Night Vision Goggles

[DrewSmith007]

Just thought I would start a thread with the progress of this. I thought about doing it over at RPF, but there's too much negativity towards them over there. Anyway, here's the modeling i've done so far. It's got alot of freeflowing curves that I can't really do until I get home and get this stuff into my real 3d cad software, but it's a start. Anyone point out any mistakes? First off, I'll call out a few:

1: No ribs on the yellow part around the lenses. Those will be added later.
2: The inner lens is much smaller than the outer lens. This is a problem I'm having making the geometries come out right. Ideas?
3: No green part at all. This will be much easier in my other software, so that will wait.

This is really mostly to get the shape and sizes down somewhat. I'll probably redo the whole thing from scratch, or at least the original sketches.

Let me know what you think.

[Cyrix9445]

i would LOVE to see these made. I would totally be on this right now if I could find the exact lenses.

[cpltony]

As you may have seen on the RPF I've been researching the lenses and not having much luck sadly.
I'm on the opinion of fabricating them now.

These look good, I'd be in for a set or two if they're built.

[DrewSmith007]

Yeah, I gave up on the lenses too. I'm going to make them. I should have a 4th axis milling machine up and running my mid-March, if I don't get sent out on more product testing. It looks like I'll be back in OK this thursday evening, and I'll be starting to make the CNC conversion parts friday afternoon.

What are everyones feelings on screen accurate vs. looks good?

By that I mean, the screen used ones look sloppy and asymetrical. The sockethead cap screws that appear to hold the lens unit to the head unit aren't even close to symetrical, and the part of the lens unit that wraps around the red led is pretty bad too.

I'm thinking, I'll do my best mockup and make it symetrical. I've never been a fan of screen accuracy over imagined piece. And by that I mean, I would rather have a replica of the fictional part that looks like it would be the real thing, vs. something exactly like the screen used piece that looks good on initial viewing but doesn't hold up under scrutiny. If that made sense.

[cpltony]

Drew, I say no one else as built a set yet (all though some are close) so go with what you want.

Personally screen accuracy is what most people want, but I bet good money if you didn't say anything about the symetry being off on screen no one would know.

Let me know how I can help.

[Bossk]

There's a set of cheap IR googles sold at Toys R Us. It would be great if these could be modified to look like JP ones, so you could actually have functional ones. I'd be interested in a set of these too, working or not, if you go into production.

[DrewSmith007]

I'll check my local toysrus tomorrow and see what I can find. That's an awesome idea! Plus, I can add IR led's in the rotating rings between the green ones to use as illuminators. I had planned on trying to make them binoculars, but this is a much better idea!

[DrewSmith007]

Didn't make it to toys r us, but I'll try either tomorrow or friday. Anyway, here's some progress on the goggles. I've still got to do the part where the switch it, it's giving me a bit of trouble. The green helmet part and gray in-between part havn't even been started yet. I also havn't started on the lens modules because I want to wait for the toy night vision idea to pan out, or not... If you see anything inaccurate, please let me know.

[DrewSmith007]

Just got the goggles from toys r us taken apart, and it looks like it will be possible to integrate them into the JP NVG's.

[cpltony]

Can you post a link or photo's from the TRU model?
I may need to go shopping this weekend