Halo 3 key ring

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WookieLord

Jr Member
A short account of how I made this keyring:
Keyringmod2.jpg

Ingredients list:
Copperclad fibreglass circuit board, small amount
Glossy or magazine paper
LASER printer
Image Editing software suite
Logo in silhouette, printable format (i used a Halo 3 background, which i was gonna make a t-shirt of)
Acetone
Ammonium Persulfate crystals
Water
Plastic tray (acid resistant)
Files, saws
Highspeed drills & Bits
High-performance Acrylic conformant circuit-board sealer
SEE MAKEZINE LINK PDF FOR PLACES TO GET THEM & COSTS

Its a rather unusual method used to prototype printed circuit boards.
To start I obtained a small piece of copper-clad fibre-glass circuit board, about 1.5mm thick.
Using Adobe Photoshop Elements 2 I grabbed the shape of the Halo 3 logo, and made it black on a white background.
Using Powerpoint (because Photoshop in its highandmighty image editing toolset fails to supply any useful line or shape tools) I drew an oval around this, just a single black line with no fill using autoshape, and printed it. I sawed and filed the board down to the same oval shape, using the printout. Next, print out another version of the logo (it doesnt have to be Halo, obviously) with its oval NB: MAKE SURE THIS TIME ITS FLIPPED SO THAT THE "3" is backwards - otherwise your final will end up backwards! onto glossy paper, (or you can use a blank bit of glossy magazine paper) USING AN LASER PRINTER. Then, cut it out around the oval but leaving as little of the oval's ink as possible. If you want ur keyring double sided like mine, print out 2, but it is quite translucent. Having cut it out, put the paper ink-side-down on the copperd board and, using plenty of tissues and a phonebook to protect ur surface, use an electric iron (i dont know if they're called this in the US, i mean what you use to flatten clothes, using heat and steam) to affix the ink to the copper. Put tissues between the back of your paper and the iron's surface, and make sure you dont move the iron, but roll it around, and change position a couple times, to make sure no bits dont get stuck on because they're under a steam hole in the iron's underside. Make sure you do it for a minute or so overall - there's no maximum time to spend and there is a minimum to stick the ink on, so keep it there nice and long. Next, soak the whole think in cold water, until the paper starts to look sort of bloated, and then peel it off SLOWLY. you now have your logo in ink, unreversed, on a copper background. If its wonky, rub it off using some acetone (careful, it strips the oil from ur hands) and redo it.
Next, immerse the board in pre-prepared ammonium persulfate solution. This takes quite a while, and keep jogging the board to keep the acid flowing over it - i'd use a wooden tooth/cocktail stick for this. - DONT TOUCH THIS, INGEST IT OR POUR IT IN YOUR EYE. When all the copper not hidden by ink has gone, remove it carefully and put it in water to dilute the acid, before picking it up and drying it.
Drill a hole in an appropriate place, and then de-burr/chamfer the edge of the hole using a larger drill-bit.
Polish the copper with some metal polish and spray the board, which has now been shaped, etched and drilled, with the sealer, or any waterproof glue, (otherwise the copper will oxidise, and lose its shine completely over a couple of days.)
You now have a fully awesome, totally rare Halo 3 keyring. I appreciate that most of you wont have the facilities/funds to do this, i could only do it cos i live in the sort of house were this is lying around, i put it up just in case it could be of use to anyone. Apologies if anything is unclear - if you intend to actually do this, read the makezine pdf article, and watch the video podcast. Hope this was in some way helpful. I'm not even going to touch selling these, what with legal mumbo-jumbo, shipping costs, etc, but i totally dont mind if anyone does, and of course its not my method anyway. Have fun!

MAKEZINE LINK: http://cachefly.oreilly.com/make/wp_pcbmaking.pdf
the 3 logo i used, already reversed:
Halo3backwards.jpg

another picture:
Keyringmod1.jpg


EDIT: "Stuff that doesn't fall into the armor category, put it in here." is the description for "Halo Universe," which is why i put it here. Apologies if this is wrong, feel free to move it.

EDIT mk II:
Here are a couple of patterns that I might make, given the time, that i thought i may as well share if anybody was going to make any of these:
a. The Bungie Fanboy keyring:
BungieKeyRing.jpg


b. The Halo Wars UNSC Spirit of Fire keyring:
UNSCSpiritofFireKeyRing.jpg
 
Thanks for feedback :)

I'm not selling any, sorry. I'm based in the UK, and am not in a position to organise shipping anything, due to excessive work, plus i dont want to enter into some money-burning lawsuit with /\/\$ for copyright infringement or whatever.
 
Im from the uk 2! comon man! special purchase for me? Pweeeess? Its awsome man good job! If your selling any later on in life. Please tell me!
 
I don't need compensation or funding, thanks for the offer, but a nice hi-res version of the logo would be nice, otherwise the edges get pixelated and the quality goes down.
The second problem I find is that the logo, which i played around with using a similar UNSCDF logo from wikipedia, doesnt really lend itself to any keyring shape very well. This you can see from my attempts below:

Shape 1:
UNSCKeyring1small.jpg


Shape 2 (my favourite):
UNSCKeyring2.jpg


Shape 3:
UNSCKeyring3.jpg


Shape 4:
UNSCKeyring4.jpg
 
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