My Star Trek Next Generation Phaser Red Mod

After doing the Clasic Phaser Green Mod inspired & instructed by Jayrob I've decided to laser modify a few of the other Star Trek universe beam weapons (mainly Federation).

My first of these additional phaser mods is the 650nm 220mW laser modified 1992 Playmates Next Generation Phaser with 10 segment bar graph led pseudo power display, keyswitch protected & spray rubber grips (and some red GITD on the fire button & inside the emitter cone).

Not perfect but I'm new to doing this so it is a learning process for me, a fun one at that! I purposely painted the body a darker metal color than what the proper color should be because I thought the darker color looked better, the other mods that I'll do will be the correct for the show (like my classic phaser green mod).

This is how it started out as a toy (I got it for 18.00 with shipping on ebay):


Plastic painted display that is actually the opening for the sound effect speaker & grips that are just black paint, had to change that (amongst other things)!

Here it is opened up:

Massive speaker, belt clip got to go! You can see (sorry, wished this was a better pic, I should have checked before I moved on) that it is pretty cramped in there and my best place I could see to put the keyswitch was in the back which meant I needed to remake the battery compartment.

Here is a better pic of the top half with the huge speaker out of the way:


The laser module I used for this was a strange setup I found on ebay High Power 250mW Focusable Laser Module Battery Case | eBay that is only 13.99 with shipping from China (I bought 3):


A 650nm (claimed) 250mW laser module wired to a 3xAA plastic box with switch. Since I needed to reduce the battery compartment for the keyswitch I decided to go with 1 to 2 10440 Li-ion batteries. The reason I say 1 to 2 is that I rearranged the battery compartment to fit two 10440s in parallel so that only their current would add so if I only put one in it will still work (tested this before I implemented it).

After cutting out the areas I needed to (display area, hole for keyswitch in top & battery compartment, connect up down power button area for slide potentiometer) I then filled in areas such as the hole for the belt clip & to rebuild a smaller battery compartment using milliput putty (insert pictures here I should have taken but didn't). I then went on to use painters tape to isolate both top & bottom sections of the housing and emitter cone and then made the paint job you see in the first pic.

I at first was going to make the display just a battery monitor so i went with a simple 3916 IC voltage monitor circuit. By the time I got the parts I changed my mind and decided I was going to use the 3916 instead for a fake power meter and since I wasn't going to use a decade counter chip where I could use buttons for up/reset of the bar graph I could just use a 10k slide potentiometer for power up/down instead. The next step was to breadboard the circuit I was going to use for the display:


(Was still waiting on the slide potentiometers so the breadboard is using a rotate pot.)

Of which I used an all red bar graph for the test circuit. For what was supposed to be the final circuit I had a nice red/green 10 seg bar graph and built it:



Unfortunately just before I first went to put it all together I was testing it and accidentally dropped a little screwdriver on the back of the prototype board circuit which shorted on the bargraph unit pins and burnt out an led!!! After chiding myself for the clumsiness I needed to replace the bargraph and the only one right there was the all red I used in the breadboard circuit.

Here is the top & bottom just before final assembly:



You'll notice the tiny speaker I replaced the massive one with, I didn't use a heatsink on this one because I couldn't see how to fit one (too cramped) so I'm limiting the duty cycle on this one to 15 seconds to be safe (I've test the module up to 40 seconds and it didn't really get hot). The Christopher Pike Laser & Klingon Disruptor will both have heatsinks (I have the perfect ones for each already).

Sorry there are no pics of the battery compartment, at the moment it is functional but not pretty. I will get back to that one later and finish it properly.

One other thing I decided to experiment with was an acrylic paint with a red gitd in it. I'm new to this so it was an experiment of which after painting the emitter cone gloss black I painted the gitd inside and the fire button chrome the gitd went into the button well (where there was a chrome foil). This is how it came out:


Not bad and the display was going too in this pic.

You can see that even though I gave the emitter cone outside 3 coats of gloss black that when I fire the cone becomes red (interesting effect but not what I was intending).



Here it is firing at the top of a telephone pole down the block



And at a tree that was annoying me at that moment (just joking):



I'm still learning to do so please bear with me, subsequent mods will look even better!


Next up will be my Star Trek Chris Pike Laser Red Mod (which I should have done is about two weeks, busy time at work at the moment):

very nice i will pick your brain when i do mine next gen phaser you will have to send me plans for the bar led.. the one i think would be cool is the class four phaser rifle and the klingon disrupter any way good going like the work would you consider selling kits

I would buy two

+1

vortish said:

very nice i will pick your brain when i do mine next gen phaser you will have to send me plans for the bar led.. the one i think would be cool is the class four phaser rifle and the klingon disrupter any way good going like the work would you consider selling kits

I would buy two

+1

Click to expand...

Thank you Vortish!

I will certainly help and answer any questions you might have. I will post later the schematic for the 3916 driven bar graph display (at work at the moment). It is a very simple circuit.

As far as kits I'm just learning myself as I go along (building on what Jayrob showed for the classic phaser) so I wont be coming out with any kits for a long time to come, if ever.

:beer:

ah Bummer! lol

I really like the work you put into the LED bar display. Nice Job. I was thinking of doing a build out of one of these as well. (I have so many hosts and not sure which to do next.)
+1 Rep

I also would buy this in kit form! I know you said you would never prolly do this but that's sales for three so far! LOL

Looks awesome man! I love the new paint job and the bar led is an awesome touch! Keep building!

Sorry Vortish, maybe in the distant future but in the meantime here is the schematic to the circuit I built for the display:


The potentiometer you see is where I used a slide version in the unit. The 3.6V supply is the 1 or 2 10440's in parallel (right now I'm using 2 but 1 does work just fine) that also power the laser module & sound circuit. For the IC I definitely used a dip socket rather than directly solder the chip. Used my dremmel tool to custom shape the prototype board I built the circuit on to fit in that cramped area.

Thank you LKY2009, I see you are very experienced yourself building these types and my favorite will always be the classic phaser of which I see you've done many! Down the road I'll do another classic phaser, a blue mod this time. But in front of that is the Capt Pike Laser red mod I'm working on now, Then after that a Klingon Disrupter green mod, and once that's done a 1996 Playmates First Contact Phaser red mod (much bigger and better made version of the STNG phaser). So I've definitely got plenty ahead to do!

Thank you ru124t & IsaacT, this new hobby has turned out to be very fun & satisfying!