Also actually including mounting pegs like a 3mm clip on dustup makes these guys doubly amazing perhaps you could find a way to make haywire mount on the back of blurrs head so his bonnet could be split and haywire could fit in there to mimick an engine
Ouch, and I thought the Tommy gun was a tricky enough prospect. Oddly enough, though, the Tommy gun has actually given me an idea as to how it may be possible. The turnaround is pretty much as long as takes to finish a couple of designs, scrounge together the cash for test prints, and wait for them to arrive, so it kinda happens when it happens. I hope to order the next batch in a few days, though, which'll likely consist of two or three models. For this lot, I'm looking at Vantage, Dustup, and probably Doubletime, along with a few other odd parts. I'm going to be testing a standard 3mm clip (as I haven't tested a printed one before), as well as the experimental clip/peg component. For now, I've rigged Dustup with a socket to accept interchangeable handle options, so I can glue in the one that works best when it's decided. I like your thinking on Haywire, and I'm trying to think how it might be implemented. As it stands, there isn't really anywhere to plug a gun in car mode (according my Drift, anyway) aside from either the very small screwhole in the back of his head, or the slot in his neck where the windscreen tabs in robot mode. First thought was to design a mounting block that fits over the head and tabs into that slot in his neck. While writing this post, however, I've been having a play with Salvo and Drift, and found that the halves of Drift's bonnet open up to 20mm at the back end - which is exactly the width of Salvo's torso (along with the rest of these figures). It might be possible to use that, in conjunction with the clips that hold Drift's bonnet together in vehicle mode, to peg him into the bonnet itself. [EDIT] Something like the attached pic. I'm just getting battered with ideas here - more hours in the day, please!
Thanks, all. I've just ordered my next set of prints, which consists of this little lot: Colour-coded here, there's Doubletime in blue, Vantage in black, and Dustup in light grey. I've included one of Despoiler's legs (brass) to test the new joint design, a set of my PCC combiner ports for kitbashing purposes, and, inspired by NemesisSpringer, a test bonnet mount for the Drift/Blurr mould. Which is this fella. The idea is that if you open up the bonnet halves in vehicle mode, this nestles between them (kinda like the picture in my previous post), with the tabs on the back slotting between the clips that normally hold the bonnet halves together. In this case I've put in a 5mm hole so I can mount guns on the slat when it's in place. If it works, I'll incorporate the design into Mayhem (my Haywire expy), actually making it part of his back. Now I've just got to wait for them to be printed and hope they work out properly.
Brilliant! Sorry for ploughing you with ideas chap, just very interesting how you are able to make such things, and the quality looks HasTak!
Nice job, bro. I have a robot i printed a while back too, too bad it's tolerances were non existent. May i ask, how do you create ball joints, and if you wouldn't mind sharing the tolerances you use? I use Sketchup which is very unfriendly to curved objects (it's possible to make a ball joint, but the work involved is painstakingly long), so i'm wondering what you use. Nice job on Salvo, btw. The paint loks a little thick, but i blame WS&F for the final detail. My only advice would be to fill the material next time. You can do that with regular putty, face by face till all faces are covered. Also, Testors MM Enamels make a smooth surface on WS&F, if that helps.
Dude that's awesome, can't wait to see the others, probably be picking them all up, I have a weakness for targetmasters
Thanks, everyone. Glad they're being dug. Thanks. Matter of fact, I rarely include any clearance in my balljoints; my first prints had 0.1mm clearance around the balls, and they were still floppy. For the majority of them, I use a 3mm diameter shaft topped with a 4mm diameter ball, and the socket is also a 4mm sphere subtracted from the surrounding shape. However, I do allow 0.1mm clearance around the shaft; if the shaft is 3mm diameter, for instance, the channel around it will be 3.2mm. I've learned (partially through studying my actual TF's balljoints) to allow, in the side you're going to push the ball into, a circular hole with the same diameter as the ball itself, and then two small nubs inside the entrance, which hold the ball in once it's been pushed past them. I've included a couple of pics below with the dimensions I generally use (which I alter if I specifically need larger or smaller sockets), but I've found it a good rule of thumb. Also, allow a small slot in the opposite side to the entry point, which allows air to be pushed out of the socket when the ball is snapped in. If you're not quite sure what I mean by that, have a look at any balljoint on your TFs, and that should help explain it. Hope that helps, but I'll be happy to try and clarify it further if you feel you need it. To be honest, the paint's probably not too thick, so much as too thin, if I planned to completely smooth the surface of the plastic. Further, thicker coats would continue to smooth out the grain. As I've said, I personally like the subtle texture that still remains on the figure (which, bear in mind, is much smaller than the large photos, so the texture is proportionally reduced). I must admit, I've never used enamels on my prints yet, and not sure I'd even considered it. I don't think Testors' paints are easily available round here, but I do have some Humbrol ones around; I'll have to give them a go on a couple of scrap pieces and see how they go. Thanks for the tip. Heya, Ratty! Good to see you here. Well, Vantage and Doubletime are in the queue to be printed now, so hopefully you won't have to wait too long till they're released (as long as they work as I hope ). And Despoiler's got a leg in the print too (which is the part that's given me the most trouble), so if those new joints work out, then he won't be far behind! The rest? That assumes there's going to be a set number; the way I'm going, I'm not going to be running out of ideas anytime soon...
this is really exciting stuff! I'll be picking one of those up for sure. got some targetmasters on deck in need of some partners. this RULES!
WOW thats all i can say Here is an idea would it be possible once all 3 homage targetmasters are done to seperate there parts into two sets so the buyer could print of the black parts in black and the white ones in white so all people had to paint was the faces
Thanks, guys. I suppose I could... though those Targetmasters were black and grey, not black and white. Alumide (WSF with aluminium dust mixed in) would be an ideal colour, but I can't release them in that material due to wall-thickness constraints. And I'll be honest, in my opinion even if you get the black-dyed WSF, it's still worth touching it up with some black paint and varnish; check out this post to see what I mean... I'll have a ponder on this; there wouldn't be any extra hardship for me to release them like that; I'd just have to create an extra couple of files and rearrange the parts in them. It'll be a little while before this happens, anyway. While Dustup's theoretically done (depending on how the print turns out), and Mayhem's fairly close (the 'bot's basically designed, but I'm waiting to see how the bonnet-mount works out before I call him done and test-print him), I haven't even started on... whatever Recoil will be called... aside from a few sketches.
Why thanks for the free plug to my stuff, Ramrider. Anyways, i think it would actually be good, just for future, to design for alumide, as it is the material SW recommends for engineering-related stuff, of which toys are, so it would make sense to use that. Granted, i've never ordered in it before, so i don't know it first hand, but i think it may be worthwhile to see what it can and can't do. Oh, and i forget if i've asked this before, but what program so you use again? I use sketchup, because the interface to me is fantastic (features not so much, but ruby plugins help), but i'm curious as to what a professional uses.
Pleasure, Treads. I'd like to design for alumide, but the minimum wall-thickness for using it is 1.5mm. That's twice the thickness of WSF's minimum, and I often wind up pushing the limits as it is! When you're designing fairly intricate moving parts at such a small scale, there's not always a lot of room for error. Plus I've heard that alumide doesn't quite have the same strength and flexibility as WSF, and until I've been able to test the extent of that, I'm reluctant to recommend it. I haven't been a professional for a few years, but I use an old copy of AutoCAD that I've still got from when I was. I've tried SketchUp, and like the interface, but I don't think it works for closely-fitting moving parts; unless I've been doin it rong, it tends to automatically merge any shapes that touch, which I'd need it not to. I am just starting to experiment a bit with trueSpace, which looks to have a lot of potential, but I haven't got my head round the interface yet.
