Boomshield Pendant, by Dale Harvey

For my first project of the year, I wanted to make a Boomshield to go along with my Locust Theron Guard Cosplay.  That build is going to be out of EVA foam, but of course I need to have a few templates created in AutoCAD.

Once this was done, I liked my current design and wanted to see if I could quickly turn it into a 3D design and make a cool necklace that my wife or I could wear if we wanted.

The 2D to 3D conversion wasn’t that difficult since I work with AutoCAD every day, and once I scaled the finished 3D model down to something a bit more wearable, I exported my work off to Shapeways. Within a week, I had the awesome first prototype sitting in my hot little hands.

It wasn’t until I actually got the model in my hands that I cooked up the plan to drill out a few holes and see if I could wire the finished product up with a few LEDs.

Over the course of the last two nights I got to prime, and paint the white puck with its base colors. Using a sponge and paper towels, I added a bit of texture to the drying paint.  As the paint was drying, I cut four small pieces of wire and twisted them together in pairs and then went about attaching them to a coin battery holder and the LED lights that they would power.  Granted, putting a resistor on the wires would have been a good idea, but I decided to just go with the straight circuit as space was at a premium on the back of the pendant.

After a few applications of hot glue to hold the wires down and to keep the post of the LEDs from shorting each other out, we had our final finished necklace.

This is a base prototype and as always I learned a ton from making it! To make it nice and neat I was going to put I nice cap on the back to hide all the wires and such, but the Locust are inventive by nature, so I felt that leaving the wiring exposed on the back was a better choice.

Thanks for taking a look!