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Ahh, good point, I hadn't thought of that, looks like it'll be plastic if I attempt it, thanks

Your welcome... I only added that one as I've seen it done, and it wasn't pretty when it rusted lols...

it was a soul destroying sight

You can get Stainless steel rods relatively cheaply from yacht Chandlers, I use them on boats as they don't rust and won't expand. Non- Stainless steel fittings on a boat or yacht will just disintergrate without painstaking maintenance.

But yeah otherwise go with the original plastic rod plan.

I think trying to combat any rust problem isn't really worth it when I can just as easily use a plastic rod instead, thanks for the suggestion though.

It's been a bit longer than I would've liked, but I've got a new update as I begun to work on the leg armour.



Initially I'd planned to do it like the middle part, using vertical parts measured to length and then the horizontal parts inbetween, of course this left it able to rotate oddly because there was no rigidity, so I changed technique.



Much like with the heel I opted to use curved plasticard to give the strength which worked much better, because of the angle outwards it gave a sort of stepped effect, but still worked well.




A couple of scale shots with the dreadnought. It's pretty large this part. You will also notice that when placed against the plan it is missing the two protrusions either side of where the toe armour piece is. I'm leaving these off as I don't think that there is enough clearance between the armour parts and feel that it should change the style by leaving them off.



I've done the first two layers of the filler on the front of the part, I'll try to do some on the back of it tomorrow. It's shaping up nicely though. and will need a couple more layers and some sanding before I do the edging.

As said before I'm still waiting on the mould making material and will be doing that as soon as it arrives. Beyond that I've decided that waiting for the acrylic tube supplier is taking too long. The only place that sells at the length that makes it cost viable is very slow to reply to my contact so I'll be doing some of the tube shapes by hand and seeing how I can manage. If it doesn't work I might have wasted time but I can still order from them at a later date. If anybody has any question just ask.

cheers

Such clean curves, its really coming along well!

I always love seeing the construction method of your peices... and feel its such a shame to cover it when you do the filling stage... ah c'est la vie!!!

looking awesome as ever, and I truly cannot wait to see an entirely finished leg!!!

Thanks, hopefully I'll have a couple once I get my casting stuff though

Small mention, my casting order arrived today. I'll be taking my time with the casting so don't expect updates immediately. But I will do my best to try a few things and experiment with hollow castings and such with the toe piece.

Pattience and breathing is key, just don't panic!!!

Good luck and I look forward to seeing the results!!!

I really hope the steel rod I used in my titan doesn't rust. Hadn't actually considered that it might... :-/

love how its coming together. so how stylized is it going to be? are you going to be putting inscriptions and stuff in the trim? Just minor details i'm curious about.

Well, I suppose It'll depend on how well sealed it is, and whether ca glue is water proof. Even if it isn't I would imagine that the surface area vulnerable to erosion is going to be rather small, and that it should last a long while, provided it isnt in too humid an environment.

Thanks, yea, I had planned to leave that kind of stuff off the masters and the casts that I make. That way they can be added on layer easily enough with the option of making a second mould for some parts with more detail. Such as with forgeworld warhounds having two different types of leg graves. Because that kind of detail would require a much better level of greenstuff than I could do I'd need the practice first, and I can do that another time.

I started to do some casting last night. It didnt go great. I'll upload some photo's but basically I think I wasn't using the right kind of clay to seal the mould box to the acrylic plate the master toe was attached to. This meant that the box leaked slightly along the edges. To try and combat this I removed the plasticine I'd used rather than clay, and placed gaffer tape long the edges in an attempt to reduce the leak. They started to leak at a faster rate now though as the silicone was leaking into a layer between the tape and the lego. I sort of gave up in the end after I managed to get some clamps placed over the corners pushing it onto the plate. They press the lego down hard enough that it shouldnt leak to much now, but I've already wasted a good deal of silicone. Partly because I didnt catch all of it that leaked, but mostly because it leaked as it was nearing the end of it's workable pot life. Because I had small cups I did iit in three pours and by the third pour the first was getting a lot thicker. They will probably all have a large number of bubbles in too as I only got the hand of trying to knock out the bubbbles towards the last pour. I'l reserve judgement until it has set and I can remove the tape and lego, when I'll update here with the full message and photo's so you can see how I got along.

If you have any other questions just ask, thanks.

Keep trying! It'll come good eventually

Legos definatly seem the way to go here, someone on here had a pretty good tutorial on thier use.

Keep it coming, the progress is going great! We require more Titanicus!

It's definitely all about practice this so I'm accepting a shaky start, but I'm getting more comfortable with it now. Gheist, if you check out what I've posted below it explains, but I'm going to avoid them from now on except as support for plasticard. I hope this update will do demetri, although ignore the repeated parts from what I said earlier, I'll post the main message on warseer too so it's covering some stuff I've already said.

The casting has begun!

Okay, a pretty massive and momentous post this one, I've finally started to cast parts. I'll go through the quite stressful procedure from master to duplicate for you guys to browse and maybe learn from, as there were a few mistakes. I plan to improve for the next mould and casts though.



This is what I ordered and I'll list from left to right and top to bottom. The spray canister is the mould release agent, It's a wax and give a fine coating over the mould to help release parts. It's also quite easily smudged or rubbed off and I thin it might even take fingerprints that would show up on the cast, so I took care not to get any where I sprayed. The small bottle is the catalyst and the can beneath the main part of the resin. It's a 1 to 0.2 part mix of resin to catalyst by weight and although the catalyst is yellow it comes out white. The catalyst for the silicone is in the small can and the main rubber in the large can, this is a 1 to 20 mix of catalyst to silicone by weight. The service I got from Tiranti was really good, quick and well packaged (I have a load of foam peanuts all over my room though), and I'm intending to continue ordering from them.



This is my mould box with the master within. I used superglue to stick the master to a piece of acrylic and then positioned my lego wall so that the part was centered. In hindisght there are several mistakes here, but I'll get to those later.





To measure the volume of the mould I used a bag of bb's that I borrowed from my twin brother. I have seen other people use rice too and might give this a go as rice is probably easier to get level reading from. I just fill it to the top and then put into a measuring jug to get a rough volume, I rationalised that rounding up is better to be a little over rather than a little under as mixing small amounts seems difficult. I had talked about making some small test blocks to measure the exact density of the material to better judge amounts but as the information was on the can already I just used that. because the catalyst is only a small volume compared to the silicone, I ignored the small change in property that would be expected after mixing them, because I think that information is only about the rubber without the catalyst.



To mix my parts together I used s set of disposable cups and some wooden sticks along with a digital kitchen scale. To make sure the scales weren't damaged I just placed them in a ziplock bag and continued working. Because of the small size of my cups I have to pour the moulds in a few goes. After mixing the first pot I used a brush to paint the silicone onto the surface of the master which ensured that there were no bubbles in the surface of the silicone. To clean the brush I just put it into a little white spirit. After that I just poured it on at one corner and let it flow into the rest of the space. Whilst a thick liquid, the silicone managed to get into small gaps easily. One thing I hadnt done and will learn from is to seal where the master attached to the base plate. Because I used superglue at the center of the part the silicone bled under the edges and gave a lot of flash on the finished mould.






After the second pour the silicone started to leak under the lego wall. I had only used plasticine at the corners and although I had thought about putting it along the corners on the inside of the box I don't thin this would have helped. After the first picture I got more plasticine and put it along the remaining edges that hadn't leaked, and also onto the leaked one after clearing the silicone off. This still didnt work as the silicone began to force it's way in between the plasticine and the acrylic base, and the plasticine and the lego. After a large amount had leaked I decided to remove the plasticine, which made the mould box wonky, and try to stem the leak with gaffer tape instead. After sealing all the edges the same problem happened again, except that now there was a thick layer of silicone between the watertight gaffer tape and the wall of the mould box. Eventually I solved the problem but only by attaching several clamps to the corners and tightly wrapping tape which applied enough pressure to make the lego watertight with the base of the mould box. I managed to catch most of the leaking silicone in some cups and was able to re-use it later, but was left with an unfinished mould. After it had set all I did was place a few of the pieces of silicone that had set in the space I wanted to fill and made some more liquid silicone which I simply poured over it. This finally finished the mould off and I was left with a brick of silicone encased within lego.



This was the sight that greeted me after prising the lego from the mould box. Those parts to the left were from the base pieces of lego and had filled on the underside. This picture is my argument to anybody that casting with lego is a good idea, from now on I intend to just use some plasticard to weld a properly watertight box together. You can also see the bleeding on the inside of the mould where the parts attached to the base, and where the toe end attached to the toe mid. I cleaned this flash using a pair of scissors as a knife wouldnt cut the stretchy materials. Because this wasn't very accurate the parts cast from this need to be cleaned around the base by trimming down, but that is better than having to fill a gap in.



Mixing the resin for casting was much the same as mixing the silicone, only that it cures much faster and is much more liquid after mixing. I didnt quite mix enough but the cast is still usable because the surface tension pulled it up to the plate I placed on top. This means that the edges are all high enough.




The cast part is a stunning duplicate of the original, even down to things like slight changed in texture where I found it difficult to sand for example. It does mean that every flaw that I can see on the master is duplicated, but I think I can make do with it for now The cast wasnt quite perfect though and some of the rivets haven't filled in properly. For these I''m going to chop the miscast part off and just drill a space for a new rivet instead.

There a small amount of progress I forgot to picture, which is that I've now finished the ankle joint tube having just scratch built it. I'll try to get another update done tomorrow night, which should be to do with what I've got to do in the next few weeks and what I have to do to improve the casting process for next time.

I'm sorry about the drop in progress, the jobs are taking a lot of my time, the girlfriend taking the rest, but I'm trying to make progress whenever I'm motivated enough. If anybody has any questions just ask away and I'll answer as soon as I can, thanks.

Wow, trouble with the silicon aside, that cast is rediculously good!

Nice work Fiore, my advice is you buy or get hold of one of those green trays that you build lego on which has the little nobbly bits on lols. then you shouldnt have any problem with seepage.

other than that dude, great work!!!!

btw, which supplier did you go with in the end?

So are you going to set up an assembly line for these and sell them at massive profit?

 bibblles wrote:
So are you going to set up an assembly line for these and sell them at massive profit?

I would recommend against it, from a legal standpoint.

 mwnciboo wrote:

 bibblles wrote:
So are you going to set up an assembly line for these and sell them at massive profit?

I would recommend against it, from a legal standpoint.

Why not?
I personally see no problems whatsoever.

A: This is a completely unique model, he designed it from scratch. He has built it from scratch. This is all his own personal IP. Call it a Mars Asault mech and there is officially no link to GW whatsoever.

B: There is no official Warlord Titan model available regardless, so there's no clash in properties, but as stated above - it's all his own personal, unique IP anyway.

 Ovion wrote:

 mwnciboo wrote:

 bibblles wrote:
So are you going to set up an assembly line for these and sell them at massive profit?

I would recommend against it, from a legal standpoint.

Why not?
I personally see no problems whatsoever.

A: This is a completely unique model, he designed it from scratch. He has built it from scratch. This is all his own personal IP. Call it a Mars Asault mech and there is officially no link to GW whatsoever.

B: There is no official Warlord Titan model available regardless, so there's no clash in properties, but as stated above - it's all his own personal, unique IP anyway.

Its not a question of whether GW produces a model of this kind... its to do with intellectual property as well as image likeness, and as he has based the look of it on the mars pattern or at least the legs being similar to the image in the apocalypse book there is infringement of intellectual property there... hence why Chapterhouse is having ongoing issues with GW as GW is suing the pants off of them...

 AnUnearthlyChilde wrote:

 Ovion wrote:

 mwnciboo wrote:

 bibblles wrote:
So are you going to set up an assembly line for these and sell them at massive profit?

I would recommend against it, from a legal standpoint.

Why not?
I personally see no problems whatsoever.

A: This is a completely unique model, he designed it from scratch. He has built it from scratch. This is all his own personal IP. Call it a Mars Asault mech and there is officially no link to GW whatsoever.

B: There is no official Warlord Titan model available regardless, so there's no clash in properties, but as stated above - it's all his own personal, unique IP anyway.

Its not a question of whether GW produces a model of this kind... its to do with intellectual property as well as image likeness, and as he has based the look of it on the mars pattern or at least the legs being similar to the image in the apocalypse book there is infringement of intellectual property there... hence why Chapterhouse is having ongoing issues with GW as GW is suing the pants off of them...

That would seem like a problem, except for the fact that people on ebay auction commissions for the regular warlord all the time usually around the 400 dollar mark.

Guys lets not turn this into an IP discussion. Please dont drag this OT.

 bibblles wrote:

 AnUnearthlyChilde wrote:

 Ovion wrote:

 mwnciboo wrote:

 bibblles wrote:
So are you going to set up an assembly line for these and sell them at massive profit?

I would recommend against it, from a legal standpoint.

Why not?
I personally see no problems whatsoever.

A: This is a completely unique model, he designed it from scratch. He has built it from scratch. This is all his own personal IP. Call it a Mars Asault mech and there is officially no link to GW whatsoever.

B: There is no official Warlord Titan model available regardless, so there's no clash in properties, but as stated above - it's all his own personal, unique IP anyway.

Its not a question of whether GW produces a model of this kind... its to do with intellectual property as well as image likeness, and as he has based the look of it on the mars pattern or at least the legs being similar to the image in the apocalypse book there is infringement of intellectual property there... hence why Chapterhouse is having ongoing issues with GW as GW is suing the pants off of them...

That would seem like a problem, except for the fact that people on ebay auction commissions for the regular warlord all the time usually around the 400 dollar mark.

That's still breech of IP, like buying stolen goods off ebay. The fact you don't know it's stolen goods doesn't make it a legal sale. The fact that something is available on Ebay doesn't make it Legitimate. GW will not close them down because it's not financially viable to do it, when someone is production lining Titan's using moulds and resin, well that's whole new ball game. Just because someone isn't prosecuting you or pursuing you, doesn't legitimise what you are doing.

On the subject of OT, it doesn't matter because "fiorehellheart" is the driving force of this thread. We do however need to be careful about encouraging people to break the law.

It's a unique work inspired by something else, but not actually the IP of GW in any way whatsoever.

If they had an actual model for it, or held a trademark / copyright on 'Mars', 'Warlord', 'Titan', or this was a direct copy of artwork / models that GW had I could see it being an issue, but being not one part of this really has anything to do with GW in the realms of 'copyright' or IP infringement I don't see how there'd be an issue.

The reason GW went after Chapterhouse, is Chapterhouse was making models for Games Workshop units, that specifically attached to GW property and was using GW names.

Furthermore, the Chapterhouse lawsuit has been stretched out for so long due to the tenuous nature of it.

Could you possibly send me that CAD file so I can use some ideas on a warhound?

 Vitruvian XVII wrote:
Guys lets not turn this into an IP discussion. Please dont drag this OT.

 Ovion wrote:
It's a unique work inspired by something else, but not actually the IP of GW in any way whatsoever.

If they had an actual model for it, or held a trademark / copyright on 'Mars', 'Warlord', 'Titan', or this was a direct copy of artwork / models that GW had I could see it being an issue, but being not one part of this really has anything to do with GW in the realms of 'copyright' or IP infringement I don't see how there'd be an issue.

It doesn't matter if the model exists or not, that's the whole point of Intellectual Property (non-physical/ Intangible). The fact that Warlord Titan's exist, in both Models and in their stories etc etc. means you will have a hell of a job proving your work was unique, unless you give it a third leg or an extra arm.

IP is a minefield you cannot make broadbrush statements along the lines of "So long as it's Unique" you are fine. It's not, you need proper legal advice from a suitably qualified person and equally this can be contested at every step. Look at SAMSUNG and APPLE at the moment, you simply cannot just say "Tweak it abit, look it's original and unique now, therefore I can sell it as my own product". Utter nonsense.