SW – ANH (5 Foot) - Studio Scale Millennium Falcon Build

So unhappy with Autodesk. Just got an email saying they're taking Inventor Fusion down from the app store. Fusion 360 may be all that and a bag of chips, but I hate the idea of being forced to save my stuff to a $25/month cloud with no local copies. I much prefer saving to my DropBox folder on my hard drive, which syncs to my 1 TB account. Add in Time Machine, and I have redundant backups of everything I do.

Anyway, I'm going to keep using Inventor Fusion, support or no, and that's what I'll be doing my kit parts with. First up will be the Saturn V 2nd stage engine cone, the one that's on the radar dish (and every other SF model ever made, apparently). :) Nice way to ease into a new modeling package. Just have to find the actual time to do it...

You should be able to register yourself as a student/hobbyist and keep on running with 360.
 
You should be able to register yourself as a student/hobbyist and keep on running with 360.
Hopefully. And turns out it's $40/month. Techshop has everything by Autodesk anyway, so I can just go back and forth between Fusion at home and Inventor at the shop, at least I hope. Otherwise I'll be spending more time at the shop -- hardly a fate worse than death. :)
 
Hopefully. And turns out it's $40/month. Techshop has everything by Autodesk anyway, so I can just go back and forth between Fusion at home and Inventor at the shop, at least I hope. Otherwise I'll be spending more time at the shop -- hardly a fate worse than death. :)

Within a few years all our software will be subscription only. Wahhh!

Oh the words that come out of my mouth when our Creative Cloud accounts go down. Miserable...
 
Within a few years all our software will be subscription only. Wahhh!

Oh the words that come out of my mouth when our Creative Cloud accounts go down. Miserable...
CC goes down?!? Hasn't happened to me yet. CC, on the other hand, is a boon -- $50/month for the entire suite? YES!! $40/month for ONE app? Pass.
 
Whilst watching Poltergeist, circa 1982 tonight, here's some current work in progress on some of the more subtle MF turret details:

Screen Shot 2015-02-26 at 10.42.24 PM.png



The derived turret base model will serve as a basis for the overall vintage turret gun assembly model survey:

heroTurret1_001.jpg



More to follow...

apb
 
Thanks everybody - going to work on the turret and window area:

MF_turretDetailsWIP_001.jpg

...in-between my sessions designing the armature.



Vaderios: I will probably publish the basic forms - I wouldn't want to hog all the fine detail solves and modeling to myself...that's the fun part! ;)




Regards,

Andre
 
Ive also been looking into the armature. Im more than likely going to go with pipe couplings over welding. Makes it a lot easier to line up.

That's funny, I was just looking at these fittings. I think I settled on this one though. The Kee Klamp fitting are way expensive. I think the one you show is like 40 to 50 dollars. At least that's the cheapest I've found. I bought some canopy fittings for my greenhouse a while back , and they were pretty cheap. So that got me looking again. I found this one today. If I can find a thin walled steel pipe that will fit over my armature pipe, I'll weld it up myself. I can't weld aluminum with my equipment, or I would just weld that together. Oh well.

6 way Canopy Fitting.png

Here's the Url.

http://ptmtarps.com/1-7-8-6-way-flat-roof-center/

I think it's store pickup only, but I'm sure there is an online vender for it, somewhere. It's for 1 7/8 inch pipe which is perfect for me. If you want bigger pipe, you're stuck with the Kee Klamp, Cheers,

Joe
 
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I have so got to practice welding. Haven't taken the aluminum TIG class yet, because I'm not fully competent with steel yet, for lack of practice. Right now I'm very good at making a molten mess of my steel, so I assume anything I tried in aluminum would look like I broke a really huge thermometer... :(
 
If welding aluminum is not an option then you guys might consider adhesive-bonding aluminum pieces. There is plenty of strength & fatigue life with the professional grade metal adhesives when used right. They just require a larger mating surface than a weld.

Steel is great stuff for interior model frameworks but it's pretty heavy for a model of air/space craft. That kind of model loses so much realism when it needs a big strong stand or thick wires.

On the other hand a big SS Falcon is going to be quite a large model just in the exterior modeling materials. Steel or alloy, either way the metal framework inside might comprise a much smaller percentage of the total weight than with a lot of other models. If the frame is a small piece of the pie then I would be more inclined to make it out of steel. Steel is cheap & easy to work with and has no long term metal-fatigue factor to worry about.
 
I have so got to practice welding. Haven't taken the aluminum TIG class yet, because I'm not fully competent with steel yet, for lack of practice. Right now I'm very good at making a molten mess of my steel, so I assume anything I tried in aluminum would look like I broke a really huge thermometer... :(

Yea, I call my welds gorilla welds, ugly but strong as crap, LOL. My Granddad taught me to weld at a young age. I still have his 50 year old Lincoln welder. I have to get a mig for aluminum, and see what a mess I can make. It will probably look like that thermometer you mentioned, :) , Cheers,

Joe
 
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