One of the most coveted weapons of the Aliens series is the M56 Smart Gun. While most of the gun it’s self is built up on the body of a blank firing MG42 with mostly motorcycle parts, the headset for it is much more of a complex build.
While some of the parts of the head and eyepiece are made with various camera parts and leftovers from other builds, much of it was made with scratch built parts. In fact the main eye cups are different in size between Vasquez and Drake models. The entire thing is built on a Beyerdynamic HM560 microphone headset, and these are very, very hard to find. They were a rare bird when they were new, and even more so nearly ~40 years later. We will be creating a new one of these from 3D printed parts.
The good news is Tronchavigas on Cults3D has made really, really good .stl models of the hand made and hard to find parts. We will cover the printed parts from this set in the second part of this series.
With the original parts collected, a few hours of printing, and a trip to the hardware store, you can make a perfect smart gun headset.
Screen used Drake headset 
Closeup of the inner eyepiece and arm
This in not an easy build, and I have made some adaptations on what was recommended to go with the 3d parts.
You will need to cut, heat and bend some metal using a vice and a torch, you will also need to be comfortable tapping holes in plastic for threading. I also did a mix of resin and FDM printing for these parts, so my assembly process is a little different.
Let’s look over what you will need to get here, and we will cover the printed parts in another blog.
Original Parts-
Here are the original parts you will need to finish this model. In some cases there are 3D printed proxies that can be found if you search in the usual spots.
| The Part | The Prop | |
| Vivitar 2500 hinge blue “ring” You will have one of these in your parts box if you did (or are doing) a motion tracker build. Inserts into the flash connector switch |  |  |
| G1 Scope mount from “Transformers” Megatron Because of the collectability of Transformers, there are reproductions of this as well as .stls to print that can be found on thingverse etc. attaches the eyepiece to the cord, and is the base for the flash connector switch |  |  |
| Pentax 110 auto 18mm Lens standard half turn screw on lens. This will screw right into the printed camera piece. This is the same lens used on the helmet cams, and you may find resin casts or .stl files of this. |  |  |
| Olympus T28 Macro Flash body Removing the cord and filling the holes, this will get screwed onto the camera body and attach the eyepiece assembly. This part is the same on the “twin flash” version, but the connector below is different on that model. |  |  |
| Olympus T28 Macro Flash connector switch The blue ring is inserted into this, and then it’s screwed into the Megatron scope mount. it will then connect to the tongue mount on the flash body. |  |  |
All in all, this is about $150 in parts if you shop around. Aside from the main headset, these can all be found with just a little searching on auction/sales sites.
We will cover all the printed and fabricated parts in the next chapter.
