Knight Rider KITT diorama
Printing KITT
After making a Larson Scanner for my 32mm Cylons on a previous project, I was still intrigued as to how far I could push the idea. Three tiny LEDs in a row were – to be honest – a pain in the butt to solder together.
They looked great, they sold the idea of a Larson Scanner in a tiny cylon helmet, but I still felt they hadn’t fully tested “soldering tiny little components for tabletop miniatures” to the fullest.
What I really fancied doing was making a 7-LED “swooshing display” and sticking it in something bigger…. like a Knight Rider/KITT car!
Searching Thingiverse for Knight Rider “things” returned a disappointing array of results. Most were for “car mods” – neo-pixel clip holders so you can stick your own “swooshing display” on the front of your actual car, or things to glue to the centre console of your dashboard to KITT in your own Ford Fiesta.
Searching for “KITT” returned some better results, but the tabletop sized miniature looked decidedly “lo-fi” with lots of sharp-edged facets; unless this was printed very small it was going to be unsatisfying
It was only by chance that one of the results was listed as “KITT Pontiac Firebird Trans-Am”. I searched for “Pontiac Firebird” and immediately found the model I was looking for!
The model (https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4342622) was perfect! I had a separate chassis and the roof comprised of multiple parts – ideal for adding unnecessary electronics inside, then hiding them behind the multi-part interiors and so on.
The preview picture also included a shot of a tiny Michael Knight, complete with classic red shirt and leather jacket. What a great idea!
Sadly, Michael wasn’t included with this model’s download. But I had ideas for that already….
I’m not taking the blame for this one! 😉
No. Fair enough. But @avernos said no more gold buttons without at least some audio. It got me thinking….
needs moving parts too … and we all know what that means for KITT 😉
https://youtu.be/tGp0B_w6QXA
Are you crazy?! I tried to make the door so it could open and just couldn’t find the space for even the smallest of motors. I managed to find a tiny, tiny stepper motor (about 8mm) but each step is 1/4 turn – so the door would twang from closed to fully open (if the motor was even strong enough to take the weight) in a fraction of a second! Moving parts = motors = big chunky lumps of stuff. Apparently they had to make an entire replica of KITT for super pursuit mode and it only ever activated when… Read more »
eh .. yes 😉
you’re the one with those impossibly tiny leds for Cylons.
You’d think there’d be impossibly tiny stepper motors too 😀
They make mechanical watches with impossibly tiny mechanics, but then I doubt that sort of thing is in the ‘affordable’ range anyways.
Besides … that super pursuit mode was silly.
I have got some impossibly tiny stepper motors (I think they originally came from a camera shutter or something?). They’re about 8mm long. But each “step” is a full quarter turn. And they have almost zero torque, so stall really easily. I tried using one in an R2D2 mini a few years ago, but it really didn’t work very well at all. When I tried to use one to open the KITT car door, the weight of the resin was too much and I’d need about 9v-12v to be able to swing the door open (I’m using a 3.7v rechargeable… Read more »