Trimaxion Drone Ship

December 31, 2022

Trimaxion Drone Ship

As a kid in the '80s I used to love watching the Flight of the Navigator movie. As many kids, I wished that I could be part of a similar adventure. The special effects were new for the time and I loved the overall simplicity of the ship and it's mission. I especially loved the Trimaxion Drone Ship from the planet Phaelon.

This project started in the Xmass break of 2021. I wanted a quick project that did not required to be painted and I though that I could just download a model buy a silver filament and 3D print it. While surfing for models, there was always something I did not like in the one I found, so I modelled it myself.

During the modeling of the ship, I was trying to figure out the ship's dimensions based on a multitude of pictures/information I found on the web, because I wanted to have the ship at a 1:24 scale (playmobil size) and to be able to model the inside. Since in the movie, the chair, 1st class engines and controllers all came from the floor, I originally wanted to make a small push mechanisms where you push the items and they pop out of the floor. Once the ship hull was modelled-ish, I started to work on the inside of the ship and I came to a quick realisation, the movie sized ship was too small. The inside of the ship did not fit inside of the ship hull.

So either I invent space time manipulation so that the inside is bigger than the outside or I just size it bigger by 20%. This also means that I do not have space to make pop out items. I'll just accept that in the movie the Phaelons have space time manipulation technologies... after all, the Phaelon's ship can travel in time...

I started to get all my reference images from the web, but then decided I needed a better source. The movie IP belongs to Disney, so under the guise of giving a Xmass present to my kids, I decided to get a 1 year subscription to Disney Plus. Now with a better source, I just watch, pause and take screen shots by watching the movie a gazillion times. But my kids were happy to have the channel.

With a gazillion screen shots I started to model the detailed interior in a manor where I was able to print the shell of the ship and then print individual section and glue them in. That way all of the inside piece were printed flat and had the same look.

Since I could not make pop out mechanisms I built the engines, chair and controllers in two variations; in floor and out of floor. As for Max, I added a rail system to the ceiling, walls and floor where Max can be moved to. The head of max was made bigger and rounder a bit like playmobile's heads. Max' head was also hollowed to be able to add in a marble to simulates the patterns in Max' eye. That also implied that I looked at all the marbles I had to find what I wanted.

On multiple surfaces of the inside of the ship there seems like there is some kind of writing. My guess is that it's signages/ descriptions of what the system are or instructions. I had fun putting in some text. As an example on the floor, on the circle near the entrance I added the following text : Phaelon Industries Power Core System and Exit every ship needs an exit sign to follow health and hazard rules... The font I used to mimic the text was Modern Cybertronic.

I originally did not want to have to paint the ship, but after printing the exterior shell, I was not happy with the look. This was mostly due to having to print the top and bottom sections in two different parts each and on one of the bottom halves, I had a layer shift issue. Not liking the gap lines once glues together, I decide to fill the gap and sand a lot. Then the usual priming and sanding a few times. I then spray painted the outside of the ship with a mirror paint that takes way to long to dry.

For this project I also upgraded my printer with the

Multi Material Upgrade 2S (MMU2S). This allowed me to print pieces with different filaments in the same print. The filament could be of different material or different color. I used this option to print the engines with both a silver and a transparent PLA. This allowed light to pass through the transparent sections. I did it that way because I decided to add LEDs inside of the engine and the ceiling. The LED and electronic parts for the circuits I got were from Evan Design.

Playability wise, there's a door that can be removed, there's stairs, there's the switchable floor pieces and there's 2 hidden panels on each side of the ship. One contains the aliens containment section, and the other a shelving system. I wanted to print all the aliens from the containment system, but never did them.

To finish everything I created a simple model of the Puckmarin.

Here are some additional picture/videos.