News Archive > Behemoth Trophies
By: John Baez - Producer, The Behemoth
So when I ambled over to Wikipedia.org to get a snappy definition for trophy to start this page, I realized I had come upon one of those entries that just seemed weird...
"A trophy is simply an object designed to be used as an award, usually mounted or manufactured for display. It can take the shape of loving cups, bowls, or mugs (all usually engraved). They are most commonly based on a platform of sturdy cardboard resembling wood, except for the most expensive of trophies. (A loving-cup trophy is a common variety of trophy; it is a cup shape, usually on a pedestal, with two or more handles, and is often made from silver.)"
Well, too bad that no one is getting a loving-cup sitting on a base of cardboard from us. Looks like we have made it into the realm of the most expensive trophies, at least according to this definition. Entries like that just make me wonder what kind of trophies that guy won...and what he had to do to get them.
The trophies started out like our other fun projects here in the office. Which means we threw around ideas of what the trophy would be like and promptly settled on a simple black resin or marble base with our metalized figurine on top. Tape on a tacky brass plaque and we were good to go. We trekked out to an award shop in a forlorn strip mall over by San Diego State University to check out samples. After an hour of trying to convince myself that this could really work, I wanted to abandon the whole trophy project because the bases looked so cheesy and cheap. And cheesy and cheap was definitely not going to look good with our genuinely simulated golden trophies on top...
So we began to build ...
First stop was IMS, one of our favorite suppliers. IMS is giant supermarket for all things metal, from pipe to plate to hinges and fittings. It's where we bought most of the parts for the pod we built last year. I imagine we'll be going there a lot with Comic Con 2007 just around the corner and a new booth design underway.
We decided that we could use the injected molded plate that came with the figurines as a cap for a 3" diameter by 3" tall aluminum tube base. We knew we'd better get a year's supply of bases cut because we didn't want to bother getting more in just a few months. The box of cut pieces was heavy and there were so many...a 152 in all (which should make a lot of people happy). We expected the ends to be rough cut but what we hadn't planned on was how "rustic" the finish on the pipe would be. Printing, gouge marks, dirt, spray paint all made us realize there was a lot of work ahead to make these presentable.
Work began at a friend of mine's shop. When I told him of our project, he offered the use of his "big as a house" CNC mill to clean up the edges. Floyd wrote a simple milling program that would true up each end automatically. It worked like a charm, except it took well over 5 minutes to do each end...so with 152 pieces, times two ends...we'll you get the picture. I'd still be working on truing up the ends if we hadn't gone old school with a simple lathe.
Enter Le Blond. Le Blond is a tank of a lathe with a bed probably five feet long and it is outfitted with the ever popular Regal Servo shift. (Like we know what that means.) It probably weighs more than my car and it has that great simple feel of one heck of a lot of metal designed to do one thing. It's the kind of machine that after a day working on it, you say, "Well, they don't make them like that anymore..." No computer screens, no harddrives, nothing to break and if anything every did, you could probably fix it yourself.
Our process was simple. Reverse chuck the base into the lathe and use the inside of the tube as a grip. Turn the machine on to 658 RPM and slowly bring the knife in to trim off the base. A job that would have taken me 3 days using a CNC machine was finished in just one afternoon by using Le Blond.
Once the ends were trued up, I began to tackle the finish. We brought in a super cheap bench grinder/buffer, but polishing the bases with the grinder buffer turned out to take much longer than we thought. The guys working in the shop, sensing that by helping me they could fill up some of their empty time, decided I should just use the lathe to clean up the finish as well. Floyd made us a pair of cones so the base could be suspended while spinning.
All I needed to do would be to grab a piece of emery cloth and polish away. It took less than two minutes to clean up each base, so within a day I'd had them all prepped and ready for engraving.
Photo etching the base....
At first we thought we could laser engrave the base, but we could not find anyone who had a laser with a spindle in the San Diego area. Once the idea of laser engraving got shot down, we started searching for an alternative. It turns out that no one in San Diego can hand engrave a cylindrical base with a pantograph and if we could find someone it would probably be way over our super cheap budget. Where does everyone get their loving-cups engraved anyway?
Thank goodness Al Gore invented the internet, otherwise we'd all still be living in caves. After a fairly short web search our solution became apparent...use photo etching for the base! We were able to find a company that still makes all the tools we'd need. Since it looks like they had never done any modifications to the design since 50's, we wouldn't have to worry about any complicated technology.
The process is simple and similar to silk screening. Make a transparency of the image you need and cut the polyester film to size.
In a darkroom, expose the film to a UV light. Develop the film in the solution then let the stencil dry.
Here are the first six stencils. Next, tape the stencil to the base. The entire area has to be masked off or the printing head will etch any unexposed areas.
Looks like everything is everything is ready....
Put solution on the etching tool and slowly etch the surface by "painting" across the stencil. Remove the stencil, wash and neutralize the acid.
Unfortunately, the aluminum will oxidize, so we shot all of the bases with a layer of clear coat. Ta Da! We are done and ready to go.
Congratulations to everyone that made it this far and especially those who have competed for these wonderful top leaderboard prizes! Now all you have to do is go play Alien Hominid HD and get your very own.