(*AKA The Matter-Antimatter Reactor-Inspired Hydraulically-Cooled, Quantum-Magnetohydrodynamically-Filtered, Matter Combustion/Vaporization Device)



Having reached the point where throwing up a blog to share details and embarrassing stories is less effort than how often I’ve found myself repeating them IRL lately, I’ve done just that with regards to my recently (re-)finished personal smoking device based on the Enterprise D’s warp core reactor. You know, the big blue glowing thing in the middle of “Main Engineering” on Star Track.

I actually finished the Mk. 1 as it currently is a couple of years ago, after an embarrassingly long, inconsistent, three-quarter-assed, “development time.” At the time I had a nitrous oxide cracker installed in the base (for making space whipped cream) and a crazy notion of tearing the Mk. 1 apart, adding a bunch of pneumatic tubing and valves, and making that cracker functional. After the Mk. 1 sat in pieces for a few years while a long journey of trial and error led me to admitting that a built-in functional nitrous cracker wasn’t going to happen.

When I was done putting it all back together (while also making a few improvements I’ve thought up over the intervening years where I could) and talking about it and using it more than a few people have asked me about it (and wanted one themselves) so, well, this blog-thing.

After I find the laptop containing all of my old pictures I’ll do a post going over the details of it’s original construction. But in the meantime, in it’s core is an acrylic “water pipe,” and, *sigh*, I guess now is as good a time to go over this as any; but Utah (where I live) seems to have weird rules concerning the use of the “B” word (rhymes with “song”) in head shops. I don’t know if this weird quirk is exclusive to Utah, or a national thing, but I do know that as I’m planning on making a handful of these for commission and that I also don’t want to get “Tommy Chong-ed” I’d better be careful, for now.

But anyway, at the base of the, *sigh* water pipe, is a solid plastic base containing the power source (4 AA batteries) and the analog control circuitry. From that base there are a bunch wires going to the central Matter/Anti-Matter chamber and each of the Matter/Antimatter containment rings.

The central Matter/Antimatter reaction area itself is where the water pipe’s stem reaches the outside, glows white from within, and has two red-glowing plasma conduits sticking out at a slight angle towards the back. Each of the “plasma conduits” has a control for the light patterns; the “starboard” conduit housing a ring pulse speed control potentiometer dial (for bringing the pulse pattern up to “warp 10” speeds, also handy for tricking obnoxious children to leave your ship to fuck off with some magical, intergalactic drifter so you can finally put the smoove on your fine-ass CMO) the “port” conduit housing the on/off switch.

I was going to do a demonstration video showing this all off but I don’t know that my fragile ego can handle the insightful and undoubtedly correct criticisms of a vast horde of successful, youtube-commenting, type-A winners; so until I work up the courage or blood chemistry to do th-nah, you know what? There’s not a whole lot I could go over in such a video that I haven’t already covered in the videos I made before discovering the convenience of weblog-no. Nope. Not going to use that word. Anyway, the first being from when I was showing off progress made after finally finished the control circuitry, all ten rings, and was working on the Matter/Anti-matter intermix chamber, the second one is a short clip of the thing sitting there doing it’s thing at normal speed before I drilled the hole for the bowl/stem (in which I rudely neglected to turn down my music, sorry about that,) and a demonstration filmed with my friend Nick after having completed it for the first time.

I actually had quite a bit of fun working on this. I’d put on an audiobook and just kind of zone out while losing myself in expensive trial-and-error, attempting to figure out what I WOULD HAVE remembered from high school electronics class were I not busy with blowing up capacitors or doodling, so I didn’t automatically decline to agree to start making another one when asked. Nor the second time it happened.

Building the Mk. IIs will also give me a chance to see to some minor flaws that continue to bug me about the prototype; the Mk. IIs will feature a plastic spine covering up the mess of wires in the back, an on-off switch that actually glows like it’s supposed to (all five of the ones I received from an electronics supplier who shall remain nameless {nah, JK, it was Mouser} failed to light up but still worked as a switch so I figured I’d just leave the current one in as a placeholder until it was too late to go back and replace,) less obviously hand-made plasma channels (3D printing wasn’t really a thing yet back then,) redundant circuit housing, more efficient wiring, a more easily-accessible battery case, and stronger rings. In fact, making the rings is probably the most involved, frustrating part of the process, and in putting the Mk. I together a second time I developed a better way of making them and replaced three of the original rings that kept splitting open at the back with new ones that are much, MUCH sturdier.

So stay tuned for updates on that I guess, if you want, and that forthcoming post featuring lame stories and details no healthy person should care about as soon as I find that laptop with those old pictures. For information regarding commissioning a Mk. II check dis shit out or to send an email that might take me a while to reply to (I’m one of those people, sorry) you can send that to acemcstud@gmail.com

Qapla’!