25 August 2019

• Dalek Supreme
  So I'm a bit of a latecomer to this party and I doubt I have much to share that isn't already known on this forum. Still, there might be something. As it happens, I have made a LOT of mistakes and so have insights that the more skilled and successful builders may never have had to consider. I strongly suggest the SPECIAL NOTES to be essential since there will be things I either didn't know or found useful. I joined project Dalek and after reading a bit on the forums, downloaded plans and ordered the "Builder's Workshop Manual". If you plan to build a Dalek, this is a MUST! After reading through the manual, I decided to start my build. I decided to go for a 2008 Series Supreme because it is distinctive and I thought it looked really cool. That was my first mistake. I had also decided to go the fiberglass route so that I could build a mold and perhaps make more than one Dalek or at least help a few other people I knew who had an interest. I also wanted a light weight Dalek and all the weight and whatnot of a wooden Dalek looked like a big pain. SPECIAL NOTE: The reason the choice of a Supreme was a mistake is that the Shoulder for the Supreme does not have the trapezoidal indentation in the front. That means my shoulder is peculiar to this Dalek only and would have to be modified to work for any other NSD Dalek. I discovered this AFTER I had already started. I used Solidworks and began translating the plans into CAD files. I am a member of the Dallas Makerspace and have access to several CNC tools. The ones I used the most are a CNC router, LaserPrinter and 3D-printer. I ran some test cuts for the skirt and the shoulder frame. I built a test skirt out of cardboard cut on the laser printer and also cut critical parts for the shoulder frame. SPECIAL NOTE: While the skirt turned out perfect, I SHOULD have used the CNC router to cut the shoulder frame parts. The laser printer left a burn residue on the wood and that caused me some time cleaning it up by sanding it down. These tests led me to try building the shoulders first since they are clearly the most complicated part of this build and I decided that if I could overcome the hardest part, the rest would fall into place. I laser cut the gun boxes and the front design pieces. I cut out the gun box indent and saved the cut out piece. I glued that piece across the hole I had created diagonally to create the indent on the gun box. This worked beautifully. I attached the two gun boxes and braced and glued them with a cross piece of wood. Since this is only to hold them in place, the wood did not have to be particularly thick.I assembled the shoulder frame with specific rings for the different shapes of the shoulders. These rings allowed me to fill the void with pink insulating foam and use a custom made hot wire tool to cut the foam along the rings. Making the custom hot wire cutters was a simple task. I just needed the distance between the rings and I could CAD a "C" shaped piece of wood, attach a piece of hot wire and power it with a surplus transformer that gave me a 5V or 12V DC output. The Ni chrome foam cutting wire is inexpensive and easy to obtain. Using the rings as a guide for the hot wire cutter gave me the shape I wanted. I made Two of different sizes and had very acceptable results. SPECIAL NOTE: The Ni chrome wire expands when heated so it would become slack once it got heated. I used a spring to try to combat this but that allowed it to stretch when I applied tension as it cut. I have since read that people will use a single Bass guitar tuning key so that it could be tensioned when it went slack. I did not use this but it would have solved an error that creeped into my build.
• Dalek Monica - Rescued From 20 Years Of Oblivion
  20 years ago, I was a 12 year old dalek obsessive with a singular mission: to own my very own dalek. Recruiting my father, whose complex joinery skills had recently been honed building a wooden boat from scratch, we embarked on our ambitious project. These were the days before blueprints were available on the internet, and we only had a Comet scale model and woefully inaccurate Radio Times plans from the 1970s as references. Nevertheless, we ploughed ahead with our prototype - a ¼ scale model. It was a good effort despite some obvious proportional problems, and we felt ready to tackle the real thing. A costly trip to B&Q equipped us with enough MDF to provide wheelchair access to the whole of Skaro, and Dad had some GRP left over from his boat. Sadly, I don’t have any photos from this stage of construction. We used the radial forming method suggested by the Radio Times with cement and plaster of Paris to form a pretty decent dome mold, and this was our first complete section. I learned more about angles and trigonometry making that skirt than in any GCSE maths lesson. Lacking plans, we had to improvise on the shoulder covering with card and PVA glue which was flimsy but passable. We were making pretty good progress, but we stalled at the balls. In those days, ready made 10cm hemispheres were hard to come by and Amazon still only sold books. My grandfather turned me two beautiful wooden spheres to use as ball joints, but to churn out 56 would probably have killed the 88 year old and made the dalek so heavy it would have fallen through the floor. Time passed, I became a teenager and therefore interested in other things, and suddenly 20 years passed. When Doctor Who came back on TV in 2005, the daleks looked decidedly less home made, and so the dalek was left to gather dust in the attic of my parents’ garage. Fast forward to July 2018,My father sends me a WhatsApp with this picture and provides me with an ultimatum: "we're clearing the garage. if you don't take this off my hands it's going on the bonfire." Prompted by this jolt of nostalgia, I decided to get onto Amazon and found that you could buy about 100 ready made 10cm hemispheres for about a tenner, ostensibly sold as transparent orbs to use as Christmas decorations. In my mind, the final obstacle to dalek completion was lifted! A few Googles later, I discovered this community and the amazingly detailed plans available here. Excitedly, I ran to B&Q and buy pipes, rods, perspex and gallons of chrome spray paint to start building appendages, the only part of dalek manufacture I could feasibly complete in a London flat with limited tools. This week I returned to the family home armed with detailed and accurate blueprints, collar and belt templates and a giant sheet of aluminium with the sole purpose of finishing a dalek. Initial Inspection of the husk gathering dust in the garage dusk revealed glaring inaccuracies in almost every dimension, most notably the neck bin which left the dome teetering precariously. Rebuilding the neck bin to the correct dimensions revealed that the shoulders are now far too narrow - the top piece is an oval for some reason known only to 12 year old me. As a result, the collar piece based on the templates sticks out far too far at the sides. Rebuilding and re-covering this will be the next stage of construction and I feel will go a long way to resolving her overly skinny appearance from the front, along with building the fender out of timber and and black speaker cloth to go inside the neck. The skirt is also a little too skinny, but rebuilding this will kill me, so I'm not planning on doing this any time soon. Generally I’m pretty pleased with how it’s going, considering that it all but forgotten about a month ago. Now I just need to complete the impossible task of persuading my partner to allow me to keep it in our small London flat when it’s done! Construction details: Dome - GRP - as per the Radio Times plans. 'Ears' are L'Oreal roll-on deodorant lids which turn out to be exactly the right proportions for a MK 3 dalek. Neck - 18mm MDF and wooden dowels, cut with an angled band saw and jig saw, held together with hot glue and screws. Speaker cloth will be used. Shoulders - 8mm MDF, card and wood glue. Collar and belt are aluminium. To be modified in line with accurate blueprints, then mesh and solar panels to be added at a later date. Skirt - 18mm MDF frame, 8mm MDF panels. 100mm plastic hemsipheres hot glued into the holes (slightly loose fit!) Fender - to be constructed. Appendages - 100mm plastic hemispheres for joints and eyepiece, plastic and metal pipes, aluminium rods for the gun, clear polystyrene sheet for the disks and iris. Jam jar lid for the end of the eyepiece. I'll be sure to update you when she's finally complete.
• Fox's Genesis Dalek
  I already started a thread on this, But i figured because i messed it up the first time, i'd have another go. Here are the results i have for now.
• Doctorjer’s Dalek
  Wade: Here is the latest work on our Dalek! I used giant poster paper to create templates of the skirt section of the Dalek. This should be perfect unlike the last time I made the panels out of MDF. (It is rather difficult to work with millimeters in the USA LOL) I am pretty confident these are the correct measurements and I’ll start cutting them soon. The great thing with paper templates is I can create more than 1 Dalek! Maybe I’ll make an army in the future, there are many possibilities! 🙂
• Daleacre's NSD
  Hello all! After umming and ahhing over a project to make after finishing my BB-8, I have finally settled on making a Dalek. I have always wanted a robot I can hide in whilst opperating my other droids; I dont want to ruin the illusion by following him around with a transmitter. The NSD was the very first time I saw a Dalek (Christopher Eccleston was my first Doctor) and I love the clunkier design! Plus, you can fit inside! Thinking realistically, I have decided to set a budget of £800. This should cover everything I need, including paint and a whacking great Li-Ion battery! More posts to come, and I can't wait to show you guys my innovative solutions to problems I encounter. Wish me luck! - - - - - First bits coming toether! As an electronic engineering graduate, I decided to fix the voice changer first. Thanks to John Darley for sending me out my circuit board super quick, and to RF Potts (Derby, UK) for getting me all of the components I needed. Super helpful shop, would thoroughly recommend them for single components! Now, the build instructions for the MK5e suggest you get 1% tolerence parts. I will confess, I didnt get these. I just used whatever I could get, and (rather surprisingly) IT WORKED. Like I mentioned, I have a masters in electronics so I understand how the circuit works and what parts can be swapped, etc. That said, there are instructions for a reason, AND YOU SHOULD FOLLOW THEM. Dont be like me... Plans were easy to follow, soldering was straight forward, and the circuit worked first time. I'm colourblind, and I only made one mistake. Thanks for the great plans, John! PCB; £5 Components; £10 Mic; £11 Total; £25
• Project Illumination
  Good news everybody! Another new pair of Daleks is facing creation. My husband and I have started a Dalek building journey together, but our supreme beings are going to be a bit different than the norm. He is creating a steampunk version (build diary starting soon!) while I am attempting a full sized, illuminated stained glass like construction inspired by Chris Thompson's CG dalek "Stainley." (pictured below) I will lean heavily on his design because it is so stunning, but mine won't be an exact duplicate. For one thing, I plan on some very specific scenes in the "stained" glass. Each round circle at the top of the skirt will feature a doctor's portrait, with the scene below being inspired by that incarnation of the doctors specific interaction with the daleks of that time. It will be motorized. I'm getting an electric wheelchair this weekend and I can't wait to get started. I've downloaded the blueprints for the NSD to use mainly for measurements and to determine the necessary internal support structure. I plan to back light as much as possible to show off that "stained glass" effect (or rather acrylic painted with alcohol inks). I also want my dalek to be as interactive and COMFORTABLE for me as possible. Shoot-for-the-moon plans included front and rear facing webcams as well as one in the eyestalk with a small array of tablet or phone screens inside for navigation ease; some sort of air circulation, fan or who knows- maybe I'll figure out something else; cupholders; a back rest on the seat and more! I think the clear dome might actually count as a moon-roof! LOL
• John K's Next 60s Dalek (JK4)
  I'm making another 60's Dalek, pretty much with the same criteria as I made my first one; -as far as possible I should match the materials, design and build technicalities as Shawcraft themselves used in the 60s. -I can mix and match authentic design elements as I fancy, this is not meant to replicate any specific Dalek from the 60s. It's going to be another Power/Evil type, and I'll be going over much of the same ground, so in this thread I'll only focus on new things.. and the first new thing is that I have decided is that I'd like to make a Dalek with wooden antennae boxes! I decided that I should finally make up my own shoulder mould for this, so took one of my casts with gunboxes, chopped the boxes off, sanded down the rough bits, put plasticard over the holes and then fibreglassed patches in. Easy to type, ages to do. The cast I worked from is exceedingly authentic, but clearly has been painted, bumped, knocked, chipped and sanded numerous times over the years. So, I decided do remediate these problems as far as possible. I used P38 filler, Durabuild surface primer and Halfords Hi-Build Primer in various combinations, along with a lot of wet and dry sanding. I started with 60-grit and worked up to 2000-grit for a nice smooth finish. Afterwards, I cleaned it with degreaser, built up the mould dividers and supporting structures, filled gaps with plasticine, then applied five coats of honey wax. Oh, almost forgot...before I did all that; the other thing that bugged me was that the shoulders were not exactly flat, top or bottom, nor were the top and bottom precisely parallel. To this end, I cut wooden 1-inch square wooden pieces of various thickness and using a spirit level and wedges, glued these strategically to the top and underside of the shoulders so that it sat level on a flat surface. I then painted some gelcoat in the appropriate shape onto a flat melamine faced board, then sploshed resin mixed with choppies all over it. I then squished the bottom of the shoulders into it. Let that cure, released, then repeated the same process to the top. Then the tedious sanding and filling... Result; a level set of shoulders with about 5mm extra height (which is easy enough to lose when trimming the casts in due course). Moulds should always be a different colour to the casts you are likely to pull, so I wanted to find a colour that I would never, ever cast up a piece in. So I got some RAL Telemagenta pigment. It's shocking. But oddly delicious looking. Thus far, I have applied two layers of gelcoat and the first layer of re-inforcement. Elsewhere, I have already made a mould for movie shoulders, that I intend to use for a Genesis style Dalek in due course. I'll create a thread for that once it picks up steam.
• Leblanc42's NSD
  Good afternoon all, I've just started a build after months and months of sleeping on it. We will see if I have the skills necessary to pull this off! 1st step building the lower platform and skirt frame done!! Now I just have to stay on track.
• Dalek Zombie
  Look at my dalek viper, sorry for the drawing, it is based on the probe droid robot, the structure is dalek 2005, mk2, mk6 and the shadow dalek and ideas to put led logic and head of the R5 D4, was based on B9 and R2 D2, its dome rotates automatically, torso also rotates automatically independent of the dome, its armament and claws, probes etc. they are embedded in the left side weapon box. It's cylindrical based on dalek evolution 1, it's spy, crawler, explorer and killer, all in my dalek. The project is still on paper, so I'll be posting photos of it soon.
• Tdb30_ NSD Dalek Fuzzball
  Never had a build diary before. I'm going with gusto on this build after a 10 year hiatus. This is the current status. I'll try to dig up the old photos and do an update with them.
• Bob's Planet Dalek - Seven 2 (loosely)
  Hi All Just a quick 'hello' before I start posting pics of my build. I have wanted to build a DW prop for years and years, lurking around various websites such as this one but never quite getting round to it. Then last summer I finally scratched an itch I’d had for literally decades, by constructing a K9 (I sent a pic in recently to DWM and they kindly published it, so you may have already seen him). I had no prior experience in such a venture, so it was a steep learning curve but I found the whole experience exhilarating. I haven’t been as ‘into’ something as I was those few months in 2018 and K9 is now part of the family. Having caught the bug with K9, I wanted another taste of the fun, so I have decided to build a Dalek. With limited space and funds, and a plan to move next year I have decided to build it in stages, with the shoulders and possibly neck this year, and the head and skirt/base next year. My preferred shape and colour scheme was always the dark grey flavours of the 70’s and 80’s, along with the Necros and 2005 machines, but after much mulling I decided to go for something that approximated Dalek Seven 2 in Planet of the Daleks. I really like the extra depth of colour that the metallic paint adds compared to say a Genesis machine. They really look smart. I cannot overstate how helpful it has been looking at other peoples builds to get an idea if I’m on the right path or not, and to learn from other peoples experiences. I hope I can do the same here, as far as I am able (as a rank amateur) So, I have started with the shoulder frames and I'm currently finding the gunboxes tougher than I expected, so I have the basic frame assembled from 12mm MDF. I have also started to tinker with the balls. I originally bought a pair of the steel 'gazing' balls that I have seen talked about, and bought a couple of hole cutters. Unfortunately, my drill and workbench simply weren't up to the task and barely dinted the ball (before they skittered off onto the floor). For my second try, I ordered a few of the Christmas baubles, also mentioned on here. Sadly, these too were'nt quite right - they shattered when drilled and just cracked when I tried to cut them with a knife. Ultimately, some searching on Google presented me with a company that was happy to sell small volumes (but quite pricey) polypropylene balls of the right size. These seem spot on (see gun test fit below). They can be cut easily with a scalpal to size and conveniently have dots to identify the centre to cut around and are sturdy. If anyone would like details of the company in question, shout. They set me back around £20 for 3 including postage (which was next day). I assembled the 'ball holders'. I don't own a router, but I plan to borrow one for the neck rings, so I used the tried and tested method I have seen used on these boards, of using one of the now unused steel balls with some coarse glass paper wrapped around it. I then finished off with my sander mouse. This seemed to do the job when I test fit with the balls, and I will also add some felt around the inner recess. Tha aluminium oval is actually the first thing I made, using the template on here and 1mm sheet. I used my jigsaw to cut it out and plenty of filing and sanding. Easier than I was expecting.
• Ethan's Custom NSD
  Hey everyone! Recently decided I was ready to build my first Dalek after multiple times of thinking I couldn't do it. I am wanting to make a combination of the more classic Daleks, combined with the NSDs. I'm thinking toward using the color schemes that were used for the original Black supreme Dalek and throw in a couple elements of the past design(As I absolute love them) along with the NSD type build. I'm really excited and I hope anyone who sees this I can give and as well receive ideas of new or useful ideas of how we can create what we love so much! I will begin posting photos and updates tomorrow and throughout the week!:)
• Genesis Dalek
  Hi. Started work on my first dalek built this week. I've got two more panels to fit, then lots of filling and sanding to look forward to. Very pleased with how it's going so far.