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Doing another deff dread, and considering magnetizing arms simply for transportation since my other dreads take up so much room. I have one that uses a boxnaut, and the way the arms on that one work got me wondering if I could just put a huge pin/peg. The SM dread has pegs sticking out that the arms just fit, was wondering if I could essentially do the same with a deff dread instead of all the work involved in magnetizing the arms, and would possibly stay on better since the arms are extremely heavy.

Would probably use a round peg of sprue glued to the arm, then drill a hole where the arms slot in.

Do you mean like a push fit that you can remove? I don't see why that wouldn't work, but I also don't really see how it's less work than just drilling a hole for a magnet?

If you decide to magnetize I'd recommend using 5mm x 2mm N52 magnets. Bigger CCW arm in particular won't hold with smaller magnets.

I’ve used just pinning for smaller things (Chimera turret weapons for example), so it can work, but the dread arms are large and long, so they’ll have a lot of moment and are likely to droop. If you want to skip magnets I would suggest you need to have two pegs / pins per arm, to lock them in position, or you’re going to need a very tight fit.

A lot of GW pre made pegs are square or hex, but that would be very difficult to make the hole for.

The problem with just pegs is that gravity and physical playing with models would mean you'd need a very very snug fit for a pin system to work. Even then it might wear over time or droop or such.

Now sometimes you do need pins and magnets, where the magnets hold and the pins deal with forces - eg a few dragons have quite long wings so often you need a pin rod to give some strength up-down whilst the magnet holds the wing to the body. But in general I don't think just pins would work on their own


They can work for things like turrets and such; where the main body of the turret is chunky and the barrel is very light; that can work as the turret is sitting flat on the model

For a dreadnought arm, a combo of pin/peg and magnet is likely to give best results.

 Blackie wrote:
If you decide to magnetize I'd recommend using 5mm x 2mm N52 magnets. Bigger CCW arm in particular won't hold with smaller magnets.

That was my biggest concern, the magnets just not being strong enough to keep the arm in place. You think the big 5mm ones would work though?

I used pins here. They are holding up the old metal arms, but are also quite long, well supported inside, and in a pair to stop rotation as well as support each other. The plan is to be able to reuse these on the modern Deff Dread. Unfortunately, this is quite recent - so still to see if it stands the test of time... (and playing...)

i 3d printed tubes with a square hole in it on my 3d printer for my elder knight holds bettter then magnets because magnets let the arms drop down

Square tubing should also work if you don't have access to a 3d printer. I should get some of that...

Commissar Yarrork wrote:

 Blackie wrote:
If you decide to magnetize I'd recommend using 5mm x 2mm N52 magnets. Bigger CCW arm in particular won't hold with smaller magnets.

That was my biggest concern, the magnets just not being strong enough to keep the arm in place. You think the big 5mm ones would work though?

Worked for me for the ork deff dread, which has one of the extra melee arm that is really massive and heavy. A smaller magnet would definitely fail to hold it.

Ranged ork weapons, or anything that size, should be ok even with smaller 3mm x 2mm instead. Maybe they could be ok for the SM dread, but I'd still recommend 5mm x 2mm over those smaller ones. It also depends on the weapons, for something like the SW great axe and shield the 3mm x 2mm magnets would probably fail.

I have pinned lots of stuff instead of magnetising over the years. Where you can I would suggest using two or three pins for stability and strength, that should stop things drooping/moving.

I use paperclips for the pins as they're super cheap for loads.