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Imperial Probe Droid
Hasbro Black Series 1/12 scale
This is the Hasbro Black Series Imperial Probe Droid toy. I don't typically do toys, but no models, other than expensive studio scale kits, have been produced of the Probe Droid. However, the Black Series by Hasbro is extremely detailed and very nice. I have half a dozen other Black Series figures which I plan on doing repaints on at some point.
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So here is the Probe Droid out of the box.
Again, a very nicely detailed toy and pretty accurate to scale. The only thing out of scale would be the antenna on the top. They're to thick and they should be thin with a larger section on top. You can see the scale of the antenna on the screen capture to the right.
So the first thing was to take the toy apart and see how it all fit together and what I could accomplish.
My first job to tackle is the antenna. I'm going to use some .5mm brass rod I have for the antenna, and 1mm tubing for the little top section. You can see the scale difference here. My little 1mm top is smaller than the toy antenna.
I then drilled out 2 holes in the top of the plastic square piece holding the antenna. This piece is necessary, as it enables the antenna to rise and retract.
And the antenna were then painted black.
I knew I wanted to light the one eye of the Probe Droid. So I removed the one eye section in question and drilled out the center to accommodate a 3mm warm white LED. It fits just perfectly.
I then repainted all of the eyes with gloss black and repainted the body and arms with a gray primer. I also cut out a section on the underside of the head to allow some rotation. It'll do about 180 degrees of rotating with the wires from the LED inside.
It was then just a matter of doing some black wash and then some weathering. For the weathering, I used Tamiya pastels. Orange Rust, Oil Stain and Sand.
I also needed a way to mount it to my custom base to run wires through for powering the LEDs. The toy came with a clear plastic rod, but had mounts on either end for the toy and the toy's base.
So I cut the ends from the clear rod from the toy, cut a 1/4 aluminum tube to the proper length I wanted, drilled out the 2 ends from the toy rod, and then attached them to my aluminum tubing.
I then moved on to my base. I'm using a 4" round plastic jewelry container as my base, foam blocks which I will shape, and a few pieces of ready made plaster rocks.
After mounting my foam and rocks to the plastic container, I then used hot glue all around to make a more smooth and organic structure. I also painted the plastic base black.
Before moving on any further with the base, I really needed to do my electronics first, as it would be more difficult with a finished top of the base. So I cut out some holes on the back side for USB power, a power button, and a switch to go between 9v battery power or USB power.
Being used in the base (starting lower left and going clockwise) is a 22mm 2Watt .5ohm speaker, then a DFPlayer, which plays MP3 files. Next is a momentary button to activate sound fx, then a switch for turning power on and off, a USB power board if wanting to plug in, another switch to go between USB power and a 9v battery, then a buck converter, to convert the 9v battery power down to 5v to power the DFplayer. And finally a 9v battery.
With the electronics now all done and out of the way I finally move on to finishing up the top of the base. I wasn't completely happy with how all of the hot glue had melted, so I went and added in putty in various areas, then sanded it down smooth. I'm looking for a fresh fallen snow type of look here.
And finally, with the shape I want, I smeared Elmer's glue all over the foam, hot glue and putty areas, leaving my plaster rocks exposed. Then, liberally sprinkled AK Snow Microballoons all over the wet Elmer's glue, allowing it to dry and then shake off any loose left over snow. I then ran my wires from the Probe Droid down through the rod and soldered them to the appropriate electronics.
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