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Over the years, I've accumulated a surplus of Gun Drone bits. I currently have a single Sniper Drone Team, with one spotter and three Sniper Drones. I've decided to convert six of my Gun Drones into Sniper Drones, bringing the unit up to full strength.

I present to you a simple Tau Sniper Drone conversion...

Materials and tools you will need:



-wire cutter (dike)
-triangular file
-hand drill
-super glue
-gun drone
-spare fire warrior pulse rifle
-spare gun drone antenna
-paper clip



It's important to note that you should be using a wire cutter with angular vice. An electrical engineer on another forum informed me this specific cutter is called a "dike".



First, take your cutter and snip the rifle bit with the flat side of the cutter facing towards the rifle's butt.



By doing this, you'll create a pointed wedge tip.



Do the same with Pulse Carbine, this time snip off the entire barrel.



Now take the bottom piece, snip off the two studs, and use the edge of the triangular file to create a groove into the where the studs used to be.



After you are done, you should have something like this.



The wedges from both the Carbine and Pulse Rifle should fit snug tight into the two filed grooves.



Now file the drone bottom piece to create a flat surface. Also, file the sides on either side of bottom piece where the fins will be placed.



Now drill a shallow hole hole into the bottom piece. Don't go all the way through. A few millimeters will suffice.



Drill a hole through the bottom of the Pule Carbine. Drill all the way through.



By now, you should be able to slip a paper clip all the way through from the Pulse Carbine to the hole you drilled in the bottom piece.



Next, file the bottom of the Pulse Rifle barrel flat.



Glue all the pieces together.



File the bottom of the antennas flat.



Glue the drone top to the drone bottom. Glue the two antennas to where you previously filed the bottom piece's sides. Make sure you support the two antennas while the super glue dries.



Clip off the top of a flight peg.



Drill a hole through the top of the flight peg just enough to fit a centimeter of a paper clip.



Clip a centimeter of the paper clip off the the bottom of the glued gun piece. Slide and glue it into the top of the flight base.

Presto! You now have a converted Sniper Drone!

Here's a few pictures of what your Sniper Drone should look like:



Front



Side



Rear



Now create 2 more to form a team. For a spotter, you could use a Devilfish/Hammerhead tank commander. Although I used a 25mm base in the picture, the proper base you should be using is 40mm, the size of a Terminator base.

I hope this tutorial has been both informative and helpful.

Great tutorial, now if only they weren't crowding up space for my railguns...

Very cool, though I feel like a little something on top of their heads would make them cooler.

Okay yeah, first thing I did on reading this was build one pretty nice use for spare parts, actually!

This is a great tutorial.

Thanks a lot folks!

I'm glad many of you find this tutorial helpful.

@lunarghost:

You could use an XV25 plastic antenna. It's small and scales well compared to a real Sniper Drone.

Nice work!

Exalted for future ref!

Emperors_Champion wrote:Nice work!

Exalted for future ref!

Thanks.

I Just finished putting together 3 more converted Sniper Drone.

I now have a full Sniper team!

Nice one!

Thats awesome. This is a great conversion because it uses actual bits, not things you need. Those conversions that use 2 plasma rifles and a fusion blaster aren't good cause you need those. This one rocks because everyone has pulse rifles, pulse carbines, and gun drones laying around.

Reecius wrote:Nice one!

PraetorDave wrote:Thats awesome. This is a great conversion because it uses actual bits, not things you need ... This one rocks because everyone has pulse rifles, pulse carbines, and gun drones laying around.

Thanks!

Those conversions that use 2 plasma rifles and a fusion blaster aren't good cause you need those.

I actually don't use my fusion blasters other than on my Piranhas. I've converted all my Crisis Suit fusion blasters into Railguns, turning a few XV8 Crisis Suits into Broadsides.



Converted Railguns



Converted Broadside front



Converted Broadside side



2 real Broadsides, 7 Converted Broadsides, 6 Converted Shield Drones

Great tutorial and a really nice result. I just wanted to throw out to the OP that you may have misunderstood your electrical friend. Dikes aren't a specific term; they are diagonal cutters, anything from micros like the GW "sprue cutters" to the big whompers used to cut heavy gauge copper wire. I dunno why that bothered me...it just did. Happy Tau-ing err

Do you have a walk-through for the railguns?

Nice tutorial. I happen to have the same parts for the SD.

Jefffar wrote:Do you have a walk-through for the railguns?

I got the idea from jerseydevil on advancedtautactica.com:

http://www.advancedtautactica.com/viewtopic.php?f=21&t=11799&st=0&sk=t&sd=a

Thanks

I'm probably going to try this. Maybe right now.
Probably with a couple of differences - primarily, I'll use another 2 of those many spare carbines to bulk out the rear a little more.

Made these this afternoon working from yours then modifying it to closer match the original:


The differences are:
I clipped down 2 more carbines to provide the bulk of the 'cooling blocks?' at the back
I clipped down the stabiliser 'wings' made from sensor spine to have similar angles as the proper sniper drones.
Same again for the top mounted sensor aerial.
Used yet another aerial which I cut down and drilled to extend the rifles barrel in a similar manner to the Rail Rifle on the regular drones.
I also cut out the bit on the rim of the drone over the forward 'eye'

As for the spotter, I just had fun with it - used the cut up pulse rifle and carbine remains to make his pulse pistol and a few spare battlesuit bits.

This was great, prompting me to use spare drones and parts in a way I hadn't really considered and allows me to have a unit I like without having to shell out over £20 for it.

Ovion can we get some closeups of the drone undercarraiges? I like your changes.

no problem.



I intend to make up another 6 drones and 2 more spotters at some point.
For them to be identical it'll probably have to wait tillI buy another box of Fire Warriors though, for the 2 spare guys and more rifles, plus might need to magic up the battlesuit bits from somewhere.

These are awesome ause like others have said you don't really need the bits for the sniper drone conversions.

Verry nice. Keep them coming.

Good enhancements, Ovion. Your variation has good proportions that matches the real GW models.

I've painted them in a semi lazy fashion, and I intend to make more, so I may include photos of both when I do.