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Its kind of in the title;

I want to build a drop pod with a mechanism that I can press to make the doors pop open

I havent bought anything for this yet, its just an idea that I might do. Does anyone know if this has been done? or have any tips/suggestions?

My current idea is to use a spring loaded button and some little catches/hooks to release the doors.
Maybe some magnets that slide away from each other at the press of the button.

If i could even hide the button to look like the spike in the top of the turbine that would be great!


If you think its impossible please say likewise if you know how, or have seen this before I'd love to hear from you.

sounds cool, but everything about it will be difficult. Hardest I think will be magnets. Springs, catches and button will be simplest, but not simple by any definition of the word. Doable, sure. Difficult? Definitively. Hiding all the mechanics will be next to impossible, unless you camouflage it as elements on the model..

The engine assembly at the top is hollow, so you should be able to hide something in there. If you drill holes through the sides where the doors connect, you could probably make something work.

Another option would be to work with the base. There is a lot of space there. You might be able to set up some sort of gear/string arrangement so when you place the pod down, the doors open.

Either case is going to take a lot of finicky, fiddly engineering.

Doable? Probably.
Easy? No way.
Cool is you can make it work? Definably.

I think I just thought of a way to do it. Use the center-part of the turbine as a button, as you said. Switch the rod that goes through it with a push-rod. You'll have to solder five spars from the push-rod. Mount a spring below the bottom of the push-rod. Drill slits in all five of the control panels below the turbine. Attach an up-facing hook to each of the five spars, you'll probably have to do this after you've mounted the control panels if you want to hide the mechanism as well as possible. Make a slit in each door, which corresponds to the hooks and then glue cross-rods across all the slits for the hooks to hook onto. Lastly, drill large-ish holes in the control panels and glue push-pen springs in all the holes. Done.

Note: Use the details in the control panels to hide the mechanism.

I don't know if this is going to work, and I'm not saying it'll be easy, but it's doable, like I said in the previous post.

That model is a pain to build without something fancy like spring-loaded doors. Good luck!

simple: the pin in the engine is replaced with a button. If you press the button, it retracts the bars of metal stuck into the engine component of the drop pod. Once the magnet in the door is too far to remain attracted to the bar of retracted metal, the doors fall.

EDIT: see what sergeant sixkilla said.

you could make something "simple" as in that you press the top of the turbine which then pushes out 5 pins to open the doors...

thinking about it makes me wanna try it!

I would just be leery of putting a spring loaded model on the table. What if you accidentally pressed the button/latch and sent some of your opponent's models flying? I'm all for cool modifications, but this one...

@solofalcon
thats just an other cool factor to this modification...

"YOUR MODEL IS SQUISHED!"

Thanks for all the input guys, It's just something that I'm sure I saw/heard/read about but can't find. Maybe I dreamed it!

It could be a while before I actually undergo this project, because I'm just about to start magnetising my Dark Angels to go with the upcoming starter set rumours. all their paint is stripped and I'm ordering the supplies to go with this week, and the paints when all the current models have magnets.

I just think that it would be awesome to have your doors actually open up on impact with the table (provided theres reasonable space to do so ofcourse - it could even lead to the idea that one or more doors is blocked and so I have to disembark in other directions aswell as being a cool model to own toboot!

If I do try this I will keep a blog on here for others to follow or maybe copy