FLOPPY DISC RECYCLING

Site was added to slashdot.org, as well as the b3ta newsletter. ended up getting
20,000 visits, which when you factor in all of the graphics makes for about
131,000. ACS, the wonderful people who previously hosted this site felt that this
was too many, and asked me to move it. so here it is. sorry if its down,
but if you're reading this then its obviously not (for the moment).
also, apologies to bonnie at asciipr0n.com if this in any way contributed to her site
going down. never really expected this to be that popular.


After seeing this thread on the boards at on b3ta
which instructed on how to recycle a floppy disc into a mockup of the Starship enterpise, I was intrigued.
The site, asciipr0n has you fold the little tab
into the body, and use the center part that the drive rotates (I grew up with 5"1/4 drives so these new fangled
floppies confuse me). I'm not a trekkie, but i was intruiged. So i tore apart a floppy disc and built one


the enterprise


Then i though, what else can i do? Why not the Bird of Prey. After googling to find out what it looked like,
(like i said, I'm not really a trekkie) i saw the Romulan war bird as well. The Bird of Prey was easy, simple snips
and folding. the warbird was a lot harder, and i had to resort to electrical tape, as duct tape is too fibrous and
and falls apart at really small sizes.
here's the mess I made



bird of prey




warbird



Then i got an idea. If i can do Star Trek, then why not Star Wars? first i made the X wing. total pain in the ass. it requires two tab things, and the cheap metal kept snapping whenever i tried to fold it. finally i found one that was tough
to fold into the lower wing. unfortunately, it was so tough that it was hard to bend. eventually i exhausted my supply
and i had to come up with a new way of making the upper wings. i had already used tape on the warbird, so why
not do it again?


X-wing



it looked a little funky until i built a nosecone for it, and added a cockpit. Of course, i had to build a Tie fighter next.
man was that rough. th idea was pretty simple, tape two discs together and make a tab into the wings. sounds simple right?
yes, and no. the only problem was connecting them. finally, i decided to just use some scraps and tape the whole thing


TIE Fighter



With lots of scrap dataslips left over, i decided to build a Deathstar. It turned out like shite, but oh well.


That's no Moon

with more scraps, I made a borg cube. I hate the borg, cause the one next generation that I did see
was the one where the borg abducted picard when i was maybe ten, and it scared
THE PISS out of me. Looks pretty crappy, huh? Then again, it always reminded me of a car that had
just come out of one of those car crushing things

The Borg Cube

Then i thought, hmm I'm running out of tabs, so where can i go next with this? Why not the fear? It's a good meme
it's never hurt anyone...too badly. besides, its just so damn cool. Historical Note: origins
So i made it. i used the floppy disc cases for the feet, and for the wings i cut up a plastic bottle of Naked Juice. The body was the cap
from said bottle. The heads were a bit tougher, so i used the left over central-metal-disc-dealy pieces from the floppies.
The neck is a piece of wire that i straigtened, off of a notebook i had lying around (I'm sort of a pack-rat, and my room is always messy.
The stomach thing and the faces i drew on with some markers. It stands on its own because i had some foam laying around
from who knows what. so i cut that up and turned it into littl things on the back of the legs. Oh yeah, its held together
with electrical tape and superglue.

ARGGH THE FEAR! THE FEAR! THE FEAR! THE FEAR! etc



How to build an X-Wing
currently, I'm out of metal tabbed floppies (lol), so I'm going to do this with a plastic one
apologies for the pictures, its hard to take pictures of your own hands, and i just got this camera, so im still learning :-p.

its best to use a pair of pliers for the bending, as it gives you a nice clean edge
I also use small scissors i have, as well as some heavy-dty kitchen shears
1)remove the tab. simple enough

2)make the first bend along the base of the tab, so that it aligns with the data reading port part of the floppy
here, its outlined in magenta

3)*Could go before 2, if you were so inclined* snip the small part of the tab to make the cannons

4)cut the wings to make them more X wing like

5)fold them like so
6) trim off the front tabs and you've finished the top two wings
7)Do the same with another tab, but fold the opposite way to make the bottom wings
8)slide one into the other. there should be a track tab in the inside, so they should nest nicely
9)If you dont like the fit, trim off the front end of the top piece
10)you can slit the front end to help it fit better, and then secure with glue
11)its much harder to make the nosecone and cockpit with the plastic pieces, so i use tape here
12)some clever cutting of some scraps, and we've got the nosecone

13)tape and superglue later...

14)roll and tape another scrap into the thruster

15)I added a cockpit and thats that!


Finished Product:










Easy, huh. I used to bulls-eye womp rats in my T-16 back home. It's that easy. The plastic tabs worked much better than i had expected.
I had figured that they were going to break the first time i bent them. turns out, they held up better than some of the
cheap metal ones did. Here are some tips that I came up with:

Good Floppy Brands: TMK, 3M(quite thick and hard to bend, but as a result, very strong and durable

Bad Floppy Brands: Imation(too thin and brittle)

File the edges that you cut: You will cut yourself, no matter how careful you are. I did.

Mark with a sharpie: it writes easly and can be rubbed off, or removed with alcohol. rubbing alcohol that is

Be patient, and have a LOT of floppies on hand. I screw up many times because I wasn't paying attention or rushing

Electrical tape doesn't stick well to metal or to plastic. I'll have to redo some of these soon.



Now check out my bookshelf.




Up next? No idea, any requests?
So far, requests are: Millenium Falcon, Winnebago from spaceballs
and somehow, I want to make one of these fly.

Original idea by Bonnie of www.asciipr0n.com
all of the models but the enterprise are designed and made me, unless someone else did 'em first, in which case
let me know. You want to use them or rip them off? email me. want to make your own? Do it, and tell me. flame/comment/commission offers ;)?
please, no viruses, junkmail, porno, or mailing lists. marriage proposals? that one is debateable
still reading this? sheesh, you must be more bored than I am. laaaalaalaaala
sorry about the crappy layout and pictures, but I'll fix it when i have some spare time
oh yeah, to those people who have been mocking me for doing this
yes i am a nerd (not a trekkie, i dont really like star trek)
but what business is it of yours?
at least i'm doing something better than sitting around all day surfing the web
mocking other people's hard work.
so go complain to your counterstrike clan
and let me make my art in peace
/tirade
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