Make Your Own Voyager Padd

Important Notice:
I put this tutorial together so that individuals could build a Voyager PADD for their own personal use. This page is NOT intended as a resource to be plundered for profit. The templates from my previous tutorial had been downloaded by the thiefs at "Starfleet R&D", where they produced laser cut templates they sold for profit. The good news is that my old templates were quite innacurrate, so all of the kits they sold based on my templates include all of the flaws that were present in the templates. The bad news is that they sold MANY kits, turning a nice profit from work that they did not do. I encourage you to avoid these people like the plague they are, and instead use my templates to create your own work of art.

If internet visitors are unable to control themselves, and continue to seek profit based on my works, I will no longer continue to offer these free templates.

Reference:
I used a first generation copy of a Voyager PADD as my reference. All measurements were taken from this padd. Assuming there was about 2% shrink in the resin, the sizing should be fairly accurate to a screen used piece. However, some artistic liberties were taken by me in the creation of my templates. Most notably along the bottom curve of the PADD. On the original, the curve arched upwards on the left hand side, making a non uniform curve. I "idealized" this curve and made it symmetrical. While this does make my version of the prop "inaccurate", I beleive it makes it look more "realistic". My vision of prop making is that I want the item you hold in your hand to appear as if it came from the universe where the story takes place. I am not attempting to replicate the item as held by a particular actor.

I recently re-drew my templates to more accurately reflect the scan linked to above. Before, the main view screen was centered, and the two openings below it were misshapen. This has been corrected. I also corrected the insets on the top plate to more accurately match those on the original prop. I had previously stylized them into hard corners, not the gentle curves that were found on the original prop.

The total thickness of my padd is 3/8". Each layer is 1/8", or .125".

With that said, let's begin!

Materials:

• .125" thick styrene or ABS sheet.
  Get it online at Plastruct. Here are direct links for styrene part # SSS-125 and ABS sheet, part # SSA-125.
• Brushed Aluminim Vinyl, for the "metal" button.
• Strip Styrene

• Elmers Glue, or Rubber Cement. Any kind of low tac, non corrosive adhesive will do.
• Contact cement. I prefer Plastruct cement, or worst case, testors model glue.
• Duco epoxy, or another two part strong epoxy.
• Plasti-Kote grey sandable primer.
• Plasti-Kote 7173 (original) or 1004. Color is up to you.
• Plasti-Kote Gloss Black.
• Plasti-Kote Clear Coat.
• Variety of Sand Papers, from 220 to 1000 grit.
• Dremel tool (optional, but VERY helpful)
• Router attachment for dremel tool. (optional)
• Jewelers files. (optional, but very helpful)
• X-Acto knife, or similar implement.
• Coping Saw.
• Sanding Block.

• eps, pdf, and Adobe Illustrator 7.0 Styrene templates

  All files are zipped. You can use adobe acrobat to read the PDF files. If you don't have adobe acrobat, you can download it here.

Download the zip archive.

Unzip the styrene templates.

Check out this Printing Instructions tutorial for a detailed explanation on printing each file type.

Using elmers glue or a glue stick, glue all template pieces to .125 inch thick styrene.

Use an exacto knife and a straight edge to score and cut the straight edges of the padd parts. Use a coping saw to cut along the curved areas, and a dremel for the inside parts.

Before you attempt to glue the styrene layers, go in with a set of jewelers files and clean up the openings for the display screen and the buttons on the top most layer.

Once you have cleaned up the fine edges of the padd layers, soak the padd parts in warm water to dissolve the elmers and remove the printed templates.

Take some sand paper and a dremel tool and clean up the edges of the padd. Sand the bevel into the edge. This padd appears to have only a very slight bevel. Don't get too excited. You could also use a dremel with the router attachment to get the bevel into place. Note that on the top plate, the inlets on the side of the padd do NOT have the bevel.

Primer each layer with a plasti kote primer. Do not sand the primer.

Then blast the top and bottom panels with a few layers of colored paint. For this padd, use Plasti-Kote 7173 or equivalent. They recently changed their paint forumaltion, so unless you are using old-style 7173, you'll want to use a different color. (I'll figure out the correct paint code shortly) Give the first coat a good wetsanding to smooth it out. Paint the middle panel black.

Next, prepare the three halves for gluing. You'll need to take some sand paper and selectively sand the paint off the areas where the padd pieces will be making contact with each other. You don't need to a ton of glue to make it work, just enough in the right places. I'll leave it up to you to decide where the glue goes and how much. Glue the three halves together using Plastruct cement, or a fast setting epoxy. If you use an epoxy, make sure to spread it thin.

For the graphics, I'll leave it up to you to print them out. Do what you think looks best.