Arcane Hextech Railgun Build

[skeplin]

Arcane was the first show in a long time that really inspired me. The story. The animation. The painterly quality. Most of all, the weapons. When the trailer for the second season came out, I was drawn to a single 3 second clip of Caitlyn with some sort of railgun.

When the final episodes of the second season aired, I grabbed as many different screenshots as I could of this beast with the intent to build my own. In the past, I relied on wood, plastic, and foam -- hand cut using methods I had learned from the masters of the craft like Bill Doran and Harrison Krix.

This time however, I decided to model the entire thing in CAD. I watched hours of YouTube videos to learn Fusion360 tricks and techniques. I used as many different reference angles as I could taking screenshot after screenshot. I swear there were scenes designed to show off the model; in one scene they break it down piece by piece to show you how it is supposed to go together. After nearly 60 hours of work over the winter, I finally reached something tangible. And here it is:

The hardest part was trying to design this for 3D printing. After all was said and done, I ended up with 152 individual pieces each with registration points and pegs to ensure it (mostly) went together as planned. While it's not perfect, I am now starting to print and assemble pieces.

I'll post more pictures as I go. Feedback is super appreciated.

 

[skeplin]

After I had modeled the majority of the railgun, I created a scaled PDF so I could print it out to get a feel for it. From that, I realized that some things weren't quite right. The foregrip was too far forward, the stock too long, the handle too thick. I went back into Fusion and re-sized pieces leaving a trail of warnings and errors. I fixed them, but it was a harrowing experience. I felt like I was going to have to restart. (For anyone interested, I've attached a scaled PDF.)

I upgraded my printer game with a Bambu Labs P1S and set to printing. I started with the small pieces that I could get a feel for: the foregrip, handle, and trigger. I printed as many pieces that I could at a time -- then sanding, priming, and sanding until the layer lines disappeared.

The rails had to be printed in three separate parts -- I added tabs in the model to help with alignment.

Throughout this process, I had to go back and redesign or combine pieces to strengthen them. Plastic doesn't act like metal and gravity takes its toll on lightly supported long plastic pieces. The cylinder was originally designed to swing down but without gluing that piece in place, the model was too flimsy to pick up.

I do have scrap piece graveyard of mistakes. Perhaps I can use those for trash bash projects in the future.

 

[Uridium]

Looking fantastic already.... I am eager to follow your progress and see the finished piece.

Have not watched season 2 yet, I really must get to it.