Centurion Mecha

[Fleafa]

Looking great, though the figure looks a little awkward right now, like she is stretching to reach the footrests.

[Islacrusez]

[mangozac]

Yeah I do need to tweak the legs using a heat gun.

[Vaaish]

Cool stuff Zac. I think the pilot looks mostly fine, but the waist is just disturbingly thin. Even with the armor she's wearing, it's unnatural. I think you could bulk that up pretty easily.

[mangozac]

Yeah but I was channelling the distorted manga style a little. Either way I don't dare touch it for fear of screwing things up - it doesn't even come close to bothering me enough to take the risk!

[mangozac]

I just wanted to drop off this quick update today and whet everyone's appetites

My CNC router was temporarily back up and running (it was assembled to the bare minimum necessary to cut out the cannon parts but has since been disassembled again so I can tidy it all up and reassemble properly) so I got my cannon parts cut out!

I give you the beginnings of the cannon design:


The basic design concept was drawn up by my friend Xeones, and it was then up to me to translate it into a physical design. There is one big problem: it's not big enough! You see I scaled it around the sizes of styrene tube I had in stock but neglected to print out a 2D paper copy first to ensure it looks correct. It's a smidge too small

Actually, at this point I should interject that realistically it's probably quite an appropriate size as is, but the style I'm going for is that over-the-top sci-fi style we all know and love, where guns are far oversized.

So I'm now tossing up between just making modifications to this design or starting again and making it bigger (I'll have to buy some larger sizes of styrene tube). The beauty of using the router is that I can just scale up the parts by ~20% and re-cut it out. Also, I've got a couple of tweaks that would make it even better so it's very likely that's what I'll do.

I'll have to hurry up and reassemble the router

[mangozac]

I received some queries asking what exactly I did with my CNC router for making model parts, so having just finished cutting out the upsized cannon parts I thought I'd share:

The first thing I do is draw the parts in a vector graphics program called Inkscape (the open source alternative to Adobe Illustrator). It's a great program! I then choose to make a copy of the artwork and convert everything to toolpaths. I'm using a 1mm diameter cutter for this so the toolpath will be 0.5mm (the cutter radius) outside of the line I want to cut. While there are automated tools for converting vector artwork into toolpaths, I've found that doing it manually doesn't take that much longer and is less error prone. More importantly it allows me to precisely control the locations of the tabs which hold the part to the sheet. Kind of like sprue gates on injection moulded parts (although a different purpose).

Once I have the toolpaths drawn up I export them as a dxf file. This can be loaded directly into my machine control software.

I have an abundant supply of 1mm and 1.5mm styrene sheet, so I cut them up into approximately A5 sizes to fit on my router table. The styrene sheet is clamped down and I run the program. It generally takes anywhere between 5 and 15 minutes for most stuff I do. Note that I'm cutting out solely in 2.5D: cutting out 2D shapes.

This is what I end up with:


I then cut the tabs and start assembling. Easy! While it's not a 5 second process, it's still WAY faster than having to cut out all of that detail by hand (especially if there are duplicate parts) and provides such precise curves and geometry I shudder at the thought of doing many of my parts any other way!

So tonight I'll start assembling the new cannon. I'm really pleased with the design tweaks I've made too.

[factor40]

That's cool stuff, Zac. A clever fella could sell those pre-cut sheets as mini-kits for hobbyists...

[Xeones]

It's cool to see a bit of your process Zac. The gun looks great, but without seeing it in context with the rest of the model, I'll have to take your word for it that it's a bit small.

[mangozac]

[mangozac]

Quick update before I go to work to show you all the progress on the cannon design. It's coming along very nicely! As I've said before I'm much happier with the larger cannon size. Obviously there's still a lot more detailing to do (the muzzle is yet to be built too), which I'll hopefully get completed in the next week or so.





Enjoy!

[Malika]

That machine just got downright frightening! I can still see it being converted into a grimdark version.

[Blindhorizon]

That cannon looks like a monster!

[Xeones]

Epic! I'm liking the pictures from some new perspectives as well. It really shows what you've been up to these last months. Thumbs up from me.

[mangozac]

Thanks guys! Glad everyone agrees with how it's looking