intuos4 there, but I usually post from home):
http://techshop.ws/
I get a student discount, so it's pretty nifty, and the amount of usage I get out of the machines makes up for the cost I think.
As for the scale, I stuck with the one from Halo3 of 57.8cm. I had read somewhere that it was similar in length to the H3 model, but with the stock upturned instead, and overall this scale also fit my hands the best. What issues were there? I wanna know what to look out for on mine!

---

Looks cool man,
Pep work... nice!
Needle construction... nice!
Webbing inside the needles... nice! (if there was a way to allow the light to defuse through the whole needle evenly... nicer!)

Great work.
Cereal.

Thanks, I am open to suggestions on diffusion as I'm flying by the seat of my pants here. I had heard of a gel I may be able to shoot inside, but I don't know if that will affect the webbing. I'm going to try different angles and depths for the LEDs when I get my pink ones to try and get it to look a bit nicer, this was more of a "holy crap, the needle looks cool in my hand" and then feverishly cutting a giant hole in the top of the gun and cramming the nearest LEDs I had inside to see if it looked cool there too, not well planned! I could also try frosting the pieces with a sandblaster, but not sure if that alone will be enough, as the piece I sanded didn't diffuse much better than the clean piece. This idea might work a bit better:
http://www.instructables.com/id/how-...p5/Youre-Done/
The blue ones were a strip, so they were pretty one-directional and focused, I have some bulbs on order I will try this method on.

[Sangheilioz]

Another option would be to run EL wire through the middle of the needle, might give it more of a uniform glow. Just design it so when you put it in the gun it completes the electrical circuit. I haven't worked with EL wire before personally, so I'm not sure if you can just cut it to the length you want like you can with regular wires, but if you can I think it would have a better overall effect.

[ACDCrockr209]

it is a boy for now, for lack of any leds than blue, but i've got a bunch of pink ones ordered on ebay now, hopefully i can get it a gender change quickly enough!

i loled!!! Xd!!

[Annanymous]

Looking good! I personally dont think that the needles look too perfect. Perhaps you could mess around with the height of each one (how far they are pushed into the needler) to make them look a little bit more varied if thats what you want?

[Sir Tsaboc]

This is turning out really really awesome!

[Katsu]

Thanks, everyone!

I will be messing with varying heights to keep that "uniform randomness" the needler seems to thrive on. I've just ordered some pink acrylic also, see if those work a bit better.

Messing with my one and only LED, I tried different positions, and found that the light reached the top much better when it was placed against the bottom edge of one of the sides.


I finished vivisecting the gun today, it went as badly as I thought it would. The part between the needler's lower jaw and the purple plate on the bottom crumbled and had to be rebuilt. The armrest snapped off while I was cutting off the bottom of the gun. But I got it all cut off, and will get to building the internal support structure tomorrow. The main body is going to be designed for molding, and the purple parts will all be made to be vacuum formed. I am sad about the lack of good reference material for this gun out there!

[Annanymous]

I think that light looks very well diffused! Also you said you were getting pink acrylic, and I was wondering how you plan on doing that. Will the webbing/hot glue filling be pink? Or will you paint the outside of the crystal pink - which would make it lose its shininess.

Could you use pink LEDs?

[Cereal Killl3r]

The needle looks great!
The light seems to be defusing well.

[Hyokenseisou]

Great job so far! Really looking good!


When and if I make my needler, I was planning on scuplting a needle, make a mold, then cast several with a pink tinted clear resin, drill a small hole in the bottom to put the led light, and that should distribute the light and still be clear and shiny. Maybe that's something you could look into is your paint-on-the-inside idea doesn't work. Because I work with a lot of paint, and acyclic plastic so I know how the two act together, and unless you get an opaque paint, you're gonna lose a lot of the light coming through it.