Scanner

The Scanner was a last minute inspiration for Scotts Halloween Effects. It really has only three main parts. There is a 3" blue cold cathode sticking through the center of a 3"x4" reflector. The whole assembly scans back and forth on a 12v motor drive I got through McMaster-Carr. The clever part of the design is the reversing mechanism. On the shaft collar there is a U shaped piece of brass. As the scanner sweeps back and forth between the limits, the tip of the U hits a toggle switch which reverses the travel direction back to the other limit. It sweeps just fast enough, makes a great noise and lights up beautifully. To protect the cold cathode tube and clean up the wiring to the tip, I used a piece of clear heat shrink and spread out the wires out of a stripped 16 gauge multi conductor wire. If you look closely you can see the wires going up the bottom of the heat shrink tube. All of the guts are hidden by an Altoids box (Cinnamon I think) and a few pieces of PVC cut just right on the band saw and it's all sprayed silver. Up in the corner it's really a cool little effect that looks like a pretty legitimate scanner as far as Si-Fi goes.

Here are a couple of quazi-great movies of the gizmo in motion.