Starlost Door Lock and Key

thingiverse

You know that Saturday afternoon as a kid when you are bored and you run across a sci-fi show you've never seen before but sounds incredible? Then you actually watched it and saw what may be the worst produced, acted and written shows of all time. No wonder Harlan Ellison ran away screaming from this botched show. As you might notice, I have a love/hate relationship with The Starlost. Still, for some reason their little door lock thing was always kinda cool and as I haven't found one here that I like, I fired up FreeCAD to create this version. I don't guarantee it is a perfect match in size to the one in the show. I scanned through a few episodes and looked at the few pics there are of this mechanism on the net and eyeballed this version into existence. As uploaded, the base hex plate is about 5.25" across to give you some sense of scale. From the pic I've included from the show, it seems bigger than that but I didn't want a wall clock. If you want smaller/bigger you can probably scale everything but I haven't tried it yet so let me know if you run into trouble doing so. The one thing most existing models seem to be missing is the funky characters on the keys. I looked around and found a font that looks just like what they used (basically an old computer font like the one used at the bottom of checks, ...) As I hate painting (translation: I *suck* at painting), I applied the various symbols that looked right as a raised surface on the top of the buttons. The goal was to do a mid-print filament swap so I could print the button body in one color and have the text on top be black. After a couple of failed attempts (black wouldn't grab onto the top of the button and just swirled around the hot end), I gave up on the filament change and just painted the top of the raised text in black. I'm sure there's a way to make it work but I'm still learning so.... It's still easier IMHO to paint the raised edge than an inset one or trying to wing it by drawing by hand on a flat button top. I've also included a button with no text both to use as the red unmarked button on the device and if you want blank buttons or some other markings than the originals. I really just winged it on the "key" that they put in to activate the door lock. After going blind trying to see the key (it looked like a micro cassette tape in some eps) I've determined it's clear, black, gray or any other color known to man lol. In other words, I couldn't see it in the old muddy prints of The Starlost so I just made it a simple "card" that slides in the slot with some text on it for fun. If anyone has a better pic of this or more details about it, please share them and I'll improve the key. The buttons are hollowed out in case someone wants to put LEDs in and animate it as it works in the shows. I need to look at hollowing out the back of it to provide access to the button holes and provide an area for the battery/control circuit for lights but someone could do some creative drilling on this version and get it going. Maybe also add a place for switch behind the key slot to trigger the light animation when the key is inserted. Definitely a work in progress but thought I'd share it since it came out pretty well on my prints. I can't imagine there are that many Starlost fans out there willing to pay for one of these but please don't sell this work. It's not that hard to make your own and sell it if that's what you want to do.