Laser

This laser has been created using cylinders and a helix. Firstly, the long cylinder was made to form the rough length of the laser. The cylinder had been created so it had multiple faces down the length of it. This allowed me to select some faces and scale them so the two wide sections could be made. To form the tip of the laser, the faces were scaled down on the x and y axes.

In between the two wider sections is a coil. This was created by selecting the 'helix' tool in the 2D shapes panel (same panel as 'splines'). The thickness, number of rotations, width and height were adjusted in the parameters to achieve the desired look. Four thin rods can be faintly seen inside the coil section and are made using more cylinders.

The coil has temporarily been made blue, while the metal parts have had an aluminium finish. The coil and laser will be illuminated later. The metal effect was chosen from the materials panel by clicking the 'standard' button under the grid of spheres and navigating to the appropriate effect.

Although I didn't use a reference plate for this (I couldn't find an image with a workable angle), I did have an image to keep looking at. This can be found at:

http://www.chem.queensu.ca/people/faculty/loock/Goldfinger%20laser.jpg

[Internet] [Accessed 30/01/2011]