Hey everyone.
Here's a brief update. I'm still building the forms that I'll be vac-forming over. In fact, I'm on my third iteration
I think this new version is a lot closer to the real deal, so hopefully, third times a charm.
In the meantime, to keep from going crazy, I've been giving some attention to other parts of the model.
Here are some photos of some work I've done on the wheels and a detail I'm calling the 'potato masher.'
Since the wheels are egg shaped, I hunted down some eggs that were close to scale.
The plastic egg was hopeless. It sanded horribly and I couldn't get any glues to stick to it. So wood it is.
I needed to drill the egg down its major axis. I made a quick cradle out of some styrofoam and held it in the vise.
There's still plenty of detail that needs to be added. The idea for now is, I'll make one detailed Master, then cast them in resin. (there are 8 wheels!)
Here are some shots of a fixture that I made for marking the locations of the treads that are radially distributed around the egg.
it's a styrene tube with an off-center channel cut in one end and a styrene scrap cut to fit the eggs profile
This styrene contour can rotate around the egg allowing me to draw the center line of each tread. I'm going to print out an angle guide that this will sit on, so all I'll have to do is line up the styrene to the marks on the paper and make my pencil line.
I've offset the styrene sheet by half it's thickness so the lines will originate in the center of the egg.
Another fixture that I built was to help glue up the 'potato masher', pointed to here in a photo of the full sized hero model:
This fixture is a thin sheet of aluminum (.040" thick) with the cross section of the potato masher cut out of it. Below that is a sheet of .090" basswood with the same shape removed. in the center is a fixed stainless rod.
A styrene tube fits over the rod.
Then the 12 'fins' of the masher are glued in one at a time using Tamiya extra thin cement
I haven't removed this from the fixture yet, I still have to make a few more fins.
I may beef this up a bit with some Apoxy Sculpt to make it look more like a heavy casting. We'll see.
Hopefully I will have more to show soon. Thanks for visiting.
Peter