The One Hour Voyager PADD Project
Path: Props Home > Star Trek: Voyager > One Hour Padd Introduction >
| As Seen In: | Numerous episodes of Voyager | |
| Time Spent: | One hour. Duh. | |
| Date Added: | Oct 21, 2004 |
A while back, I made an online tutorial showing how to build a Voyager style padd from scratch. I included templates for download that were to be used to guide users in the cutting of styrene. Along the way, some unscrupulous folks on the internet decided to use my drawings for their own profit, and proceeded to laser cut a large number of "kits" that they then made available for sale.
The bummer for me is that I didn't get any proceeds from the sale, nor did I get any thanks.
The good news for me is that the drawings I posted on my website were quite inaccurate. Though they were a fairly decent interpretation of the Voyager Padd design, there were many artistic liberties taken, and even a mistake or two put into the drawings. Fortunately, this makes the rip off pieces easy to recognize for me. In fact, if you'd like to see if a kit you have was made using my stolen drawings, simply print out some of my old templates, and place the cutouts on top of them. It is a statistical impossibility for two separate people to make the identical artistic interpretations and mistakes on the same piece. Any doubt as to the origins of padd kits can easily be quelled.
Recently, I dug up a resin copy of a screen used Voyager padd that acquired a while back. I scanned it into my PC, and traced out the shapes using adobe illustrator. I was REALLY careful to maintain the subtle curves and arcs that were present in the original. I did make one major "editorial decision" when I decided to make the padd symmetrical along the bottom and top arcs. In the real prop (which was hand sculpted), the curves are not symmetrical. The bottom right hand side arcs upwards a bit sharper than the left. Also, the top of the padd has a bit of "Lean" to it.
I "corrected" these issues, but left in tact all the subtle cuves along the cut-ins on the sides. I think this makes for a much more accurate looking padd.
With these drawings complete, I set about getting my own laser cut kits made. The results are pictured here. On this page, I am going to walk you through building up this kit step by step. Because so much of the work is already done, I have estimated that I can finish a production quality padd in under one hour.