God Bless This Man Who Put a Turntable in a Millennium Falcon

This article originally appeared on Thump.

All images courtesy of Marco Garza/Picotekdesign

Electronic instrument technician Marco Garza has done more for the world in one blog post than most leaders do for their countries in four years. In the late 90s, Marco bought a vintage Millennium Falcon toy (non nerds: that's a Star Wars thing) and, after it had spent a few years in storage, recognized a pressing problem that nobody yet knew existed: it wasn't also a turntable. Over the course of nine months, he tore apart a Technic 1200 (the variable compression engine of the turntable industry) and melded the two objects into one. The entire project was finally cataloged recently on his fantastic DIY blog, Picotekdesign.

First, he made reinforced "feet" for the soon-to-be object of salvation. If you've ever held one before, you'll know that the pieces inside a boring, regular, non-hyperdrive capable Technic 1200 are rather heavy. If you haven't held one before, well, you learned something today. These "feet" ensured that the toy's brittle, plastic frame could hold the weight of the electrical innards.

Here we can see a few of the turntable's electrical components, as well as the drive shaft, implanted into the toy on aluminum reinforcements. It should be added that Marco measured, cut, and fit this framework by himself using aluminum sourced from Green Guy Recycling.

A top plate was then cut to support the turntable platter. Critically, this was precisely cut to fit the contours of the toy's exterior. According to Marco, the process of creating a plexiglass stencil, preparing the Dremmil tool, and cutting the aluminum took a really, really long time.

With all the components placed and the swinging arm installed, the only thing left to do now is attach the platter.

So how does the finished product look? Awesome, as I'm sure you can all imagine. God bless you, Marco Garza. I am a better man having seen these photos.

View the whole build on Marco's website: Picotekdesign

Ziad Ramley is Han Solo on Twitter: @ZiadRamley

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