Making a Boomerang

We were lucky enough to be asked to participate in the Ponoko beta testing program. Ponoko for those of you that haven’t come across it yet, is a place where you can make, share and sell real world products designed on your computer. It’s a hugely clever concept with some smart people piloting it.

Before we started the beta test we had to have an idea of what we were going to make. We wanted to make something a bit unusual and in keeping with our 80′s sci-fi movie upbringing. We decided to resurrect an old joke idea for a sci-fi boomerang complete with nasty blades and sci-fi goodness. Tony made a quick sketch and the idea began to take shape.

Now that the initial idea was sketched out Tony began creating the EPS files that would be required by the Ponoko laser cutter in Adobe Illustrator. Now you have to bear in mind all the while that neither of us had created files for a laser cutter before and though we had an idea of what we wanted we had no idea what was going to come out at the other end. One of the concerns was were the dozens of 1.5mm round pin holes going to cut out or would we be spending hours with an electric drill?

Well the various parts were converted to outlines, slapped into a Ponoko template and emailed off. Fingers were crossed and prayers to the laser cutting gods were made – a sacrificial burning of an apple pie was involved but this was mainly due to our poor baking skills. A few days later and wha-zam! A box of of goodies arrived..

Of course we had to drop everything and start pulling all the parts out of the acrylic. It was just too cool to not play with…

And here are all the components for the Boomerang.

That only left one thing to do – PUT IT TOGETHER!! We were super happy to see all the pin holes cut perfectly through the acrylic. We grabbed some tape and some panel pins and a few minutes later our boomerang idea was a real life 3D boomerang model….. marvelous.

Now that just leaves the painting and finishing. That night Tony shunned the advances of his wife and set to giving the Boomerang some much needed colour. A base coat of aluminium was added and allowed to dry. A “naffed army” look was adopted give the boomerang a sense of continual use and history. This was accomplished using enamel model paints and a time machine.

Stay tuned to see the completed Boomerang in all its wicked goodness…..!

UPDATE: The boomerang is now complete.