Forum adverts like this one are shown to any user who is not logged in. Join us by filling out a tiny 3 field form and you will get your own, free, dakka user account which gives a good range of benefits to you: No adverts like this in the forums anymore. Times and dates in your local timezone. Full tracking of what you have read so you can skip to your first unread post, easily see what has changed since you last logged in, and easily see what is new at a glance. Email notifications for threads you want to watch closely. Being a part of the oldest wargaming community on the net. If you are already a member then feel free to login now.

I have a BA Hons in Modelmaking and spent 5 years doing it for a living and I can hand on my heart confirm that without a lasercutter I couldn't replicate the work you have accomplished here..

Ohh and possibly a detailed set of blueprints wouldn't hurt....

The Looted T-Hawk is awesome....!!!! Why didn't I think of that!!! Oh, I have to do that now!!!!!

mullet_steve wrote:I have a BA Hons in Modelmaking and spent 5 years doing it for a living and I can hand on my heart confirm that without a lasercutter I couldn't replicate the work you have accomplished here..

Ohh and possibly a detailed set of blueprints wouldn't hurt....

I agree, his work is spot on.

Subscribed!

Well i'm glad my question wasn't completely off the wall. I was just thinking from a mechanical standpoint, i hadn't really thought about the building process of a ball & joint system and how complex it would be. i was just thinking from a view where an axle would completely take any kind of manouverability away from your gigantic warmachine. But i am certainly glad that you have taken all of this into consideration and understand what you mean by your building process. I like your detailing, are you going to put any cogs or aquilas on there? also are you going to put banners on your titan? i know these are way out on the to-do list, but i am just curious!

Thanks guys, I'm just doing my best.

yea skipphag, go for it, and be sure to link across in here to it, I'd love to see what you can build. When I did mine I just roughed it out and it went well, so good luck if that's what you decide to do for yours

Thanks squig sqasher

It was a good question Wh40KPicasso, something I'd thought about but hadn't written about so I'm glad you asked. But yea, in terms of building one it's getting a smooth ball of the right diameter that's annoying, and then you need a retaining ring or set of pistons to maintain the connection. That ring or set of pistons is the difficult bit to produce and to recreate in duplicate too. They do look a lot cooler however.

The plan is to go with cogs on the thigh joint barrel bit, but generic circles on the knee joint. A bit like the ankle cap and the ankle joint parts respectively. Elsewhere I'd like to use aquilla's but doubt my ability to make them. As I intend to cast I don't want to be using a GW one either. I might give a bit of carving a go and will show anything successful on here for you. I definitely want to hang banners on this thing. I'm planning on a set of banner from the guns obviously, some flags on the ends of the shoulder carapace armour, and a series of flags on the shoulders or the tops of the shoulder guns along with the shoulder gun barrel flags. I might have a banner between the legs, but it might look silly and a lot like a loin cloth. This will probably change depending on what looks best for a completed model, and the shapes of the banner, triangle square rectangle ect and the dimensions of which will also change. So for now I only really have a vague decision on placement.

Your reply has prompted me to want to do a bit of work on the computer design actually. To that extent I'm going to make a blank render of the titan so that I can upload it and ask people to provide suggestions for the colour schemes, filling in a few myself. I'll also look into a logo for the legio, as whilst this is intended to follow the mars design, I intend to have it painted differently. In regards to getting it painted, I was thinking that I would like to get it properly painted by somebody else. I want to offer in exchange a cast of the titan in return for a decent paintjob on the titan. If anybody would be interested in this just subscribe and pm me later when I get around to casting it up and I hope we'd be able to sort something out provided I'm happy with your painting and you with the cast ect.




I decided that the connector for the toe armour part wasn't quite right. Beyond being unhappy with the rivet work I noticed that the whole part wasn't perpendicular and noticeably slanted along the edges, like a parallelogram. The new piece removes this slant and is also much flatter along the edge now that I'm better and sanding my parts evenly, thanks to blackadder's advice.



I've also finished the heel armour connector. Whilst it might look a little undecorated on the sides, I intend to leave it like that. I couldn't come up with any detail that I was happy with and felt that blank was best. It's not a part that will be seen much and will manage fine.



I'm finally down onto my last piece of plasticard now, shouldn't run out though, it's a bit big, and yea, that's the scale dreadnought there



As some people asked for templates before now I thought I might demonstrate a bit more what I meant when I said that my templates aren't really templates. These 3 sheets are all I will use to build the armour pieces for the legs. From the middle piece I can build the internal frame for the armour by measuring the radius at certain points from the centre line and using the width of the part on the left half to give me the distances between vertical braces and the size of the horizontal circular braces too. the distance of the vertical braces will be taken from the rightmost sheet, and the detail is freehand. I'll demonstrate this a little better in the next update if anybody's curious. The part on the left will be used for the thigh armour, and the horizontal cross section is beneath, the length of the vertical braces being measured from the larger face again. Both of these are going to be using filler.



Lastly another of the update graphics showing where I'm up to right now. I'm waiting to complete the legs with the acrylic tube, but I'm having a small problem. The supplier I wanted to use, as they're the only people I can find who do the smaller 500mm length tubes, aren't able to cut some of the lengths that I wanted. Something to do with lengths equal to or greater than the radius. I'm trying to get them to bend this rule and cut mine for me, but the email communication is taking ages as they aren't replying very quickly.

In better news though I now have a job, or to be more precise, two. I've started work back where I had my last job part time, and am also working part time at a local supermarket. Both offers came within a few hours of each other when I expected neither to be in contact with me again. Because of this I'll be working most of a full week, and fitting in time to do other things with friends you'll probably see a drop in the rate of work on the titan. This does mean I'm able to order the best materials for the job though and I'll be able to order some silicone and be casting within the next couple of weeks I expect.

As usual if anybody has any question ask away. Also if anybody knows of any really really cool warhound titans out there then link me to them. It's always nice to see a great colour scheme and I could do with some more pictures for my inspiration folder. Thanks

The Warp Runners!

(At least, I think that's their name...)

warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Legio_Astorum





http://www.bolterandchainsword.com/index.php?showtopic=151315&st=0

I think tagsta is a member here as well... his work is fantastic!

This whole project is rediculous! Ill echo how professional this looks.

fiorehellheart wrote:In regards to getting it painted, I was thinking that I would like to get it properly painted by somebody else. I want to offer in exchange a cast of the titan in return for a decent paintjob on the titan. If anybody would be interested in this just subscribe and pm me later when I get around to casting it up and I hope we'd be able to sort something out provided I'm happy with your painting and you with the cast ect.

Id be very interested in this, a chance to get my hands on one of these beauties is almost too good to be true!

fiorehellheart wrote:As usual if anybody has any question ask away. Also if anybody knows of any really really cool warhound titans out there then link me to them. It's always nice to see a great colour scheme and I could do with some more pictures for my inspiration folder. Thanks

As it happens i just finished my warhound:



More pics here: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/570/342824.page#4615744

I would be completely interested!

Alpharius, I've seen those models before, some fantastic work on. I can't say I'm a huge fan of the colour blue though, I was thinking red, or, to be different to the generic red/blue a green or even black and white.

virtruvian, That's a pretty awesome warhound there. I like the use of bleached bone armour sections, considering most are blues or reds like I've said above, It's quite nicely unique, I'll keep you in mind for when I get around to casting them up and looking for a painter.

Same reply as I had for vitruvian really, capitansolstice, I'll consider people more thoroughly later, I just wanted to voice an idea and see if there was a reaction at all, given two people have shown interest already I'll be sure to do some kind of selection process later to determine who's best to take this on, but thanks for the interest for now

Well there are these:

http://wh40k.lexicanum.com/wiki/List_of_Titan_Legions#.UCQQ2M1mzRt

http://warhammer40k.wikia.com/wiki/Titan_Legions_(List)

Sadly most of the legions seem to not have a colour scheme pic.


edit: Oh yeah almost forgot winterdyne's currently doing a warhound titan diorama: http://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/456441.page


edit: some of the cooler titan schemes i could find

I don't think red works well on Titans - the color itself seems to dominate the senses.

The 'cooler' colors often look a lot better on bigger models, and especially so on Titans...

Alpharius wrote:I don't think red works well on Titans - the color itself seems to dominate the senses.

The 'cooler' colors often look a lot better on bigger models, and especially so on Titans...

Tis a shame you think that, I'm a Legio Moprtis fan

Yea, I'm a fan with the red on most, although I do agree that sometimes the colour is too bold. Red has always been my favorite colour growing up, I was the red twin, my brother was the blue twin, everything our parents bought us being colour coded. I think it affected me as you can tell from the red carpet in my room and the paint on the walls.

One I really like is this one, which is somewhere on dakka too I think
http://www.coolminiornot.com/160054

As I've said the greens are cool, but I think I'm going off the pure white and black, the black is bland and the white too contrasted and odd looking. My favourite is the cloudy blue armour with yellow from the forgeworld one. More suggestions would be cool though.


Automatically Appended Next Post:
I've placed an order for some casting materials at last, I went for the following and I'll report on how things go when I get them.

http://www.tiranti.co.uk/product.asp?Product=1263
http://www.tiranti.co.uk/product.asp?Product=1277
http://www.tiranti.co.uk/product.asp?Product=3012

I'm excited to find out how this goes, and if everything goes well I'll be ordering more in bulk to cast the rest of whatever left over of the titan.

You are going to need alot of Silicon rubber. I mean an awful lot. I think you will make the titan, but will need crowd funding for the silicon rubber moulds (I wish I was kidding). Just do a couple of calculations based on a minimum of 3cm around all the your pieces, squared off into box shapes (unless you will make custom mould holders, I'm guessing you will use box shapes) then work through the Volumes, of say....the Femur piece and that will give you the volume of silicon rubber you need to encase the part (never mind the resin for the part itself).

It is a staggering volume of Silicon when you consider the size of this project, even if you are clever and halve the numbers of mould needed by making them ambidextrous so that you only need one arm and leg mould as it will serve both.

btw, when it comes to casting, investing in a box of lego is the best thing you can do, as it is waterproof and doesn't seep at all.

Just one question...Aren't Warlord Titans supposed to have a bigger shoulder/back area with 4 cannons on them? Or is that a specific pattern?

Yep. This is why I have two jobs now... I know it's going to cost me a lot, and I want to be able to fund all of it myself. I don't like the idea of people relying me to use their money to finish something and then have to return their investment with a product. I'm much happier to not have that pressure to achieve and instead fund it myself and manage my own pace to complete it myself. Just means I have to pay a lot. As I've said before though, if it's worth doing, it's worth doing it well.

I will try to be as cost efficient as possible though. Things such as joinging multiple pieces together or in the same mold to reduce the cost of having a 30mm wall around each part. For example to plan is to make a small toe mould of the toe end and mid, cast it three times, chop it up and use it as filler in the mould for the whole foot. Because the foot is intended to be the same regardless of pose and side, I am going to just cast a single foot to reduce the cost of the wall thicknesses in rubber. I'll also try to keep grouped moulds the same height for that reason, to maintain the minimum wall thickness and being efficient.

In terms of calculating the volume I have been thinking about getting some high quality sand and using it to calculate the volumes necessary. I should be able to remove it from the parts after finding volumes and it would let me vastly reduce the waste. I'm also going to do some tests to determine the density and such of the materials so I can best work with it. None of the sites I found gave sufficient information as to densities or specific gravities. I'll determine this myself and from this calculate a projected cost. It won't be small but I'm just accepting that now

Yea, I had tons of lego as a child and know exactly where it is in the attic, I'll be hording that for the enclosures or using plasticard when I need an odd shape. I need to get some plasticine too

Superb point on the sand, at least you will get the volume and be able to calculate back using the density of the Silicon Rubber to allow you calculate exactly how much you will need +/- 10g or so which is pretty clever.

I also like the idea of making a mini density mould, make several 1cm3 or know volume moulds fill them, let it go off and then weigh them on a scales and work it through. The advantage to doing several is that you can average them to ensure a few air bubble inside don't skew the figures.

I understand you using the old moulds cut up, that is clever, but it might be wise to other materials as you might want to keep the mould themselves, especially if 18 months later you want to make another (everything is worth more as a pair!). Maybe even Plaster moulding?

Anyway all told, I'm rooting for you, because you have thought this through and are committed. Well I'll just come on every so often and offer morale encouragement.

Well i'm glad that i could "set the cogs in motion" for you. Blessed be the Omnissiah!

also i'd def be interested in a cast when you get done!

I do like the moulding questions Keep them coming. When I refer to cutting up the old moulds that are no longer used I will only do this is I have another suitable mould of the part as well. For example.

With the toe the first mould I create will have a single toe within it, so for each of the casts made I get one more toe from it. After completing 3 casts I will be finishing them to a higher standard than the master. As I expect to be able to perfect a uniform material master more easily that the mishmash of materials and hollow parts of the initial master. Once this is done the three toe's will be attached to the rest of the foot second or first masters. From that I will create a mould of the whole foot. After I have a mould for the whole foot I no longer need the single toe mould, and It's added to the chop pile for the next mould. The key idea being that I will always have the original plasticard masters stored away so that if it is necessary for me to re-create a mould, I can do so. I hope that clears things up on me trying to be even cleverer at cutting waste and improving quality. Because I don't want to waste loads though I won't be doing this second master type process for all parts, only those like the toes where an intermediary mould is needed for the multiple parts.

I don't want to use another filler either for a couple of reasons. Firstly it will change the properties of the filer, both in terms of volume/density, and the flexibility or toughness. I'd like a consistent material throughout all the moulds. The second reason is that silicone will attach to nothing well at all, apart from itself. Because of this I shouldn't need a release agent, only some kind of surfactant to break the surface tension of the resin removing bubbles more easily, they go smaller ect. However, because it sticks to itself, provided the material is clean, it should form a bond to itself in curing, becoming a uniform piece once again. Giving good re-used moulds. The lifetime on these moulds seems due to the breaking and tearing of the rubber and loss of detail, rather than a chemical effect, but I might be wrong on this.

In terms of plaster casting I was considering using some dental plaster if it turned out strong enough. I've read plenty of stuff on bruce hirst's website and think it could be a good material, but not something I'm looking into right now. But possibly in the future.

Yea, I'm not entirely sure how expensive a cast of one of thses would cost, like in just resin alone. But i'll figure it out in time I guess

Thanks for the encouragement and morale boosting, that really helps

i could always supply a casting material for you

I do hope youre not intending to cast the thighs and lower legs etc as solid pieces?

It would be interesting to see the cost of shipping it overseas to me and back... probably more than I'd want for it...

Yea, that was the plan, Might be expensive, but I'd like to try it first

Fair enough, it would greatly increase durability. Hollow casting is a good way of conserving expensive resin though, not sure how you would go about cutting up the model for casting though

Sillicon isn't that expensive here... The stuff I use is apx 2cents (.02 dollars) a ML.

Yea, I've taken quite a bit of thought to hollow casting so far, partly I don't want the drop in strength, or to make it difficult to pin, but the wight drop would be good. What I would ideally do is called rotocasting, where you part fill a mould and then rotate it to coat the surface with a layer of the resin. After I had a good thickness shell I'd then use expanding polyurethane foam to fill the remaining void within the model, giving good strength and low weight. That would add more cost though in terms of time. Seems very difficult and time consuming though so I doubt I'd take that route.

Another way I could lower the weight is to use the expanding foam in a seperate mould and then place that part within the detail mould giving a core part that is then coated with resin, sort of the reverse of the above. It would work well but I'd have a problem with alignment. It would also leave it difficult to pin giving a reliance on the surface glue strength. It is however a much easier way to maintain the strength and detail with a lower weight.

Prompted by my explanation above I've had a think and If I were to do it I imagine I'd cast the foam around a pair of plastic rods at the same location as the seam in the 2 part mould of the piece. Then I use grooves cut into that mould to align it within the centre of the void, clamp shut and pour around the part. giving only a couple of pins extending on one surface here there's a mould line already. Then it's common mould line cleaning and trimming of the sprue using sandpaper or a knife to get it flat. That would work very well but would necessitate extra moulds for the internal volume which would need to be two part in order to give the correct position of the alignment rod. Whilst I might not use it for everything I feel myself wanting to give this a good try because i've not seen it done before now as I describe, I think it'll be fun, and it's a challenge. I don't feel I'll be as good as I can be at this stuff unless I challenge myself enough, if it works though, it'll be very useful. For now though I'm going to do a couple of casts of the feet an learn the materials and their properties once my order arrives.

Yea, price here seems about £20-£25 per litre with even higher for some of the tougher stuff, that's what my brief research seemed to suggest. It's not that much of a difference really, the real cost being the sheer volume I'll need, probably well above 5 litres..

Wow, Maybe putting metal rods in there (rather than plastic rods) for reinforcement and structure?

Initially I thought of metal rods, but then I realised that cleaning the excess coming from the side might leave more of a visible mark if its metal, which is why I thought of plastic. Plastic can be cut and polished flush with more ease, probably not requiring much extra work. Metal pins would probably need a bit of greenstuff work to clean up and smooth out.

I can see the argument for strength though, that they would suport any flexing over potentially a large face, but I think that it should be sturdy anyway. I need to try it obviously but I expect that although the expanded material is fairly weak when compressed and will crush, if it's as a core the force is spread by the thick resin skin, so it goes from being weak to strong because the force is spread. As I've said though this is just speculation and could still be a weak part, but is just something I'd need to test.

Also a main argument against metal rods is they may rust, and as metal rusts it expands, and with pop open your resin like a wallnut in a nutcracker...

You'd have to use a non ferrus metal, which would get expensive, especially if you went with a decent thickness of rod.