Working with Pearl

I’d be a terrible salesman. Promoting things; compelling a call to action; these just aren’t part of my default behaviors.
But: short attention spans? That, I understand. So I’ll but the result right up front, this time.

Trying to implement abalone or mother of pearl in the Dial of Destiny prop builds has bothered me since I started on it. I never found a great 3D printing solution for a true pearlescent effect though I found a pretty good workaround for the white rings.

I set up a two color print with a black backing and the top layers with a silk white. The glyphs in the rings are cutouts, that reveal the black beneath. Silk filaments have a directional polarization to their reflection that becomes evident if you print the same part in two different orientations.

It occurred to me that part of what gives pearl its beauty is that it also polarizes and reflects at different angles based on the organic matrix of the intricate growth patterns of the material. People are like Bass, we like shiny things. It roots back to evolutionary selection for pattern matching cognitive behaviors developed on the Serengeti. (Probably)

As 3d printers put down layers, you can control the patterns of movement by setting various travel and fill patterns. The printers often use faster (but less visually consistent) patterns for interior structures and then switch to monotonic patterns for top layers in order to try to provide a uniform finish. If you think of a 3D print as an Oreo, the bottom and top layers have one pattern and the filling can be something else entirely. Yummy. I’m not sure what the milk is in this metaphor…

Anyway.. so, I had this idea. What if I reduce top layers and let some of that patterning through; especially considering the visual properties of silk white filaments. To get this effect, I could reduce the top-layer counts of a print or even just pause and top the print early when it looked “right.” It worked out pretty well and gave the Dial’s white features a pearlescent effect. I’d typically spend a day making nothing but the white parts for future builds using this trick and my build plates have the wear grooves to show for it.

One limitation is that the effect is diminished in larger surface areas. I tried to account for it with various holographic skateboard paints but lets be real. Actual Pearl always beat plastic.

Glyph Disc

Last year I started including a mother of pearl glyph disc option with the Dial of Destinies that I made for people. The process was timing consuming, the material is costly and can be a challenge to work with. I started by ordering 240mm x 140mm Mother of Pearl Veneer Sheets. You can get them from Amazon, from Etsy, from specialty suppliers and prices vary from $75/sheet on the top end to about $8/sheet when buying in bulk from a sketchy part of the internet. I applied the veneer sheet to a backing material with adhesives. I cut the pearl circle by hand with a hobby knife. I went through alot of hobby knives.

Pro-tip that I learned while cutting floor tile. A piece of masking tape (on both sides) of the area you plan to cut, then cutting through the masking tape -and- material at the same time can help sharpen the cut lines and keep it from crumbling. It works for marble and tile floors and it happens to work for mother of pearl as well.

Marking the glyphs onto the pearl is a challenge.

I tried various approaches at using hand-made stencils but most were underwhelming. Anything from 3d printed stencils to vinyl cut stencils. The vinyl-cut stencils mostly worked but the Cricut is my wife’s toy. She has a job -and- keeps the kids alive when I’m mad science’ing in the garage; doesn’t need me adding to her Cricut cutter backlog.

Top, unpainted plastic print. Middle, Dark pearl. Bottom, Light pearl.

I had Dry Transfer Decals made from the glyph design. At bulk, I ended up with two giant rolls for a few hundred dollars from different brands.

The first vendor, Ninja Transfers misprinted the first order, got the middle order correct. They sent the entirely wrong product type on the third order, which was a reprint from a QR code of the good roll. The print and cut quality is really good. From the customer perspective it feels like a fully automated print on demand business with bugs in the print provisioning pipeline. Their customer service was so unhelpful that they may already have been replaced by chatGPT agents. ¯_(ツ)_/¯

I had another batch made from a local sign company.

The challenge with dry transfers was that their transfer tape was too sticky. Removing the transfer tape pulls and cracks the upper nacre layer of the shell sheet.

Heat transfers work but have to be applied before the shell is applied to the backer. The backer becomes warped from the 380F heat press.

I can get 1 1/2 glyph disc per 240mm x 140mm sheet of MOP. I seamed together each scrap at the up-arrow and used these in discounted (fused Dials) aimed at Cosplay. The single piece, went to the more expensive complete Dials that I sold. This is why there was a price difference between the two.

Sharks with Laser Beams, Sans: Sharks

I think that there are some clear signs in the film production prop that at least some of the pearl markings were done through a laser-engraving or laser-etching process. Those parts were likely laser cut, especially the outer glyph rings.

So, how can we mark directly on the pearl?

One problem: Laser etching a shell nacre, doesn’t turn it black, it oxidizes white.
Another problem: The detail in the outer rings is such that a punch through cut isn’t really feasible, especially with such brittle material.

Ideas

Idea:
Use Liquid Masking on the face of the pearl. Stencil the liquid mask with the laser. Stencil-Paint the glyphs with an airbrush.

Result:
As you might predict.. Burning rubber is a big downside. The liquid mask doesn’t adhere well enough for a smooth application, requires several coats for a smooth finish. This would work but the drawbacks outweigh the benefits.

Idea: Mark the pearl with sharpie to increase the heat absorption and to see how the heat interacted with the underlying material.

Result: The laser just cleans off the sharpie. There wasn’t a noticeable improvement in the etching depth.

Idea: Rub graphite into the laser etchings. Seal the graphite in with a top coat.

Result: A bit messy. The graphite has great color. It did have a staining effect on the surrounding pearl that would require extensive, meticulous clean up.

Idea: Use a laser marking spray. They make laser marking sprays that are water soluble but react to the heat of the laser in such a way to bond to smooth surfaces (like glass).

Result: The laser intensity settings that react most favorably to the marking spray in terms of color-change, did not trigger an adequate bond to raw shell materials.

Powder Coating

From the pinball and arcade hobby I got pretty familiar with the concept of powder coating. After a usually torturous surface prep process, electro-static charged powdered pigments are applied to a (usually metal) surface and then baked to achieve a semi-permanent bond. This is also reminiscent to how a laser printer functions. Toner isn’t just ink, there is a static charge relationship between the toner and the paper, then the fuser bakes the toner into the paper.

Can I use powder coat or toner to mark the pearl with the laser? Absolutely. Any drawbacks?
It is so… very… catastrophically messy. Especially when you are unable to disable the ventilation fan on the laser engraver.

Direct Printing

At production scale, Screen Printing or UV Printing would be a solid choice for marking these. The brittle nature of the materials would likely create potential for a high defect rate. The large format resin printer and laser engraver already have me in a $7500 hobby-hole. If I were to add a $25k UV printer to the tally, I’m pretty sure to get a visit from a divorce attorney..

So… I’ll find another way with the tools that I have..

Laser Ablation

In the process of engraving a God of War coin for my son, the idea came to me. A common step is to let the laser do low power cleaning pass on the coin to remove any surface contaminations like oils or burs from previous engraving passes.

The Process:

Cover the pearl sheet in a desired dye, paint or stain
Create a negative of the glyph design
Do many (10-20) cutting passes first
Follow by 2-4 lower power engraving passes using the negative vector of the designs

The Pros: Extremely crisp results. Reasonably simple execution with single color prints.
The Cons: Burning paint is the stuff of burn-pits and cancer. Make sure you follow a good ventilation-filter-capture protocol. Do not breath this shit in.

There were several a-ha! moments working out how to make the Dial of Destiny props. The kind of thing where you start to see reinforcements that you are walking in the right footsteps. (In Latin, Jehovah starts with an I). One such moment was the repeated geometric harmony with 60 degrees on various design aspects of the model. Another, was the the notion that the largest pearl pieces just barely manage to fit on a 240mm x 140mm sheet of pearl inlay.

There are certain lettering stutters to the film props' glyphs that work to enforce the weathering realism and create an appropriate sense of a completely handmade object.

I achieved something similar in early testing by defocusing the laser or intentionally misaligning the pearl for extra cleaning passes. The result is that some letters get truncated while others are left alone.

Putting it All Together

My resin printers are [currently] working night after night on parts for my 2/3 scale Ark of the Covenant build and the FDM printers are mostly busy making my son’s Storm Trooper armor.

I will make a very limited number of pearl-based Dial of Destiny props. As of the time of writing, (late June 2025) there are 3 in the wild. The pearl is fragile and a little expensive and frankly I didn’t want to get over my skis with a very experimental process.

The stack on the right in the photo above are all in-progress builds that need more sanding and detail work before I add the white parts. Most of them aren’t spoken for yet (again: I’m a terrible salesman) but I’m having fun taking my time and applying these new processes to create what I consider to be a very-top-shelf result.

Lima (top left) went to a friend stationed in Germany

Mike (top right) is still around. I considered swapping it into my own display because I like the extra distressing.

November (middle left) went to south Florida.

Oscar (middle right) went to a place near the Alps on the German side.

Papa (bottom) also moved across the pond, jealously now closer to the Guinness Brewery than I am.

Dial of Destiny Prop Info

In the fall, I switched the majority of parts from FDM to Resin. It saves me time in post-processing and not having to create fill channels for sand and quickcrete for weight and balance, the detail is nice and they feel more realistic.

Over the summer, I fell into some prop-building fun by way of creating a 3d printable Archimedes Dial prop based on Indiana Jones and the Dial of Destiny. I thought the movie was fun (though far from perfect) but I was really captivated by the prop and it seems plenty of others’ shared that sentiment. I made & sold a surprising number of them on eBay, participated in eBay Charities, donated quite a few of them and added some additional 3d print capabilities along the way.

The experience has been overall pretty rad and a bit redeeming on several fronts. For one, I had a mostly negative impression of eBay going into this having been ripped off as a seller many times in the not-so-distant past. Also, I’ve been surprised by the positive response from people that got them and made a few new friends along the way. Turns out, Indy people are cool.

Want to buy one?

I’m currently building “Anniversary Edition” dials that have more accurate dimensions and they separate in a more film-accurate manner. They also include a spring-loaded compass.

Sorry, the beaded lanyard is not included. I can walk you through making your own, though. It was just more time-consuming than I could commit to for any reasonable quantity.

Direct Order

Prices:
Small / Regular - $325USD (Sold Out)
Large -$650USD (Sold Out)
Anniversary Edition - $420USD (limited)

8/1/2024
I currently have a few of these (more or less) ready to ship minus any customization. Email me if you have questions or are interested but have a hardship situation, need a price cut to make it work out for you. You can also order from this site below.

Image below links to ordering page, if any are currently ready to go. ->

Sold out

Dial of Destiny Prop Replica (Mk42 Design)

$475.00

Indiana Jones, Dial Of Destiny Prop Replica

Want one of these but feeling a little out of reach by price?
No worries - here are some free plans if you feel inclined to print one, yourself. You got this!

(The open source plans are slightly different than this prop replica)

The build is 240mm by 210m by 41mm. This is consistent with the size of the prop on display at Disney World and what you see on-screen. This build is made from a combination of materials, PLA+, PLACF (Carbon Fiber) but the majority of it is Resin. I intentionally built this one to be heavy, to feel realistic in the hand.

The hands move, it can be displayed assembled or in split-view similar to the film Premiere and includes a static compass for the center assembly that can be optionally installed. It does not facilitate travel through time but congratulations, you are already traveling forward in time at the rate of 1 second per second. :)

Add to cart

F.A.Q.

Which is the screen accurate size?
- That’s debatable. If you watch the film and extra features, they made and used several different sizes during production. If you, person reading this, have the definitive (not Disney World prop) production sizes please send them to me and I will be forever in your debt.

Is it 100% screen accurate?
- It is pretty close. Some liberties were taken to facilitate printing. The screen-used props were expertly weathered and made from different materials.

Those prices seem steep. Why so much?
A few things went into my pricing considerations. First: I’m sort of a stickler on quality. My Dad drilled in me to work hard and over-deliver when possible and let the pricing reflect the work. I have spent some effort refining processes to try to bring prices into a more accessible range and my processes are pretty efficient. I like making these for people and these prices cover my maker supplies and parts.

Charities? How do we go about getting a Dial for Charity purposes?
No red tape. Just write up a few sentences on what you have in mind and we’ll work it out.

I heard something about a free-alternative?
My 3d Print model files up to Mark 5 are completely free and open source and I highly encourage folks to make the builds themselves, it is a gratifying project to complete. People even use them commercially and that’s cool. With the right tools (multi-color capable fdm printer, large resin printer) the build can even be pretty easy. It does involve about 30 parts, 50+ print hours, sanding, priming, paint, assembly, trimming, etc.

*the anniversary edition files are not available for download (not yet, anyway - I’m re-evaluating this)

Can you still make the FDM-style dials?
- Sure thing. Depending on my filament-stock-levels I may need to source the particular filament I used for the main body but the deliverable time should be about the same.

Do you sell kits?
- I have. It isn’t going to be any cheaper because I’l likely be printing extra parts for kit-builds but I certainly can send you an unpainted and unassembled kit-form of either build type.

Do you sell parts?
- Sure.
If you purchased a Dial from me and part of it broke, you have my contact info - just reach out and I’ll get you squared away; either with replacement parts or a complete replacement Dial. I’ll make every reasonable effort so long as I still have the parts, material and printers to do so.

If you are trying to print your own Dial and need the white parts printed, I’ve sent a few of those multicolor-parts-only kits out by request. There should be little or no charge for this outside of shipping & handling unless I get behind or inundated.

eBay Store

I may, from time-to-time have some pre-built and available for purchase on eBay - you can find that storefront here:
https://www.ebay.com/usr/visi0n9

Awesome / Humbling Buyer Feedback

Build Process Overview

Below is my general build process. I tend to have more than one dial in one of these phases at any given time and these days are not contiguous, they rely on my work schedule, humidity and other factors.

Day One
The printers print parts. For the main body I use an Elegoo Jupiter, for the compass assemblies I use an Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra. For the remainder I use 2 Bambu X1Cs, and a Bambu P1S

Day Two
UV Curing for MSLA parts, additional printing for FDM parts.

Day Three
Prep. I remove supports, sand and clean parts and paint them with a Black Primer

Day Four
I paint the parts. The gold is a Krylon Gold Leaf, available in liquid and aerosol form from Hobby Lobby, Michaels, Lowes and Amazon. I use a mixture of airbrush, aerosol and physical brush.

Day Five
Assembly Day. More light sanding and surface prep, then I glue any parts that need to be glued, reprint anything that was missing, lost or doesn’t meet quality standards.

Day Six
I test them for loose parts, glue, fix, touch and photography the finished model. Since each model is a little different, I give the model an internal grade in terms of qualities and setbacks and I use this grade to pick a price from an established price-range.

Want to Make your Own?

Want one but would prefer to make it yourself? You got this!

You can find the model files on Printables and on Bambu Maker World
and an assembly video here: https://arcadeshenanigans.com/blog/2023/8/5/dial-of-destiny-mark-4-conversion-instructions

Quick Prop Build: IJ Antidote Vial

After picking up a nice version of the Nurhachi’s Urn, I also wanted one of the antidote vials but felt like the average going rate of $75.00 was a bit excessive for the vial.

I started by ordering these from Amazon: 30ml Clear Small Glass Vials

I used this for the blue liquid

For the blue liquid, I originally attempted a mixture of food dye and various clear liquids. Eventually I ended up with a $10 bottle of bottom-shelf vodka. I painted the lid with the same Krylon Gold Leaf spray paint I used for the Dial of Destiny.

Here are the print files for the gold rings:
https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/3aq2nl70qm3o8jup8vcel/h?rlkey=62lfizbud55nw61s6z7a23772&dl=0

Dial of Destiny Mark 4 Conversion Instructions

Want to buy one? Click here for ordering options.

Already have one? Welcome! Hopefully the video and resources below cover the bases but if you have any questions, just drop a comment and I’m happy to help.

If your Compass Mount Looks like this:

Then, You can carefully unscrew the compass mount like this illustration.

The following video also shows how this assembly can be separated at the 10:20 mark)

(If you’d just like to see how to convert between split and assembled configs, jump to about 10:20 in this video)

If your Compass Mount Looks like this:

Then your conversion operates like this:

Lift the compass mount off.

Unscrew the center plug

Re-orient the dial parts for the desired split configuration.
Screw the center plug back in to create enough pinching force to hold the halves together.
Re-Install the Magnetic Compass Mount

Model Files, Download from Printables:
https://www.printables.com/model/468260-indiana-jones-dial-of-destiny

Legacy Parts (and commit history):
https://github.com/graffitilogic/3dPrintStuff/tree/main/Indy

Dial of Destiny Prop Build

This covers the initial, Mk1-Mk5 builds. For the most recent project updates, check this post.
Already have one and looking for support guides or parts? Click here for assembly instructions.
Want to buy one? Click here for ordering options.

Just here to see what went into making it? Welcome to my first adventure in prop making.

Mark I

Based on a the single still frame of a (mostly) assembled "Dial of Destiny" from the upcoming Indy movie, I wanted to try my hand at creating a basic approximation of the prop for my basement, bar, gameroom.

A few challenges:

• I only have the single still frame grab from the movie trailer to go by

• I have a somewhat limited 3d modeling skillset

• I have a very limited artistic skillset

This is a timelapse of most (but not all) of my first attempt at generating a primitive test version of the prop to hold us over until someone more talented can make a detailed version.

STL Files:
https://github.com/graffitilogic/3dPrintStuff/tree/main/Indy/DoD

Prototypes

Top: 144mm Test, Bottom: 200mm Test

Top: 144mm Test, Bottom: 200mm Test

“Compass Dial” Workaround

The dial for the center compass-like mech is very small and the post that engages from it is entirely too small to reliably function. The first time someone turns it and it catches any resistance, it will snap off. As a workaround for now, I glued a part of a paperclip to the dial.

240mm Build

Even at 240mm I think the dial rod is too small, so “paperclip thing” was used again.

Insets

I’ve always been bad at art..

Assembly Instructions

Mark 1.5ish

Late May 2023 Update - 6 sides, Side details

DOH. It’s not 8-sided.

An anonymous emailer, supposedly familiar with the production told me the prop was going to be octagonal in shape. This rightfully jived with my confirmation-bias as a programmer that likes math-by-eights. This last trailer gives a better view of the assembled mechanism and it uhh… isn’t octagonal. So… yeah.. Need to fix that.

A new promo trailer came out with some new stills to potentially harvest some early details about the prop.

Central glyph disc from the bottom of the Dial? (Or…. map that leads the heroes to parts of the artifact?)

Assuming this is related to the bottom glyph disc of the prop, we can extrapolate some rough sizing estimates..

The Upper Compass-like mechanism perhaps?

Additional Side Details

The additional details set me down a path to adjust my own personally-built model above with additional side details and some slight size adjustments.

Told ya by art-fu was weak! :)

The biggest issue that I’ve had with the side details was printing them with supports. The channels are so small between those chiclet pieces that I cut myself a few times on the tiny support wires that were generated to fill the channels.

The May 2023 Dial turned out pretty good., except that its the wrong shape! :\

Mid June Update

To work around the support headache of the side details, I separated the chiclet-box-things into their own prints and left inset cutouts for easy glueing and snapping of the details into the box-sides. In order to accommodate this, it was necessary the expand the box sides a little while trying to preserve the internal scaling ratios.

By mid June, I started trying to add in some of the extra detail from the top of the box design. Each point of the hexagonal box has an elongated pyramid with tiny details. Looks a little like a landscape, sun-ray pictograph to my eyes. If I did the smallest lines as cutouts in the print, I’m not 100% sure it would translate well in larger layer-height and nozzle-size print configurations. For now at least, I’ve added a small cutout in the shape of the pyramid but missing those fine line details. I exported glue-on outset versions of those top details.

The early screenshot of the assembled dial also shows perpendicular seams on box. I thought it was odd that these seams were not symmetrical points of the hexagonal structure. I’ve resisted so far the urge to add these cutouts until I can see the film and see how persistent the seams are within the film. I suspect that the assembly in film will slide together and these will be left as seams but not necessary raised relief as pictured here.

At this scale, drawing the little sun + raw pictograph would be a challenge for me. I enabled Archimedean Chords for the top layers and the printer at least gives me this effect. It isn’t perfect but I’ll take it, for now anyway.

As of mid-June I’m starting to run out of ideas for this current design. I’m mostly happy with it, though. The weak spots are my lack of hand-drawn art skills. Once the movie comes out and I can get more detail on the glyphs I might end up trying to build something that is printable for the glyph areas. (Like a transfer sheet or transparent decal)

Mid June Update 2

Well, I put out into the universe that I was running out of inspiration and ideas and the universe answered the call. In a recent Blog Mickey Post, they announced the reopening of the small Indy store at Hollywood Studios as a temporary bar and snack shop. It has been re-christened the Den of Destiny and features a Dial of Destiny Prop giving us plenty of details to obsess over. I’m told this isn’t a film model and that it was made specifically for this Disney Parks location by local talent. The creator(s) are a professional and unable to spill the secrets, specs and dimensions of the model, totally understandable, that.

I think we can infer that this model was likely derived from privileged access to production design notes. While it is possible, even likely that the film model and Parks model might differ in finish and details, I think we are safe to glean some details from this model for our hobby build.

Well, all that detail work.. felt a little like work. But the result is worth it, I think.

Splitting the Box

Having recently built the basement bar, I was thinking about the prevalence of jigs, cutouts and other build-assistance. While working out the line pattern in the upper white ring, I noticed that it is also based on a hex shape. So, I started to wonder if this is the answer for the the box split.

I’ve waited this long to tackle this particular problem b/c I think I secretly hoped the box would snap together and the seams would more or less disappear. I don’t think that’s the case, though. In fact I’m mostly sure of it after seeing these photos of the premiere model. I suppose it sort of tweaked my sensibilities that the box would be split where it is split but now I’m thinking this was another hex-jig-derived design decision. It seems like you can work out the cut points to separate the box by overlaying a 1:1 scale hex and positioning it so that the points no longer intersect with the inner inlay rail and rotate it so that it doesn’t interfere with the gear-box-cutout on the bottom side.

Dealing with Spares

At this point, I’ve printed a few prototypes and in some cases have doubled-back on design philosopy. Originally I printed the smallest prototypes on Bambu Iridium Gold Filament. Once complete, I wasn’t thrilled with the color match so I started painting them in either Rustoleum Gold or Krylon Golf Leaf paint. I found a Champagne Silk Gold filament that I liked for the smaller parts but the filament is inconsistently available and the brand name is very um.. Shenzen diversified whitelabel-ish. I’ve also been printing these in Antique Gold Silk Filament after a friend found a roll of something similar at a Thrift Store and sent it my way.

Why so many? Sometimes the filament is too dull or the paint is too shiny or the filament is tonally incorrect and the paint obscures detail work. A necessity of my work and family schedule is I seldom have more than an hour of uninterrupted free time to sit and design or experiment, results in an iterative design process. A byproduct of the iterative process is that I ended up with a scattering of parts printed or processed through varied combinations of material color and paint color choices.

Enough so that counting the three models I’ve printed for my own display since April, I have parts or have built more than a half-dozen of these. What to do with the spares? I gave one to a friend and two out on Indy and prop builder forums. I’ve listed the rest on eBay with 50% going to St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital, the American Cancer Society or American Heart Association. Kind of cool to clean out my parts clutter, deliver some cool props to fellow excited Indy fans and get a little charity feels in the process.

Update 7/16/2023
.. all of the Charity-share auctions sold. Raised a couple thousand for several charities. eBay’s charity fund isn’t quite as automatic and hands-free as I’d hoped. There are steps.. and fees.. so many fees.

eBay Results

The eBay sales of prototypes and partly finished props yielded the following:

1 @ $910 with 50% to American Cancer Society
1 @ $356 with 50% to St. Jude
1 @ $699 with 50% to St Jude
1 @ $245 with 50% to American Cancer Society
1 @ $1225 with 50% to St. Jude
1 @ $305 with 50% to American Cancer Society
1 @ $315 with 50% to American Cancer Society
___
$4055 /7 = $579 average

Not bad but I don’t think we’ve solved Cancer with this. Outside of the charity split, I also traded one for a metal-plated Coronado Cross and one for an improved Grail Diary. I’ve given a few away, as well. I started getting 100+ messages per week: “Make me one, sell me one, make me one, ship it to Germany, Italy, Australia, France”. eBay gets grumpy about those side deals, international shipping is atrocious and frankly 100+ messages per week is a bit too people-y for me. I kind of prize my quiet, simple existence.

Scarcity and release timing pushed the average sale per Dial up over $1000/per prop briefly. That’s the cost of scarcity and impatience of early adoption. Which is somehow both too much but also not enough to be worth my time as a side-hustle. 30+ print hours per dial + assembly time and other materials and trying to fake customer-service and sales skills that aren’t in my wheelhouse.

Eventually, I expect the usual prop-making Etsy crowd will start to fill this need with highly accurate original prop designs and prices will stabilize towards more reasonable levels. My plans will become the Great Value alternative to the AAA props. I’m cool with that.

After seeing the movie..

With the film being out and production secrecy embargoes starting to lift, more details of the prop have been trickling in. Folks have sent me stuff from twitter, forums, facebook - one person super sleuthing screenshots during the film which has been really helpful.

Observations looking at these is.. I got that bottom disc wrong, it looks like what I thought was the Glyph disc is actually a different prop from the movie, the Graficos (?) I think they called it. It looks like the glyph disc at the bottom is a fair amount simpler in design but it and the white rings are actually pearl which is a really nice touch and to my mind makes sense thematically. Seafaring ancient Greece would of course use Pearl thanks to its material properties as reasonably hard but still workable. Would could imagine that Archimedes might have come to appreciate pearl for the concentric nature of their development.

The internal mechanisms of the production prop seem reminiscent of a planetary gear, to my untrained eyes. Though, I’m not entirely sure it functions like one, if at all. if you look there are certainly a number of static gears in the assembly that seem to be just there as interesting bits.

working on refactoring the center area, improving the split box design.

Mark 3.5

This iteration smooths the out inset slope, adjusts the ring diameters for lost consistency through over-processing and scaling mistakes and adds some of the side plate details by borrowing from the Disney Parks prop and the film prop. (Their plate layouts are different) Combined with the new compass design and the split build, I think this looks alot like the film prop, minus the internal gearing complexity that doesn’t seem to actually have any function.

Completed Assembly for the Mark 3.5 Design. This is my stopping point for awhile.

Remaking my own Dial based on the new designs.

Side A Print

Side B Print

Outer Inset Ring

Scammy McScam-Face

This site is a scam. It will disappear under this domain and pop up under a new domain with similar style, layout and copy.

An idle Saturday enjoying the backyard with the family while we have a brief reprieve from the extreme temps to just regular jungle-like Alabama normal temperatures. I come in to fetch some ice cream and I see an angry message notification from someone who bought one of my Dial prototypes on a Charity-Split auction on eBay. The person is pissed because they found a site (probably a facebook ad) for a Dial of Destiny Prop for $38. When you click through there are various screenshots of various iterations of the prop harvested from eBay and therpf.com prop builder forums and other sites.

One of the fake reviews if even from: -BillD

must..not..shift..into.. super-asshole mode.

.. a little known weakness to PayPal’s buyer protection is this:

The scam seller can ship an empty envelope or box to anywhere in your ZipCode and that suffices as “proof of delivery” for a giant, understaffed and over exposed payments processing company like PayPal.

July 28th Update

My interest in this has plateaued but I did find a few minutes to tinker around the spiral design. It still isn’t 100% movie accurate but it is an improvement.

Final eBay Activity

I have material enough for maybe 4 or 5 more, 2 of which will go towards funding some printer maintenance and/or a cheaper secondary workhorse printer for future projects, probably a P1P and to pay down my eBay fees invoices. I’m not ordering any more material after this run. Anything I have available should be gone by mid-to-late August but fret not fellow Indy fans, rumor has it in the prop-maker-forums that even more accurate versions are being made and sold, coming soon to the Etsy-verse. That’s awesome.

Fall, 2023: Project Conclusion, Final Thoughts

Time to move on from this project. Had some laughs, learned a few new skills, raised a little money for charity and achieved the primary goal of making a beer-goggles passable Dial of Destiny Prop. There are still plenty of prop details left to resolve and there are some creative and highly detailed props out in the wild from more talented folks on the horizon.

When this project started, I just wanted a thing and couldn’t find anyone from which to buy thing. Over the 3 months of effort, a few meta observations have come into focus.

Acts of pure creation are fun and talented people are amazing.
Just like walking through an arts and crafts festival, poking around the prop maker forums on the internet is a fascinating exercise. The amount of care, time, expense and level of detail that go into these efforts are impressive, if not intimidating. Just like the arcade and pinball restoration scene, actually.

In-group cliques w/ protectionist concerns, outsider-skepticism & fear of commoditization amongst prop builders
Early on, the only Dial for sale on the internet that I could find reference to was located on a private facebook group. A particular subreddit required a portfolio of related work prior to joining. Some forums were more open to outsiders than others. They have their own lexicon, their own set of taboos and their own [implied] blacklists of taboo-violators. There was an underlying theme in these communities of concern about Chinese scam sites like the one above and more generally the commodification of the work as hustle culture and collectibility sensibilities collide.

A narrative of a hyper-competitive, often mean-spirited and darker side of the Etsyverse that I wasn’t aware of formed. I guess it never occurred to me that Etsy sellers would be sniping at each other but they do. Paranoia around trying to maintain artificial scarcity fueled by fear of a diminishing or saturated market keep some of these folks up at night trolling forums in classic keyboard-commando fashion. Just like the arcade and pinball restoration scene, actually. I almost started an Etsy store to sell these things but decided against it. Anything that might invite drama and work opposite of my love for the franchise is a big no-thanks.

Although, zooming out a bit: There is comical irony in a bunch of prop nerds and artists building a recurring revenue stream from recreating replicas of actual Hollywood prop masters who were paid once for their work. Being so precious with their own copy of someone else’s’ original work while being aggressively protective of their own copycat coke formula.

methinks thou dost protest too much.

This, I think is a unique aspect of commercial art vendor circuit. A nugget of a thought that occurred to me walking through the Epcot Arts and Crafts festival watching vendors sell for a premium their own interpretations of other artists’ and animators’ work. I wonder if those original animators (many of whom were laid off a decade ago) are getting a cut of the licensing? You don’t have to hang around long to hear the vendor in one booth talking shit about the vendor from another booth. I guess capitalism isn’t a team sport.

Thinking on the protections that these artists try to mask their work with and all of the signs saying “no photos, please.” That’s ironic right? No photos of my copy of a thing that was derived from something that literally aired on ABC during the Wonderful World of Disney.

People are weird animals.

This is an abstraction of the AI conversation in the current Zeitgeist. If a drawing of a drawing is art, is a photo of a drawing still art? If you stare at enough art, it creep into your own creative output, just like the training data for generative models. These are complex topics for a blog about retro-nerd stuff, so.. I’ll leave it there for now.

Our princess is in another castle
Just my opinion: considering the box-office take of Indy 5 and how promotional budgets in the studios work, I don’t expect to see an official prop anytime soon. Hopefully I’m proven wrong.

Throughout this post and to this point in time, I made a prop that was “close enough” for my own purposes and with enough whiskey your mind will resolve it as accurate, even though it isn’t really accurate. The dimensions were a guess, constrained by build-volume. The glyphs were pixel-peeked from theme park photos and further extrapolated by astrological signs. The internal dimensions were resolved through relational geometry and natural constraints and the hidden internal details of the film prop are far more elaborate.

On the OCD scale, where 1 is a deformed pizza box and 10 is the film prop, this is a 7 by my estimate. Keep an eye out and I’m sure the real prop makers will eventually rise to the challenge.

December 2023: Getting Pulled Back In

I thought I was done! (again). I guess not! (Again)

Social Media. I should stay off of it. Around early December on one typical four-espresso morning waiting on a meeting, my phone vibrated with a social media message from across the Pond. Summarized as follows:

”I’m in [exotic place] (by standards of South Alabama, anyway) I’d like one of your props.. but there are two issues I’m concerned about. Layer Lines and Support Scars. “

In my little mental red flag push-pin map of places that I’d sent Dials, this particular locale spoke to me. I’m being vague here… on purpose. Just to highlight the innovation-motivation without calling attention to an individual in the Indy prop communities.

I know that I could make a Dial without layer lines and without support scars, I made plenty of them but it was hard work; a lot of sanding and post-processing of the parts, which drove the time (and price) up. But, since I took a break over the fall from making Dials, a few things didn’t set right with me about the model as I left it.

Issue: I wasn’t happy with the way the conversion process, particularly the danger of breaking the eyepiece part while unscrewing the compass mount. No one (but me) appears to have broken one but still, I wanted to improve this mount.

Proposed Solution: A slight redesign of the screw-plug to introduce a magnetic coupling. Working on my Johnny Five project, I’ve been experimenting with magnets to give some parts a natural resting position and to aide in disassembly and storage. Its something I saw Titan Ross do over at Titan toys on his smaller J5 builds to hold the arms into the shoulder sockets while still allowing rotation.

Issue: I wasn’t happy with the FDM print process. I mean, the bambu printers are great but the post-processing steps to add weight were cumbersome. When someone would buy a Dial from me, I added pour-channels and plugs to the Side A/B parts and filled them with a concrete-like mixture. The weight was good but the balance was off. Also, it was messy.

Proprosed Solution: (Read in Austin Powers voice) Resin, baby. Yeah.
(Resume normal internal monologue voice of George Carlin) In order to build a Prime Radiant, I finally picked up a resin printer. Then another. Then another. Then another. The full-sized / large Dial wouldn’t fit on my Elegoo Saturn 3 Ultra but does work out on an Elegoo Jupiter.

Issue: I know I was missing some details like: the edge ripples on the box and the lines on the viewfinder disc.

Proposed Solution: Adderall and design-focus-time.

Issue: I wasn’t happy with the organization of the project on printables. It was clutterd.

Proposed Solution: Declutter it while also adding additional build sizes. (200mm, 205mm, 210mm)

Mark 5

Mark 4 became Mark 4.5 which became Mark 4.6 which eventually became Mark 5. Mark 5 is the Mark 4 design with a few details added to the box corners and fixes for the 3 items listed above that are backward compatible with the older designs. MODULAR, FTW.

I’ve mailed off a few samples but I’m pretty excited about this update. It just “feels” right.

Mark 4 Corners

Mark 5 Corners