Blackadders WIP Warlord Titan

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Have you read anything by Lovecraft, Blackadder? I think you'd like his writing style ;)

Anyway, the torso is really starting to impress, but it looks like the hood above the neck is a little crooked?
 
Yeah I just tacked it on for reference so I could get the angle right for the neck and I haven't bothered to straighten it yet. There's a lot more to do with the head and I need a clearance guide. Sharp of you to pick that up. Keeps me on my toes.........

A little Item before the daily toil, I have always wanted to include a curved girder in one of my constructs but finding a logical place in a Lucius pattern war machine is difficult. I finally hit on the idea of including it in the ceiling/void generator flooring where strength is needed to support the void generators but lightness is also necessary due to the height above ground of the vehicle at this point. I incorporated stress/lightening cutouts to cut down on the weight of the structure of the real life biped.

http://i.imgur.com/ATwDa.jpg
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It's an interesting point at least I am given to understand that cutting holes in a girder actually increase its load bearing strength per mass. Are there any structural engineers in the audience that can confirm or refute this? I am also in the understanding that a hollow cylinder is stronger that a solid shaft of the same mass but larger diameter. again clarification would be appreciated.

Just a point of conversation to clear up some of my ignorance on the subject.
 
I know I am wasting a lot of time on the interior but there is an interesting aspect of making a workable environment for the crew. If you don't allow for the crew there is no concept of scale. Yes you can plunk a 2/3 meters tall entity on a battle board and all the tiny 28 mm tall denizens look minuscule but the titan just looks like a scaled up human in armour. But give the titan an interior with decks and work stations seats and monitors and suddenly the scale of the thing grips you. FW models are well designed giant vehicles (at least the ones I'm interested in) but when in a setting other than a battle board there has to be something to convey the size it is supposed to represent.

http://i.imgur.com/SVZqP.jpg
ai.imgur.com_SVZqPl.webp


In keeping with scale this construct needs heavy internal bracing to be believable. I may have to rework the girders in the Eng. compartment.

http://i.imgur.com/TeFZ3.jpg
ai.imgur.com_TeFZ3l.webp
 
Yes I definitely have to rework the Engineering interior.

http://i.imgur.com/YAJgk.jpg
ai.imgur.com_YAJgkl.webp


The Command deck knees and hanging knees installed I don't know what the modern term for them is but in 18th century shipbuilding they were called knees. Surveyors would go out into forests looking for Oak trees with the desired angled branches called 'compass timber' and mark them for the cutters fell the trees and they were brought to the shipyard sometimes years before the ship was built. There they were seasoned and cut down to the proper size and installed in the hull to support the deck. Trees selected for the Navy were marked with the Admiralty broad arrow mark

awww.fishermensvoice.com_images_1207kingsbroadarrow2.webp


signifying the tree was the property of the Navy and no one else could fell it.

http://i.imgur.com/NwtJQ.jpg
ai.imgur.com_NwtJQl.webp
 
The_Blackadder said:
Yeah I just tacked it on for reference so I could get the angle right for the neck and I haven't bothered to straighten it yet. There's a lot more to do with the head and I need a clearance guide. Sharp of you to pick that up. Keeps me on my toes........

Ah ok, all good then!

About the holes in the girders: I'm no engineer, but I do remember something from physics class about a hollow tube being stronger than a solid one. Also, the pyramids where built with a similar technique, with arches inside instead of solid stone, and they have proven pretty sturdy… And let's not forget that girders with holes look cooler :cool:
 
Yes of equal mass though. It's interesting that if you bore half the mass out of a solid shaft you only decrease the strength by about 10%.

Someone asked that I include a figure with the model to get a prospective as to the scale. I found a tank figure sans base in my scrap box which should be a fair representative of an average sized human and glued a thin piece of plasticard to his feet. The result is astounding to me, at 26 inches the amended design height of this model the figure is minuscule.

http://i.imgur.com/A4l3z.jpg
ai.imgur.com_A4l3zl.webp


BTW the carapace side and back plates are drying in these images and stiffen the structure immensely.

http://i.imgur.com/A4l3z.jpg
ai.imgur.com_A4l3zl.webp


I was concerned at the flexibility of the carapace which had a tendency to droop under the influence of gravity so I assembled it upside down to negate that effect.

http://i.imgur.com/056pz.jpg
ai.imgur.com_056pzl.webp
 
I've come to the realization that although the legs are movable I only show one pose so here's some with the left foot forward.

Note if you will that the carapace skirt is too long and I'll be shortening it 15 MM also that the cabinets in my work area are too low to be taking pictures under from now on.

The scale height has gone from 120 feet/36.576 meters scale height to 159 feet/48.4632 meters. I'm still an inch and a half shorter than the DS Titan and I plan to shorten the engineering section half an inch which should round out the height to about 160 feet when finished and all the detail is added.

I happened to be crossing a bridge the other day over a sea level freighter port, Port Newark if you must know and I had my GPS set to give me the elevation above mean sea level. As I crested the bridge the readout was 130 feet and I thought to myself, "If I were in a Warlord cockpit this is how high I would be." I was looking down at everything even the cargo container gantries; believe me, that's high! A lot higher than 130 feet looks when you pace it out on the ground. I like to make references like that; Some times when flying the captain will say, We're cruising at 35,000 feet " and I think, that's the depth on the Mindanao trench." or 29,000 feet, "That's the height of Mount Everest." It kind of brings home the scale of what you're looking at when flying.

http://i.imgur.com/yFDUd.jpg
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http://i.imgur.com/775fm.jpg
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http://i.imgur.com/KdIhk.jpg
ai.imgur.com_KdIhkl.webp
 
I had no precise figures so I rationalized from the FW models. Starting with the Warhound they made their model 10.5 inches tall thereabout. 10.5 divided by 1.125 (the scale constant for a six foot tall man) is 9.333 which means that a warhound is 9.3 times taller than a six foot tall figure therefore a warhound is 9.3 X 6 = 56 feet for the height of a warhound depending on the pose or 17.07 meters tall. going further the reaver titan model is approximately 16.5 inches tall according to the FW spec's so a 'real' Reaver by my calculations would be 16.5/1.25 X 6 = 79..2 feet or 24.146 meters tall. There is no model for a Warlord so I divided 16.5/10.5 X 16.5 = 25.905 inches X 6 ft = 155.4 feet or 47.387 meters which is what my model approximates. Going further using 1.57 as the new constant (16.5/10.5) gives you 40.6 inches tall for an Imperator Titan and 63.8 inches for an Emperor Titan the last two of which would be totally impracticable for the average game board. I much prefer making 9.5 inches the new bench mark making the Imperator Titan about 35 inches tall and the Emperor Titan 45 inches tall which is still too tall for practical gaming and actual scale height of 270 feet or 82.3 meters tall for the Emperor Titan.

Incidentally using 1.57 as the constant would give you 382.8 feet or 116.7 meters for the Emperor Titan.
 
The carapace is going together quickly, there is a discrepancy in the DS model that I didn't incorporate in mine in that the carapace isn't as deep front to back as the Epic model. Why Mr Smith chose to make it narrower front to back isn't known but for me the balance is important as I want it to stand without a base and with the legs in any position so I need the balance point to be directly over the waist pivot.

Right now the weight of the torso is 1.6 lbs about 0.725 kilo.


http://i.imgur.com/LvcQr.jpg
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http://i.imgur.com/3kROw.jpg
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I'm trying to make the upper works as light as possible without compromising the detail. There is a fine line between overbuilding and the right amount of detail. I need to demonstrate the Warlord as I want it to be and counterbalance the CG with adding weights to the rear area as I did with Lucie. I'm hoping to pull it in in under 5 Kilo.
 
I have no qualms that the feet and legs will support however much the torso will weight/mass or the joints for that matter. What I am concerned with is the balance. Just because the legs when directly under the center of mass is able to sustain that weight but when the legs are in a position that one leg must be under that center of mass and sustain that ad infinitum while the other leg ostensibly supports nothing and maintains that support for more than the split second that you or I would have to due to a momentary shift in balance.

Do you understand the problem?

I took a shot front and back for reference.

http://i.imgur.com/bBATf.jpg
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http://i.imgur.com/YOQZ9.jpg
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The Sun is well over the yardarm; Martini time.
 
Is that kinda like the upper arms? It's hard to get a feel of scale when they are not attached to the model, but they are looking very nice.
 
Yes these are the upper arm stanchions that connect the elbow to the shoulder under the carapace. Right now they look like very complex salt and pepper shakers to me but when inverted and affixed under the carapace they should do nicely. The length is right but they may need bulking up.

Meanwhile I need gun barrels. PVC is out of the question and I won't use cardboard. A couple of years ago I found an old beach umbrella on the beach (where else) it had broke as cheap stuff usually does and got left behind when the bathers had left the littoral boundary. The pole was made of plastic and it has been kicking around my garage for years. Damn me if the shaft isn't a 31 mm styrene tube. Now two feet of styrene tubing if you could buy it would cost $10 to $20 bucks; probably more than the whole umbrella did. Here's the lesson, watch the recycling bins they're full of gold.
 
Part of the problem of a construction of this type and magnitude is keeping the upper works light enough that it won't be top heavy. In particular the ruddy great guns stuck out a foot/0.3 meters from the CG imparting a tipping arm that can be measured in a substantial fraction of a pound/kilo. I have stated previously that PVC tubing will be too much mass for stability but to make a sturdy enough tube is difficult.

I have now what I believe to be the solution.

Starting with a full sheet of 'Evergreen 0.5 mm styrene I divided it into 6 equal parts of 50 mm width. The reason for this is that while bending a 50 mm wide strip tightly around a PVC tube is well within my capacity bending evenly a 150 mm sheet is not; you may prove better than I at that endeavor.

http://i.imgur.com/QWafC.jpg
ai.imgur.com_QWafCl.webp


Once I have a proper overlap wound and cemented I opted to glue the remaining tail of the strip on as well for seam reinforcement.

I now had 6, 50 mm long tubes of the required diameter.

http://i.imgur.com/xzn0f.jpg
ai.imgur.com_xzn0fl.webp


Sliding the relatively near perfect tubes back onto the PVC tube and mating the seams I applied a liberal amount of cement on the periphery of the seam I pushed the segments together until tiny beads of plastic oozed from the seam and allowed to dry the result being an extremely light near perfectly round 150 mm styrene tube to build my gun barrels around.
 

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