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Project Jubilee (a.k.a. Leander, 54mm Warhound Titan)

Started by MarcoSkoll, January 23, 2012, 08:30:28 PM

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MarcoSkoll

No new pieces to show today, but nonetheless a bit of progress has been made.

Firstly, I think I worked out largely how the parts I had were supposed to make a leg:


(Complete with my 1:1 reference, scaled from the Imperial Armour books).

This isn't the pretty part, but it will be the load bearing skeleton.
There is a problem with the knee joints, however, as I discovered when I disassembled them for inspection. The pieces on the right are roughly what they should look like, the work of a hot air gun to reshape them. The parts on the left are how they came out of the joint:



... in other words, I'm an idiot. This is a concept called "creep", absolutely routine stuff that was covered in the first year of my incomplete Mechanical Engineering degree.

In very layman's terms, above a certain temperature, materials become ever so slightly liquid and will slowly flow over time. You've probably heard that glass is like this... that's not exactly true, as glass' transition temperature is usually around 500 C/900 F; the irregularity in old glass windows is simply that the manufacturing techniques weren't that precise. However, it is true that plastic can creep at room temperature.

The problem here is that because the friction in the joint is dependent on the inner "arms" pressing out on the outer rings, it means the joints will become softer with time and eventually the whole thing will stop holding poses.

However, good news time:
1) Entirely because this project has taken so long, the problem has been spotted before it would be a nightmare to fix.
2) I can fix this relatively easily. I'll probably have to re-cut some of the parts for the knee joints, but I have the materials to do it and it'll let me do them neater this time.

I've also taken a bit of a look at the work I've already done on the shin guards:


It's not terrible sculpting, but it's not exactly up to my current skills. It's possible it would look passable with a mild spruce-up, but I'm considering the possibility of separating the plasticard layer from the PVC pipe it's mounted on (so I'd keep it fairly intact) and cutting a new front face on which I can launch a more sophisticated attempt - possibly a female figure instead, but it might stay a man if I feel enough I feel like sculpting some really buff musculature.

~~~~~

On the note of gender, and I may have said this before, it's already decided that the Princeps will be female, but will have an otherwise male crew.
I know female Princeps don't get a lot of mention in the fluff, but given the AdMech has to look outside of its own Forge Worlds to find enough suitable Princeps Cadets, I doubt half the population would get entirely overlooked.

She's currently the only crew member named though - Helane Rogen. As the Titan will be Leander, her name is part of a play on the original Greek myth, "Hero and Leander".

There's actually quite a lot of background material I'm working on behind the scenes. Given this is Inquisitor, I couldn't reasonably take one of the scarce few Warhounds in the universe and not give it an identity. This does mean I have to explain why Leander will have a closer connection with the Inquisition than other Titans, but I've already got a few options I like.

(As an aside, I will provide it with unnamed shin guards at some point, so that it can theoretically be used as a different Warhound, but I do want it to have a primary identity).
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

MarcoSkoll

Just a quick post to assure you things are still happening around here.

Nothing particularly glamorous, as much of it has been rebuilding the knee joints - they're not that visibly different from the old ones, but they've been cut more precisely, which should make them less susceptible to loosening over time and also allow them to be put together in a way so they can be partially disassembled for maintenance.

I've also taken the decision to try redoing the relief on the leg armour. The old one was a bit more reluctant to be removed than I anticipated, so I had cut it off in several pieces, but it should be possible to reassemble and repair if I decide I want to reuse it.

I'll try a sketch of a gender swapped relief in the next day or so and see if I like it. I'm still umming and ahhing, as the scrollwork is supposed to be embossed with the Titan's name and it might be a little odd to have the name of a male Greek hero written under a female figure, but a) I'd usually refer to the Titan (or the locomotive it's named after) in the feminine gender anyway, b) I don't think the Imperium is any the wiser, c) it's not completely exclusively male (it's not unknown as a surname, actually) d) who cares or e) I could swap the name to the other shinpad... so I think it really comes down to which I like more.

I'm also still working on the fluff a lot, as it doesn't hurt to have thought all of that through first so I can add related details along the way.

Oh, also, I did take a picture for the benefit of another forum, so I'll drop that in here too:
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Kallidor

Don't know how I missed this but that is some serious gak Marco. I barely do a damn thing on even small modelling projects so to see a 54mm Warhound Titan... It looks great so far and kudos for even making the attempt  ;D
Be Pure!
Be Vigilant!
BEHAVE!

MarcoSkoll

Actual construction work has been a mite slow, but there are new pieces to show:


They need a little more refinement, but these parts are for slightly beefier thighs than I originally intended:



I wanted to make sure the joins were really robust and wouldn't snap off if they were a bit roughly handled during repositioning, so I needed to increase the footprint to spread the torque better. The result is a little heavier than I'd've liked, but will be relatively central and only about 20cm up ("only", he says), so won't have dire effects on the model's centre of gravity.

I'll probably be ordering some aluminium pipe to use instead of the thin walled steel (originally part of a disposable gas canister) that's in the picture. It won't dramatically affect the weight, but the thicker walls will have their uses.

~~~~~

Beyond that, electronics!

I'm strongly tempted to revise my earlier thinking regarding the megabolter. The electrical system has already been redesigned quite generously (now providing four 3V banks, not one 6V bank), so having the spare battery capacity to motorise it is now not a problem. The megabolter has also been swapped to a (somewhat) hollow plasticard build rather than its earlier balsa. Also, basic motor and gear sets cost about tuppence ha'penny.

Beyond having to run an extra live power feed through the model  - and there already need to be at least two (the red and yellow LEDs need a different limiting resistance than the blue and green)  - it's not a significant add.

The other subject... my original plan had been to wire a phased oscillator into the blastgun so that I could make the accelerator assemblies out of translucent plastic and have one side fade on, the other fade on, then both fade out and start again.
However, I talked with Ruaridh via Skype on Sunday and his first interpretation was that the glow would travel the length of the barrel... which was not what I'd originally planned and a little more complex to actually assemble, but it sounds cooler to me.

I'm going to have to check my circuit diagrams and order a few new parts - but at this stage, I don't see the point in cutting corners on this project.
I know it'll be a dramatic enough model just because of its size*, but I'd like to turn things up to eleven.

* Even I still have moments where I go "holy crap, this is huge!"
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

MarcoSkoll

Latest news. Some parts arrived today:



On the right, the 50mm aluminium pipe that will replace some steel parts in the hip joints. (Although, as mentioned earlier, the objective is not so much a lighter part, but a thicker part)

On the left, a motor which is now partway through being installed in the megabolter. You can see a short video of it in a vaguely operational state here.

I've had to gut most of the Vulcan's old honeycomb interior in order to fit the motor and its gearbox, and I may have to weight the back of the weapon to counter balance the motor, but I'm hoping it'll be cool enough to make up for that.

Given it's noisier than I'd hoped (and also starts to smell a bit funny after a minute or two of running), I'm scrapping any plans to use it other than intermittently, and as a result modified a few of my original plans.
I've taken a set of gears out of the box, so it's now running on 37.8:1 gearing with an output of about 225 rpm. This'll let me drop in some crude circuitry to drop that by 20-30% and slow its spin-up/spin-down. That's not completely realistic - it should really have a max RPM of about 400 to match its claimed ROF, and gatling guns normally try to limit their spin-up time, but I'm thinking that it not being a total blur will look better.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

MarcoSkoll

I give you a fairly large chunk of the leg skeletons.



Yes, parts are actually finally attached to each other here. The copper parts can't be glued in until the feet are done, but all the PVC parts are pretty well attached to each other. I still need to conjure up the top mounting plates so I can attach them to the hips (when those are done, anyway), but that'll be very simple.

I've also been re-discovering how not spherical the wooden balls I bought for joints are, which was going to make engineering a tight fit damn near impossible, so I've made a tool to sort them out using a brass pipe fitting I had around - a brass fitting that'll be painfully pricey to replace if I ever need another, but 1) I had three of them around, with no foreseeable future need for more than one, 2) I've only ever used one of the three in accordance with its design purpose (it's supposed to adapt to 15mm compression, but the only one I'm currently using treats it as 1/2" threaded) and 3) it was less of a pain than trying to find a supplier who'd sell me replacement plastic balls (insert "that's what she said" here) of verifiable precision in sensible sizes and quantities.

The tool is doing a stunningly good job of turning the balls into more accurate spheres, but as they're now slightly smaller, I will need to re-cut a few other parts which were first made to the original sizes.

In any case, I now have much of the basis of poseable legs for a Warhound Titan, and I had to use the opportunity for a new scale shot:


(The bottom of a Warhound's hip cylinder is roughly the mid point, depending on pose, so this is about half of Leander's height).

So, yeah, she will be a pretty big girl when she's done. I've seen the 28mm models enough times, but Emperor's teeth has 54mm given me a different perspective on how big these things are supposed to be...
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Aurelius

So I saw the leg next to the rhino, and I was like - it's not that big... then I realized that is a 54mm scale rhino and I did a double take!  That thing is massive! Very nice, precise engineering there, can't wait to see more!

MarcoSkoll

And now you know why I chose to include two Rhinos in the picture.

Yeah, my big MkII Rhino is a sufficiently good copy of the 28mm model that I have done some trolling size comparisons, like the time someone on DakkaDakka asked how much smaller the old MkI models were:


(I did own up later in the same post, I add).

Me winding up people on other forums aside, new diagram. I'm hoping this is the basics of the circuitry I need to get the phased lighting for the Plasma blastgun, but I will be checking some of the details with an electronics forum, as I'm very out of practice:

S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Alyster Wick

I won't be satisfied until I read a battle report where the Titan kicks the Rhino at an Inquisitor :P

Kallidor

Seeing that giant leg really made me smile, it truly is a monster. And that rhino... incredible.


I also remember now why I never pursued electronics at school, that diagram means nothing to me  ;) ;D I did manage to build a 12v battery charger so that I could charge a portable DVD player, you know, portably, but I just made that with lego and a few prayers to the Omnisiah. Actually working it out, properly, with diagrams?  :'(
Be Pure!
Be Vigilant!
BEHAVE!

MarcoSkoll

New parts have arrived!



Including a few things I already had around, this is most of the electronics yet to go into Leander. There's some surplus parts here as well (I always order spares), but don't let the lack of an easy scale fool you, this picture is nearly three feet from side to side. Many capacitors, resistors, diodes, transistors, switches, LEDs and even a few integrated circuits.

A majority of this will be going into the Plasma Blastgun, so I was rather worried when I actually had the 1000 uF capacitors in hand about how large they were and whether I had enough space inside to fit a couple of dozen of them in there.

... then I looked at my scale plans again and remembered that 1) I had actually checked the numbers before and 2) I was talking about a weapon three inches longer than a 28mm Baneblade.

It's a quite hefty circuit (very different from my original plans) that's going to take a while to solder together, but this is the kind of thing Leander's extra size is permitting (although doubtless a clever person could use SMD PCBs to miniaturise this far enough to fit into the 28mm model), and I'm hoping it'll be cool enough to make up for the effort.

These parts also gives me all the pieces I need to be able to finish the mega bolter's circuitry - I've already soldered in a miniature protection circuit for the motor (While I expect it'll probably be the gearbox that explodes first, I intend to minimise the likelihood of any part blowing up) - so I should be able to move closer to finishing that.

Oh, and I've decided that I will be trying to make the weapons interchangeable. While all of these weapons are so powerful that their effect in  game can only really be defined as "What Inquisitor?" and I'm not sure if/when I will make other loadouts, I'm leaving the option open. So that's what the 3.5mm jacks and sockets are for, so the electrics for the arms can be unplugged.

Quote from: Alyster Wick on March 24, 2015, 01:02:58 AM
I won't be satisfied until I read a battle report where the Titan kicks the Rhino at an Inquisitor :P
"Send medical assistance! Inquisitor Shyloque has been hit by a Rhino."
"It drove into him?"
"Not exactly..."

Quote from: Kallidor on March 26, 2015, 02:45:58 AMActually working it out, properly, with diagrams?  :'(
Well, I've adjusted a lot. It's primarily based around 556 and 4017 ICs now, which is allowing me to get pretty darn fancy...
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Kallidor

Quote from: MarcoSkoll on March 27, 2015, 07:03:38 PM
It's primarily based around 556 and 4017 ICs now...

I have no idea what that means!!! However, if it works how I think it will then it will be pretty damn slick.




Also, I hope I am not the only one who keeps picturing this thing stomping around like an ED-209.
Be Pure!
Be Vigilant!
BEHAVE!

MarcoSkoll

The 556 is a twin 555, and the 555 is a digital oscillator.

It'll run in:
- astable mode, where neither a high or low output is "stable" (hence, the "a-" prefix, like amoral, atonal or asocial) , with each stage decaying to the other (at a rate set by external components). Hence, it constantly switches on and off, giving a series of timed pulses.
- monostable, stable only if the output is low. Triggering it gives a single on pulse of a set length.
- bistable mode, where both high and low outputs are stable.

The 4017 is a digital counter, where triggering it increases the output by one. Specifically, it's a decade counter, with ten pins for the output. Triggering it turns off output N, and turns on N+1 (up until output 9, when it resets and cycles back to output 0).

Feed the output of an astable 555 into the input of a 4017 and you get this little cycling series of ten outputs. And if you drive LEDs from those, you get a sequence of ten chasing lights.

There's a bit more circuitry to actually switching the LEDs (the ones I've picked are too powerful to be run directly from the 4017's meagre output), but that's the basic effect.

However, the 556 is a double 555. So I'm wiring each side of the blastgun from different halves of the 556 set to slightly different frequencies, which will give a slow "beat frequency" between the two sides (a more visually intriguing effect than them both being exactly in sync).

The other thing about the 555/556 is that it has a control voltage pin that affects the output frequency. Most applications set this to 0V, but I'll be trying to get something to work where using a charging capacitor to feed a rising voltage to the pin so that the chase effect speeds up until the capacitor hits a certain voltage threshold, and discharges through powerful LEDs that'll flash the accelerators bright white for a moment. Basically, a firing effect.

Unfortunately, I've discovered I've ordered less powerful LEDs for the flash than I intended. Mind you, in hindsight, a 130 lumen flash effect probably would have melted people's eyes; 10 lumens does sound a mite smarter.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

MarcoSkoll

Anyway, much soldering has happened since yesterday, and this is most of the left half of the LED array:



It's deliberately been put together in that L-shape so that the right half can be made the same, flipped over and slot together (as the capacitors are the biggest concern regarding space.

Given that despite the massive size of the blastgun, I'm a mite limited on space, there's been a little creativity in laying out the board - the capacitors have had to be slightly staggered, as they're a little too big in diameter to fit immediately alongside each other. The LEDs have also been inserted from the wrong side of the stripboard and soldered onto the legs of other components on the top side of the board, so that they can be low to the board (having them on long leads on the other side wouldn't leave enough space to fit both arrays down the centre between the accelerators).




And most of the primary control circuit. Aside from the automatic frequency adjust, one of the 4017 ICs is missing at the moment (there's two so each side can have a slightly different frequency), as the other side isn't ready yet and the chips are rather easy to break. (I did order a spare, but I'd prefer not to have to use it).



And, naturally, there is some video. As I say there, it's not yet diffused yet, but you can get an idea of what it'll be like on the final model.
S.Sgt Silva Birgen: "Good evening, we're here from the Adeptus Defenestratus."
Captain L. Rollin: "Nonsense. Never heard of it."
Birgen: "Pick a window. I'll demonstrate".

GW's =I= articles

Kallidor

I am slightly wiser on these electronic components but I am not ashamed to admit that this sort of thing does somewhat baffle me but then I have never actually read up on it and good old orky know wots only gets you so far; surprisingly far some times!!

The effect so far is really cool. In the final version, if I understand correctly, each LED will dim slightly as it goes off yes? I imagine that will look even more sophisticated than it does already and also sounds like it would be quite a soothing effect  ;D I also like the idea of it building up to a firing flash, something that actually ran through my mind watching the video before reading you post through fully.

Will you be adding LED's to the mega bolter? I imagine you won't have much space with the other components installed to turn the barrels but it seems like a flash of yellow light would suit. What about sound effects?

Very impressive so far Marco and something that Inquisitor scale lends itself so well too; it's great that fantastic centre pieces like this one can advertise the game, almost like thumbing your nose at GW for dropping the line.
Be Pure!
Be Vigilant!
BEHAVE!