Materials for Cheap Satellite Antenna Dishes?

[Mako]

I know there are some that are professionally made, and available in metal, but wanted to know if there are some other, common, plastic or other materials to make these from, since I don't want to place an international order right now, just for those.

Could use some in 15mm, and 25mm - 32mm scales.

Looking for some shallow, round dishes, about 18mm - 36mm across for most of them.  Probably could use a largish, 2" - 3" across one as well.

Will also consider other shapes too, e.g., hexagonal/octagonal, rectangular, rounded corner/rectangular, etc..

Anyone producing these in the USA, and/or on Shapeways (admit to not having looked on the latter, yet).

Sci-Fi looking is a bonus.

Thoughts, and/or pics to share?

[YPU]

well if they aren't on Shapeways that could easily be fixed.

[Johnnytodd]

Ping-Pong ball + razor knife + sandpaper -or- green stuff pressed around a ball form in size of your choice.

[FramFramson]

Convert some of the lego ones? Lots of sites sell individual lego bits.

[Mako]

Thanks for the replies, and ideas.

A Ping-Pong ball sounds like just the ticket, though cutting them cleanly, and/or smoothing the edges might be a challenge.

I thought of another idea while driving around.  Perhaps just using some sheet styrene cut to shape, and then softening with a hair dryer in a measuring spoon, or regular spoon, depending upon the final desired shape.  I suspect that just might work.

Boiling the styrene just might work too, though I'm not sure if that will get it hot enough to work.

Hmmm..........may have to do a bit of experimenting, or check out some YouTube videos. 

I know the hair dryer trick will work, assuming the little one I have gets hot enough to do the job. 

[6mmfan]

Plastic spoons - they were popular back in Rogue trader days of 40K

[Connectamabob]

A Ping-Pong ball sounds like just the ticket, though cutting them cleanly, and/or smoothing the edges might be a challenge.

I've done this before. You need a circle cutter and a sanding block. Poke a wee tiny hole for the circle cutter needle, and scribe a circle repeatedly using light pressure. Once it's engraved deep enough, press the center of the circle with your finger tip 'till it pops concave. If your scribing was deep enough, this will snap the dish free from the ball. Pop the dish back to it's original shape, place it edge-down on the sanding block, and rub it around to clean/true up the edges.

[DS615]

The bottom of drink bottles often have some great shapes for this sort of thing.
Water bottles, juice, soda, etc.

[MartinR]

As above, I've been using old bits of plastic packaging for this sort of thing. Vitamin bottles in particular seem to come in all sort of useful shapes.