BRINGING THE GALAXY HOME IN A BOX
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Restoring the Voyager Centrifuge for TREKCETERA MUSEUM part 2.
I had the wonderful opportunity present itself in being asked to restore the screen used centrifuge from Star Trek:Voyager for the
TREKCETERA MUSEUM.
Here continues the restoration.
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The centrifuge body itself had several areas that had been chipped, broken away and or cracked. The front itself is an acrylic plate blended into the MDF body just before the corners. So I filled, sanded, filled, sanded and sanded these areas to reblend them and bring them up to creating a uniform surface for paint.
During this process of filling and sanding I had time to test and rework the electronics for the lights. The two upper platform lights worked fine being simple flasher led's. And the centrifuge motor still ran. However all the rest of the lights in the base around the centrifuge spinner and the white rectangle light in the upper platform did not work. No sound is in this unit as like many props the sounds are added in post production.
Fearing the custom flourescents had been damaged I began inspection of the bulbs. I was relieved to find they were intact and unbroken. There is no wiring diagram of the unit, so I began tracing and testing wires, following each one through its circuit. This allowed me to find and replace the faulty parts and tidy up the wiring, labeling each one so that if needed future work is much easier.
Once the final bodywork was looking good I masked the unit and got it ready for paint.
During this process of filling and sanding I had time to test and rework the electronics for the lights. The two upper platform lights worked fine being simple flasher led's. And the centrifuge motor still ran. However all the rest of the lights in the base around the centrifuge spinner and the white rectangle light in the upper platform did not work. No sound is in this unit as like many props the sounds are added in post production.
Fearing the custom flourescents had been damaged I began inspection of the bulbs. I was relieved to find they were intact and unbroken. There is no wiring diagram of the unit, so I began tracing and testing wires, following each one through its circuit. This allowed me to find and replace the faulty parts and tidy up the wiring, labeling each one so that if needed future work is much easier.
Once the final bodywork was looking good I masked the unit and got it ready for paint.
Once the wiring was fixed. I turned my attention to the finish. The prop had to look as it did on Voyager before the Klingon redress. So all the individual parts were further cleaned up. I cleaned and polished the brass for the vials that spin. I recreated the colored liquids, opting to leave out the white liquid as being viewed in person at the museum it just didn't look right. I manufactured replacement rings for the upper vial edges as they had all been broken at some point.
I left the back of unit as just cleaned without repainting it. I felt this partial restoration would help to leave the history of the prop intact and was not in that bad of shape.
The upper platform was disassembled further to facilitate cleaning the vial holder and polishing the black acrylic. The acrylic touches are simply held in place with double sided tape. Now with paint dry and set it was sprayed with a matte finish to match the rest of the props original finish. I could then begin the reassembly of the centrifuge body.
I left the back of unit as just cleaned without repainting it. I felt this partial restoration would help to leave the history of the prop intact and was not in that bad of shape.
The upper platform was disassembled further to facilitate cleaning the vial holder and polishing the black acrylic. The acrylic touches are simply held in place with double sided tape. Now with paint dry and set it was sprayed with a matte finish to match the rest of the props original finish. I could then begin the reassembly of the centrifuge body.
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