Building the Collar
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I glued a collar template to a piece of poplar plywood and cut it out using my jig
saw. I then glued the outside piece to a piece of wood and attached a knob to the
inside template piece. I used a template I found on one of the many B9 web sites I
visited. It is supposed to be a tracing of the original Collar rib. |
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I cut the 1/4 inch plastic rod into 9 1/2 inch lengths (well I had cut one to this
length at this point). I heated it in the toaster oven at 300 degrees for about 6 1/2
minutes. I put it in the jig and boom, my first collar piece. Cool! One down,
107 to go. |
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Here's what happens when you mold ribs while trying to pay
attention to your daughter as she practices her oral book report in the
kitchen. This rib saw 350 deg. for about 8 minutes. It starts forming
bubbles inside the plastic and they bubble to the surface. It's pretty cool looking,
but not very useable. I was still experimenting to find the best temp/time combo. |
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I have about 84 collar ribs completed at this point. I stacked
them in sets of five for easier counting. This was my close-up
"artsy-fartsy" shot. I finally finished all of my ribs. It took
about 5 hours total spread over two weekends. |
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I cut
the support rings out of 1/4 inch acrylic. I tried several ways of cutting a circle.
I finally settled on the method pictured. I bought the Multipurpose
Cutting Kit for my Dremel tool. This kits includes a general purpose cutting bit
that is similar to those used in the "Rotozip". It cuts from the side.
I used the Router
Attachment which allows you to cut circles. The two metal rods were not long
enough for the size circles I needed to cut so I cut two longer rods from 1/4 steel rod
stock. |
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Here
is my set-up for cutting the inside circle. I cut all the outside circles first.
Then setup my Dremel Tool once and cut all the inside circles so that they
would all be identical. I was surprised at how well the cutting bit cut the plastic.
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I used GOOP Plumbers Adhesive
to glue the vertical posts to the top and bottom frame. |
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I want to
mount a pinhole camera on my B9. One of the places I am considering is in the
collar. I would really like it to be mounted in the radar section but I believe that the
camera is too tall. |
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I made two acrylic mounts for the camera and positioned it to
see how it would look. I set up some ribs and viewed the camera through the ribs.
The view was not too distorted. |
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Here's the
finished collar. It's a great feeling when you see your completed. I can't
believe that I formed all that plain looking plastic rod into something of such beauty. |
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5/5/05 - I cut
a piece of 1/16 inch PVC plastic to fit inside the front of the collar.
I cut three holes in it for the camera, microphone and IR Detector. I
then painted it a flat black. (shown unpainted) |
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Here's the rest of the collar insert.
This will prevent you from looking inside the collar and this is where Bob
May's head would be (had I used Bob instead of the electronics). I
heated the piece in my over for about 2 minutes at 200 deg. F and formed it
around a popcorn tin. I used my daughter's electric hair straightener
(don't tell her) to put the flat hooks on the two ends. These hooks
hold it in place when put inside the collar. |
