Sammus Aran Arm Cannon

7/22/18 Addendum at bottom: Josh has provided me with some process shots with the light in action.

A few months ago, my buddy Josh approached me with a print job: Sammus Aran’s Arm Cannon from the NES classic game Metroid. I didn’t really like the file he found, but I liked the subject, so I printed it out.  But that wasn’t the end, you see, because there’s a story here.

A young woman and musician [Sammus] had her car broken into and her performance arm cannon was destroyed. Josh swore that he would make a successor worthy of song. He enlisted the help of me and my trusty TAZ5, Starfighter, and we sallied forth…

Printing the first parts

 

End cylinder and muzzle

 

The first layer was almost all buildup

 

Whoops! ran out of filament. Dang!

 

Much Better

 

Elbow Inlet

 

Fender or something. The printer artifacting looks almost like a wood grain here.

 

The “wood grain” is a bit more apparent here

 

One of two pods. I really didn’t like how this turned out so I reprinted it…

 

…and ruptured the film on the bed . I replaced it and continued

 

Starting anew on the side pod pieces with a different orientation

 

The artifacting on the top as a result of the orientatation. It sorta looks like a vent to me. I like it. I’m going with it. I had to keep this consistent, so I chose the more diagonal grain, and mirrored that on the other side

Another part that’s mostly buildup for the first layer :/

 

Some of the finished pieces

 

At this point Josh also picked up a super bright lantern at the hardware store to act as the reactor light. I ran the switch on the light out to an external limit switch mounted as a trigger on the grip inside the arm tube. A press of the switch closes the circuit with a satisfying click, and the super bright LEDs blast out photons out the front.

 

Josh smoothing out the imperfections with Plastic Wood. It’s like bondo but not frustrating bondo death!

 

The finished surface

 

Another angle

 

Priming

 

Priming

 

All painted up – sans muzzle

 

Josh found a beautiful tool case to ship/house the cannon in – Then he added foam and found some brilliant NES controller fabric to line it with

 

Unfortunately, I didn’t get any shots with the light-up effect. There is a trigger inside the cannon on a grip. When pressed, it lights up a super-bright LED array behind an amber filter.

Added shots of the light in action:

The light josh picked up from the local home despot. I didn’t get any process shots of hacking the puck light (I plumbed a limit switch out of the body to  trigger mount on the grip). Here we are testing the light mid-build.

Light off,

Light on

Fit testing

Testing the light. I love that you can hear the limit switch.

Thanks for reading 🤖