Laser Monocle Headpiece

If you've seen Star Trek TNG (or the Austin Powers trilogy) you may have though that it would be pretty cool to have a laser-beam on your head (I did). So I bought a laser and I built this:
It features a fixed magnification scope with a narrow / wide- beam illuminating laser.
Please see the video for how fun the laser is, I used a little bit of fog for it, but not much.




(I'll edit a bit at the weekend, add some more pics)

I used:
Epoxy glue
PVA glue
Paper (Private Eye and a birthday card)
Car-body-filler (styrene-based)
Some bits I pulled off the back of a TV tube
Some bits I pulled out of a Canon B95 FAXPHONE
Various screws, bits of metal wire and plastic
A Crosman laser (IIIA)
Cheap spray-paint (black and metallic)
A pair of very cheap field-glasses^*

Fiskars scissors (good scissors)
A craft knife
Sandpaper
A junior-hacksaw

*Binoculars have prisms in them

I seemed to remember PVA peeled off skin fairly easily from when I was at school...
I set up the video camera to point at me, with the LCD display rotated so that I could use the whole thing as a "mirror". I put a pair of underpants on my head to keep my hairs out of the way. I applied PVA glue to my face and added pieces of paper. Having built up a few layers I let the mask dry whilst trying to keep a straight face. The mask then had to be peeled-off.
After cleaning my skin, and picking PVA out of hairs, I applied some tissue to the inside of the mask and re-seated it (repeatedly) as it continued to dry and harden.
The end result was a face-hugging mask, which would for the base of the monocle.



ModMischief said: Two things would have made this step less painful: Vaseline & a hairdryer

To make it even easier, you could have used plaster cloth like I did for this mask: https://www.instructables.com/id/SHB0P9YG1BBDUVL/

You must be either a brave man or a masochist.

While the mask fits the face well, I needed something to stop it falling-off (and I wasn't thinking of PVA again).

I had a left-over piece of wire from the Soup-Cans build. I applied the mask, then secured the wire with masking-tape. The wire was then splinted to the mask with a ruler & more tape, the original tape was removed and the wire fixed with car-body-filler.

The other mounting point is the nose-piece. I covered my nose in masking-tape, applied filler and squished the mask onto it. When set I removed the tape (only 1-2 min). This sits on one ear and a nose like (half a pair) of glasses.

I had some bits from the back of a TV tube, which were hacked to fit the mask. I applied a couple of blobs car-body filler to the main piece, and seated it whilst wearing the mask. This ensured that I got the alignment correct. It's fast setting-stuff, I only had to wait 1-2 min.

Then it was back to paper and PVA, building around the paper & plastic. The purpose of this was to define the basic shape, and provide a base for the outer finish.

To mount the laser I made a tight fitting tube from paper (based upon the cardboard tube from a Brother Thermal-Fax roll, which is co-incidentally the same diameter @ 19 mm). The laser was attached with filler, holding in place as for the main TV tube piece to ensure correct alignment. The beam hits the centre of vision at around 12'.

I literally hacked the cheap (but tough) plastic of the field-glasses to extract the lenses. I found each side had a lump of steel in them, presumably to give a better "feel", like they might have glass in them?

(Photographed under the Lego lamp on the back of a comic-book)

I removed removed the eyepiece from one side and glued it to one of the front-pieces. Then I removed the front lens and glued the black tube to the other front-piece, to give a fixed monocular. The full eye-piece is good for 12' upwards, but not at shorter-range.
The other eyepiece lens was built into a beam-widener for the laser, being a bit powerful I wanted to reduce the energy density in case of accidents.

For appearance I used some more bits from the TV tube and some pins from the fax.

I had started with a different carboard eye-piece, and suffered a media failure whilst photographing - the last image came from a data-recovery preview (I wasn't going to pay for the full version)

I spent an entire evening on this this tiny-part, building it from bits of plastic & filler & paint around an eye-piece lens. It works - see video. It was attached to an iron core from a VCR motor.

Filler was applied to the paper, sanded, then more filler and more sanding. The filler & sanding was repeated until I'd got a shape that looked good enough to paint.
The front was sprayed metallic, and the side portion black.

Sheets of aluminium drink-can were cut to cover the original pieces of card. To seat with the filler, the metal was wrapped in cling-film, held in place and filler applied up to it. This left a narrow gap into which the sheet could be pushed later.

I had a bit of stainless-mesh which filled-up three holes nicely, there were back-lit with yellow LEDs, but they're not bright enough to show on a picture, so that as much as I'll say about them.

Also due to media failure whilst photographing - the last images come from a data-recovery preview

To fill-in the painted spaces, I put a bit of electrical tape on the eye-piece rings, and applied some nice wire I got from a McDonnell-Douglas P-LAN node. The wires originate from a stereo-switch (glued on) and terminate on the front, secured largely with friction, but aided by epoxy glue. The eye-piece is a friction fit (unless I should decide to glue it)


(I'll tidy this up later, having spent enough time already it's time I published it)