by Jerry Oliver

I designed this battlestar to be more of a battleship and less of an aircraft carrier. I thought that the new Battlestar Galactica needed more big guns. So I beefed up the fire power to 85 turret and 180 nuclear missiles hatches. There are 82 fighter launch tubes.

Three years ago, I was messing around with a 3D modelling program called Solidworks, trying to make complicated shapes. The first shape that I came up with looked much like the pods of the new Galactica. Every day at lunch I would add a little more. Six months later I had a finished 3-D model that had a file size that would almost kill my computer. For a while nothing happened, then I got the itch to build it. During the time I finished the 3-D model and started construction, the Company I worked for got a laser cutter. That got gears in my brain turning. I then took the 3-D model and cut it into sections, transferring it to AutoCAD format and then I cut the parts out on the laser cutter. The body, the "Legs" and the engine block were the easiest to make. The head gave me some problems; I ended up making two and scrapping the first one. The model's hull is made of Acrylic Sheet that was in the scrap bin, the same goes for the styrene.

For the pods and the engines I grew them in the Stereo Lithography machine that my company owns. We had a tank of bad resin that was going to be sent back so I had a chance of getting these parts grown. The guy who was in charge of the SLA told me I had two hours to get something ready if I wanted something to grow over night, because he was cleaning out the resin tank the next day. I had the parts ready in 20 minutes.

For the most part the modelling was easy, the only hard part of it all was getting it done. Once summer was here I would forget about it and it would sit collecting dust. It is a good thing this contest came along or it would still be collecting dust.

Image: Starsting point (top)

Image: Starting point (side)

Image: Top/front view

Image: Pheonix

Image: Top/rear

Image: Left/rear

Image: Underneath

Image: Detail