The Mars Warlord Titan Project

[fiore hellheart]

Ahh, progress. I've noticeable stumbled somewhat. In the past couple of weeks I've been sent my vacation work for uni when I begin, so that's been taking up some of my time. It's not easy starting a 1000 page maths book, I also want to try to read through at least volume 1 of the feynman lectures on physics which will also soak up a lot of time. All this means my education is taking precedent over my hobby again, but it's necessary for me to do well. I'm not going to stop completely, not at the hobby at least. The titan is going to remain somewhat untouched for a while now. I've largely lost my motiviation to work on it for extended amounts of time, so I'm going to start another project that I've always wanted to work on. A spacehulk board inspired by this fantastic one that's been in my inspirations links for years. http://spacehulk.beckerf.de/

The hope is that I'll be able to work a small amount on this and wait until I feel motivated to do another rush on the titan, which I expect when I come back from uni around christmas. For now I'm just experiencing shiny model syndrome and will probably swap back to wanting to work on the titan soon, but until then I'm doing a half height version of the spacehulk in the link. Whilst I plan to include different wall styles I am going to do a very similar hulk but with a different plan for making the parts. I'm going to make a mock up in paper to test sizes first, but once that's figured I'll make the masters and cast copies in resin, then from those I'll make corridor moulds and cast into those with plaster to save on cost. I'll update if I get any progress done but thought it was time I at least posted to say what's going on with the titan and my lack of progress.

[blameless]

Well I am Gutted... I will wait impatiently for you to get stuck back in on this project. Your work here is stunning and I was inspired by this project. soooo gutted

[scotticus2]

Any progress with this or have you hit a block like what I did with daisy my warhound?

[G.Hawke]

Any progress with this or have you hit a block like what I did with daisy my warhound?

thank you for the thread necromany, i was expecting to see some awesome sauce update on this log, but alas no.

-hawke

[The_Blackadder]

I thought I subscribed to this thread..............

Anyway how can you cast the pieces and be sure the size is correct?

How goes the progress on this Warlord?

My first introduction to Richard Feynman was his proposal that the reason all electrons are alike is because they are all the same electron i.e. one particle tunneling back and forth thru time to be everywhere in the Universe at once. It's certainly more economical than the infinite worlds theory. Besides he had a great sense of humor; compared to him 'Blackadder' seems like 'Charley Chaplin.'

[fiore hellheart]

Hey, nice timing.

I just got back from my second term at uni, so was just about to start working on it again over the next 4 or 5 weeks. I didn't really have much time at Christmas because of other commitments such as holidays and a job. This break however I've decided I can do without the job and so have much more free time. Even though I've only been back a couple of days I managed to completely rebuild the front shin armour plate. 5 months was a long time to go without anything so it was the first thing I did when I got back. I found that even though I had the shape I wanted with the filler version, it took way too long to complete, and I wasn't sure about the finish on the pieces when it was complete either. It's also let me learn that the way I was building parts took much longer than necessary. I tended to try and make things perfect from the start, instead of making them good and perfecting them later with sanding, and putty fillers ect. which is much speedier.

I'm definitely a great admirer of feynman. As you say, some of the most interesting things about him are nothing to do with physics. The books like 'surely you're joking' are some of my favorite reads, and very funny. His physics was amazing though, so it'll be a couple of years until I start to hope of understanding the simple stuff :P

I will get back later today with a few images of the progress and a few more words about the next steps along.

[fiore hellheart]

So, this post is a long time coming, but better late than never.

I've been quite busy of the past 5 months, with two terms of uni and Christmas so didn't get a chance to do any work on the titan like I had planned to. This break is different and I have 4 or 5 weeks in which to work as much on the titan as I can before I head back to uni. Later on I'll need to start doing uni preparation work but for at least the next couple of weeks, I'm fairly free to do as much as I can physically manage.

I think I'll have a quick recap of where I am and what I plan to do, just for people that have skipped ahead and for others who've forgotten. To build my titan I decided that I would construct a number of master/prototype parts. From these prototypes any pieces that need to be copied, say for example the legs, for a left and right, will be cast from the prototypes. If I'm able to I would like to make molds of all of the titan so that I can build more than one/sell a few on. Before uni I'd managed 'to complete most of the leg structure prototypes. I had the foot, toes, heel, ankle, a half completed shin plate, and the thigh of the titan. For the legs I had left to do, the back of the shin plate, the thigh plate, the knee, top shin joint and armour connectors.

In the first few days that I've been back I had a think about how I was building the shin plate. For all of this log so far I've persisted in wanting to use the filer method for the armour plates. I decided to accept I might be wrong though and tried to build a shin armour plate out of plasticard when I got back from uni. This is for a few reasons, mostly time given that the filler was taking a long time to complete, but also cost as the filler is expensive. Building that part was successful and showed that I could build other curved parts like that so shouldn't spend as much on filler, which is good. To build it in plasticard I did pretty much the same as before in terms of internal structure. A number of increasing radius braces with a wall in the middle giving strength. to align the frame properly, a problem I had with the previous version, I glued the piece down onto a small cutting matt so that it didn't shift around. This was much much better than before and could easily be removed afterwards and the superglue marks sanded down. after releasing the frame I had a tricky job to do in wrapping the plasticard around and gluing it down, this was much easier that it could have been, with small clamps. After the initial plating was on it was easy to complete the edging of the part too. Overall the part took me about a day and a half, compared to the week + that I'd spent on the other version it was much better, I even forgot to take progress photos because I building quickly.




Having completed the shin plate I decided to move onto the part that was preventing me from assembling a mock up of the leg, the top shin joint. Before I start this though I needed to build the cylinder that comprises the knee joint. Cylinders have been something I've struggled with in the past, but I had a brainwave this time round. I constructed myself a jig consisting of a pair of parallel straight edged plates, at an angle, fixed a specific distance apart. This means that when I rest any circle or cylinder, with a diameter bigger than my gap, on the jig the centre will lie in a specific line. Provided I've taken care to cut out the same sized circles then it allows me to produce a much more accurately aligned cylinder than I had managed before. The straight edge is also useful in wrapping the completed internal structure as it allows pressure to be put evenly along a line, something I struggled to do earlier. This was really helpful at the seam where I got a fairly smooth join. Unfortunately the second layer of wrapping onto the cylinder was thicker, so the joins are very visible. This shouldnt be a problem however as by incorporating the cylinder into the top shin part, I can hide the seam line.

[fiore hellheart]

For the patterning and the style of the cylinder I using the warhound joints for a lot of the inspiration. The main body has a similar ridged central part and smooth outside sections. For the caps I also used a similar raised circle to the warhounds, but embellished mine with a cog and different rivet placements. On the ankle caps I had an edging on the detail similar to the knee caps. For those I had cut a thin strip of plasticard, and joined the ends of the strip square to create a loop. For these caps I was much more successful in beveling the start of the strip, wrapping it around the part, and then over the bevelled edge. I then sanded the overlap down so that it was almost a uniform thickness all around with next to no seam. I tried to get a decent picture of the wrapping, but my phone's camera isnt good enough at macro. I think that sometime in the next few weeks I will try and borrow a dslr from a friend to take a few high res macro shots to show the detail better. Forgive the current images, as I've adjusted the contrast and colours to bring out the details.









That's all I've been up to in the last few days, but will be starting on continuing as much as I can. I hope to be able to begin part of the body before heading back to uni. Next up though is finishing of the toshin joint with the new cylinder, and starting the back shin armour, and thigh armour, with connectors. After that it will just be the waist/hip before the body.

[efcjester]

simply fantastic!

[fiore hellheart]

Thanks efcjester!

I'll be doing another update soon, for now though I'll tease you guys by telling you that I've mocked the leg together with blu tack for some nice pictures to show how it's headed.

[Jaycen]

Your work thus far is quite impressive, and I look forward to seeing more of it. I noticed that you are making molds and casting parts, does this mean that perhaps you may eventually make a couple for sale?

[Saardis]

This is really nice work. I am a CAD user myself, and I think I'm going to model up my next tank first to work out the plasticard sections like you have done. I really think you should consider hollow casting... Have you thought about suspending a piece of polystyrene or something inside the mold when you pour the resin? The leg joints might not take the weight of the resin body!