Around the beginning of October, a friend contacted me about making a Sonic Screwdriver prop for his Halloween costume. We kicked around ideas for a couple weeks and wound up with this:
We took a bit of artistic license with the design, but it is based on the screwdriver of the 10th Doctor. (see http://www.thinkgeek.com/geektoys/cubegoodies/8cff/)
The piece was turned out of aluminum and the final version has LEDs inside for lighting. Machining took about a week’s worth of afternoons, leaving me with a day left to make my costume :p
Build photos after the bump!
The piece started from a piece of 5/8″ aluminum round stock. It is made in three pieces (left to right in top photo):
- Head piece
- Collet
- Barrel
- Tail
Head Piece:
Starting the head piece:
Cutting the decorative features:
Aligning the head piece in the mill to cut the windows:
Cutting the windows with the mill. The brass tabs are to protect the turned finish:
Finished head piece. A glass bead will be glued to the top later. We chose to forgo the “crown” on the top to save some time.
Collet
The collet piece attaches the barrel to the plastic tube. I don’t have a good picture of it by itself, but this pic shows it fairly well. The collet is attached to the barrel with two screws:
Barrel
The barrel was the first piece to be started and the last one to be finished. It holds the batteries and LED that lights up the head piece. Most of the machining operations – boring, cutting the slot, drilling and tapping set screw holes, etc. – were done before turning the outside to avoid damaging the finish. The most interesting aspect of this piece is the mandrel I made to hold it when finishing the outside:
The mandrel consists of two aluminum cones and a center shaft made from a 1/4-20 bolt. One end of the shaft was held in the lathe chuck. The barrel was held between the cones (tightened with a nut and lock washer) and the right end of the mandrel was supported with a live center. This was the first time I had used a center with a project and the setup worked like a charm!
Tail Piece
At the bottom of the barrel is the tail piece. This holds the batteries in an provides some artistic decoration. I didn’t want to spend the time trying to thread on the lathe, so the tail piece is made in two parts – an outer aluminum shell and a threaded insert cut off of a 1/2″ bolt. The bolt piece has a 4-40 hole on one end and a small screw holds the two together.
Conclusion
All in all, I really enjoyed this project. Unfortunately, the friend who I was building this with moved to Seattle recently, so I can’t go back and take a nice set of glamour shots. I’ll be sure to do that early for my future projects… If you have any questions or want pointers on your own Sonic Screwdriver, feel free to leave a comment below!
