MartinSivertsen
New Hunter
Hi,
Between painting my Bobamaker ESB helmet I have been preparing my Minutefett ESB SE helmet for a future paint job as well, and part of that prep is the electronics for the rangefinder.
First off I want to thank Ord Mantell for the massive amount of research he put into finding all of the components for the electronics and their history. Read his excellent posts about it here. And Deancfh for figuring out how to solder the back of the board to get a working circuit. Looking at pictures of the back of your soldered boards was of great help.
And lastly RafalFett for figuring out the silk screened text on the prototyping board
Here is a comparison between the board that's in the pre-production helmet #3 and my finished board:
Note that the white text on the board is rotated 180 degrees as that's likely how it is in the ESB hero helmet. On the images from Star Wars Celebration by Britt Dietz found in the Media Archive on this forum we can see the bottom edge of the board with the blue slide switch and the diode, but no white letters next to the diode as seen on the pre-pro #3 board.
The prototyping strip board was purchased from AliExpress on looked like this:
I sanded off the white silk screened grid, cut it to size and painted on the lettering proposed by RafalFett using acrylic paint and a fine tipped brush:
I bought most of the electronics from Digi-Key and made a list of the components needed: myLists – Parts List Management | DigiKey
As mentioned I bought the prototyping strip board from elsewhere, and the rainbow wire used to connect the LED's/bulbs in the range finder can be bought from anywhere. I added them to the Digi-Key list, but if you can find them cheaper from somewhere else then go for it. I work as an electronics engineer and we have tubs of rainbow wire I can use.
To get the board to look the same as the original I had to paint the slide switch, the resistors and the capacitors.
The Switch and capacitors were painted using Caledor Sky from Citadel as it was a close match and I had it on hand, and the capacitors got a gloss clear coat.
The two 10 ohm resistors near the slide switch were painted with a dark reddish brown as they came in a tan colour, and then I painted on the stripes and clear coated them gloss, this could have been done neater, but it looks okay at a glance.
The 3.3k ohm resistors close to the tantalum capacitors were not the same shape as the ones on the vintage board, so I 3D modeled and resin printed a shell to glue onto them to get the right shape, then I painted them to match the originals:
I used Citadel paints here as well, Mournfang Brown for the body, and Evil Sunz Scarlet for the red stripes and Jokaero Orange for the orange ones.
The tantalum capacitors looked like this before I painted them:
The original electronics has a 47 uF capacitor and an unknown one that can be assumed to be 100 uF. I prototyped this on a bread board and found that the frequency of the blinking red LED's were a bit fast compared to what can be seen in the black and white video of Ben Burrt introducing the white Supertrooper prototype.
I studied that video frame by frame and came to the conclusion that the two red LED's in the rangefinder were on and off for around 700 ms each, which is over twice as slow as the blinking with the 47 uF and 100 uF capacitors that are on the board, I believe they blink around every 300 ms.
Combining this with the research Ord Mantell did where some components on the board likely are from after the filming of ESB, I took the liberty of adjusting the capacitor values to 220 uF for both to match the frequency of the blinking to what we see in the Supertrooper clip.
It has to be mentioned that you can also change the value of the 3.3k ohm resistors to adjust the timing of the blinking. And I might as well have done that, especially since I covered them with a 3D printed shell. The 220 uF capacitors are slightly larger than the 47 and 100 uF ones, so changing the resistors would be less of a visual change to the board.
I might do that at a later time.
The last components are the 14-pin NAND Gate and the 14-pin Inverter, these are just stock modern equivalents with the same pin-out and function as the ones on the vintage board.
I don't know if I'll modify the writing on them.
If I had access to a laser engraver I might have tried sanding them smooth and etching a copy of the text and symbols seen on the vintage ones.
Or I could sand them smooth and try painting on the writing by hand.
I also have to consider what lengths to go to, as most of the board is covered up in the original hero ESB helmet, and no one else but me (and you) will even know that it's there as it's sitting on the shelf in my house.
Here is the board with the battery pack beside it:
I'm really happy to have a board that looks and functions the same as the original, and I'm really greatful for such a great community of prop replicators that share their knowledge!
I'll make a second comment where I cover the range finder itself as I haven't finished it yet.
Thanks for looking!
Between painting my Bobamaker ESB helmet I have been preparing my Minutefett ESB SE helmet for a future paint job as well, and part of that prep is the electronics for the rangefinder.
First off I want to thank Ord Mantell for the massive amount of research he put into finding all of the components for the electronics and their history. Read his excellent posts about it here. And Deancfh for figuring out how to solder the back of the board to get a working circuit. Looking at pictures of the back of your soldered boards was of great help.
And lastly RafalFett for figuring out the silk screened text on the prototyping board
Here is a comparison between the board that's in the pre-production helmet #3 and my finished board:
Note that the white text on the board is rotated 180 degrees as that's likely how it is in the ESB hero helmet. On the images from Star Wars Celebration by Britt Dietz found in the Media Archive on this forum we can see the bottom edge of the board with the blue slide switch and the diode, but no white letters next to the diode as seen on the pre-pro #3 board.
The prototyping strip board was purchased from AliExpress on looked like this:
I sanded off the white silk screened grid, cut it to size and painted on the lettering proposed by RafalFett using acrylic paint and a fine tipped brush:
I bought most of the electronics from Digi-Key and made a list of the components needed: myLists – Parts List Management | DigiKey
As mentioned I bought the prototyping strip board from elsewhere, and the rainbow wire used to connect the LED's/bulbs in the range finder can be bought from anywhere. I added them to the Digi-Key list, but if you can find them cheaper from somewhere else then go for it. I work as an electronics engineer and we have tubs of rainbow wire I can use.
To get the board to look the same as the original I had to paint the slide switch, the resistors and the capacitors.
The Switch and capacitors were painted using Caledor Sky from Citadel as it was a close match and I had it on hand, and the capacitors got a gloss clear coat.
The two 10 ohm resistors near the slide switch were painted with a dark reddish brown as they came in a tan colour, and then I painted on the stripes and clear coated them gloss, this could have been done neater, but it looks okay at a glance.
The 3.3k ohm resistors close to the tantalum capacitors were not the same shape as the ones on the vintage board, so I 3D modeled and resin printed a shell to glue onto them to get the right shape, then I painted them to match the originals:
I used Citadel paints here as well, Mournfang Brown for the body, and Evil Sunz Scarlet for the red stripes and Jokaero Orange for the orange ones.
The tantalum capacitors looked like this before I painted them:
The original electronics has a 47 uF capacitor and an unknown one that can be assumed to be 100 uF. I prototyped this on a bread board and found that the frequency of the blinking red LED's were a bit fast compared to what can be seen in the black and white video of Ben Burrt introducing the white Supertrooper prototype.
I studied that video frame by frame and came to the conclusion that the two red LED's in the rangefinder were on and off for around 700 ms each, which is over twice as slow as the blinking with the 47 uF and 100 uF capacitors that are on the board, I believe they blink around every 300 ms.
Combining this with the research Ord Mantell did where some components on the board likely are from after the filming of ESB, I took the liberty of adjusting the capacitor values to 220 uF for both to match the frequency of the blinking to what we see in the Supertrooper clip.
It has to be mentioned that you can also change the value of the 3.3k ohm resistors to adjust the timing of the blinking. And I might as well have done that, especially since I covered them with a 3D printed shell. The 220 uF capacitors are slightly larger than the 47 and 100 uF ones, so changing the resistors would be less of a visual change to the board.
I might do that at a later time.
The last components are the 14-pin NAND Gate and the 14-pin Inverter, these are just stock modern equivalents with the same pin-out and function as the ones on the vintage board.
I don't know if I'll modify the writing on them.
If I had access to a laser engraver I might have tried sanding them smooth and etching a copy of the text and symbols seen on the vintage ones.
Or I could sand them smooth and try painting on the writing by hand.
I also have to consider what lengths to go to, as most of the board is covered up in the original hero ESB helmet, and no one else but me (and you) will even know that it's there as it's sitting on the shelf in my house.
Here is the board with the battery pack beside it:
I'm really happy to have a board that looks and functions the same as the original, and I'm really greatful for such a great community of prop replicators that share their knowledge!
I'll make a second comment where I cover the range finder itself as I haven't finished it yet.
Thanks for looking!
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