[WIP][MOC] T-70 X-wing starfighter

[atlas]

from flickr:

Almost done here. Main obstacle is getting the two sides of the hexagon (top and bottom of each side) to match up together whilst staying inside the profile of the rest of the build and not being too gappy. I'm pleased with the plating of the hull you can see creeping its way forward along the bottom half of the fuselage. That's the coverage and tolerance of the angles that I'm going for. I resolved some major strength problems in the middle of the fuselage, so now it's moderately swooshable.All going well next post will be of the completed model.

 

Edited March 9, 2017 by atlas

[All in the Reflexes]

Looking really nice, cant wait to see the finished article!

[Kevin Yoo]

deleted

Edited December 21, 2022 by Kevin Yoo

[atlas]

Thank you both. Hopefully Ill be finished soon.

[atlas]

Well that was a long "soon" but I'm happy to say that I am actually finished with this for real now. I'm just waiting on a handful of parts to arrive and then I will be ready to shoot. In the meantime, here's some comparisons that I used while I was revisiting this and reviewing some things before I finished it. I noticed that there was something that looked a little bit off - the engines were too short and small, which made the fuselage look much bigger than it really is. So I fixed that up today. On the surface it looks quite a simple change, but all four engine assemblies had to be broken down and rebuilt to allow for the changes. The wings were also moved forward to a more correct position.

 

And here is a comparison of an orthogonal plan view and the final iteration of my model. This is what I used to figure out what was making it look a little bit odd. The contrast is pretty strong here so I put it in a spoiler

Spoiler

Overall I am pretty satisifed. There are a few problems that I would ideally have hoped to deal with but couldn't get over in the end. The things that really jump out at me are the size of the slopes next to the engines on the wings, the little nubs the extend along the fuselage inbetween that and the engines, the cockpit, and the lack of a really distinct shape for the nosecone. I don't think they detract from the rest too much though. To be honest I am glad it's finished and I'm looking forward to sharing some proper photos. After that I'll move on to something else.

Edited February 2, 2018 by atlas

[Bender222]

Amazing. Are those stickers on the backs of the wings? How are the foils attached? Any rubber bands?

Edited February 2, 2018 by Bender222

[atlas]

16 hours ago, Bender222 said:

Amazing. Are those stickers on the backs of the wings? How are the foils attached? Any rubber bands?

Thanks. They are not stickers, I painted those parts. But you could get exactly the same effect with lego stickers cut from sheets. I just chose paint as that is my preference and the end result is the same. There is only 1 rubber band in the entire model, at the very front of the nose. I added it very recently to strengthen the structure and pull each panel toward the middle of the fuselage. It isn't absolutely essential, but adding it was an improvement.

There aren't any rubber bands in the wing mechanism. Here is a photo of the mechanism I used:

https://www.flickr.com/photos/atlaser/28064722126/in/album-72157670052809384/

The turquoise 1x6 plate is now a 1x8 plate. Each wing is basically built studs-up with plates on top of these plates that extend from the centre axle. The snot-built parts of the wings are attached to that plate construction with bracket pieces. I should mention that this mechanism is quite weak and if you hold the model as if it were in flight, the wings can droop a little bit. If I had my time again I would have built a much stronger mechanism for the wings.

 

Edited February 3, 2018 by atlas

[Kit Bricksto]

21 minutes ago, atlas said:

I should mention that this mechanism is quite weak and if you hold the model as if it were in flight, the wings can droop a little bit. If I had my time again I would have built a much stronger mechanism for the wings.

 

If you have room for another 1x2 technic brick on the other side of the mechanism, you could swap that 3L technic pin for two standard black ones and feed a 4L bar through them. That's what I did with my X-Wing and it really makes all the difference. The wings stay in position but are still easily folded back into flight mode, while it's not as stiff as Psiaki's original concept. 

[atlas]

2 hours ago, Kit Bricksto said:

If you have room for another 1x2 technic brick on the other side of the mechanism, you could swap that 3L technic pin for two standard black ones and feed a 4L bar through them. That's what I did with my X-Wing and it really makes all the difference. The wings stay in position but are still easily folded back into flight mode, while it's not as stiff as Psiaki's original concept. 

I think I made that change earlier in the build. I am pretty sure that I put another technic brick on the back side of it while I was still fiddling with that part. I'm no engineer, so I was surprised when I was messing with it (back when I was still making that part) that the wings stayed open, shut, or half open. They balance each other out so they'll stay where you want them to. The issue I have is that the whole mechanism is only 2 plates deep. It really needs an extra set of arms to eliminate the little bit of wobble and droop that you get from having only two. I think the reason that I went with two is that it you had two arms for each side that plates would need to cross over into each other. Basically having several parts occupy the same spaces, which is impossible. The whole thing is very crude honestly.

[Kit Bricksto]

8 hours ago, atlas said:

I think I made that change earlier in the build. I am pretty sure that I put another technic brick on the back side of it while I was still fiddling with that part. I'm no engineer, so I was surprised when I was messing with it (back when I was still making that part) that the wings stayed open, shut, or half open. They balance each other out so they'll stay where you want them to. The issue I have is that the whole mechanism is only 2 plates deep. It really needs an extra set of arms to eliminate the little bit of wobble and droop that you get from having only two. I think the reason that I went with two is that it you had two arms for each side that plates would need to cross over into each other. Basically having several parts occupy the same spaces, which is impossible. The whole thing is very crude honestly.

I see. I thought the problem was that the wings flopped open and closed when the model was tilted. Fixing the twist inside the individual arms is a lot harder of course. If you wanted to have two arms on each wing you'd need four studs length for the mechanism (plus one on either side to have room for the technic 1x2s). If you have that kind of space and don't mind the additional work  of rebuilding the wings yet again, then I can assure you that it makes a great difference. I orignally thought I'd get away with the slim version on my X-Wing too but it just didn't work to my satisfaction.

If the model is just meant for display anyway though, it probably doesn't matter that some parts are a bit wobbly. ;)

Edited February 3, 2018 by Kit Bricksto

[atlas]

21 hours ago, Kit Bricksto said:

I see. I thought the problem was that the wings flopped open and closed when the model was tilted. Fixing the twist inside the individual arms is a lot harder of course. If you wanted to have two arms on each wing you'd need four studs length for the mechanism (plus one on either side to have room for the technic 1x2s). If you have that kind of space and don't mind the additional work  of rebuilding the wings yet again, then I can assure you that it makes a great difference. I orignally thought I'd get away with the slim version on my X-Wing too but it just didn't work to my satisfaction.

If the model is just meant for display anyway though, it probably doesn't matter that some parts are a bit wobbly. ;)

Yeah. I think it might be possible to strengthen the mechanism but that would have to happen if I revisit this in the future, because I just want to finish it now. I started it over 2 years ago. When moving it around it is stable enough for the most part, and it will stay put if left alone, which is all I really needed for something that is purely meant to be a model.

[atlas]

On 04/02/2018 at 5:32 AM, Kit Bricksto said:

I see. I thought the problem was that the wings flopped open and closed when the model was tilted. Fixing the twist inside the individual arms is a lot harder of course. If you wanted to have two arms on each wing you'd need four studs length for the mechanism (plus one on either side to have room for the technic 1x2s). If you have that kind of space and don't mind the additional work  of rebuilding the wings yet again, then I can assure you that it makes a great difference. I orignally thought I'd get away with the slim version on my X-Wing too but it just didn't work to my satisfaction.

If the model is just meant for display anyway though, it probably doesn't matter that some parts are a bit wobbly. ;)

I thought I should thank you for the suggestion to double the armature. I tried it yesterday and it was a lot easier than I thought. For whatever reason, when I was first making the mechanism I was under the impression that the arms had to cross each other and so having more than one attachment point for each wing was ruled out. Not so. All I had to do was duplicate the first two arms and clear out some space on the inside, and then move around some plates under each engine assembly to fit the new scissors. I don't know where I got that idea from. What's more is that clearing out that space and doubling the scissor has completely transformed the durability of this thing. Because each wing is now stabilised at two points, there is no wobble whatsoever and everything sits where it should. Now the entire fuselage is much more rigid than before and it's even swooshable. The fuselage and wings assembly now also stay perfectly perpendicular to each other, as they should, instead of having room to wobble like before. I'm chuffed, especially because I haven't had to make any sacrifices with the exterior. A great difference indeed. I was dreading have to do the surgery on it but it was painless and it's a great result. Thanks for the tip man.

[Kit Bricksto]

2 hours ago, atlas said:

I thought I should thank you for the suggestion to double the armature. I tried it yesterday and it was a lot easier than I thought. For whatever reason, when I was first making the mechanism I was under the impression that the arms had to cross each other and so having more than one attachment point for each wing was ruled out. Not so. All I had to do was duplicate the first two arms and clear out some space on the inside, and then move around some plates under each engine assembly to fit the new scissors. I don't know where I got that idea from. What's more is that clearing out that space and doubling the scissor has completely transformed the durability of this thing. Because each wing is now stabilised at two points, there is no wobble whatsoever and everything sits where it should. Now the entire fuselage is much more rigid than before and it's even swooshable. The fuselage and wings assembly now also stay perfectly perpendicular to each other, as they should, instead of having room to wobble like before. I'm chuffed, especially because I haven't had to make any sacrifices with the exterior. A great difference indeed. I was dreading have to do the surgery on it but it was painless and it's a great result. Thanks for the tip man.

Wow, I'm really happy to hear that worked so well! I assumed that you knew Psiaki's X-Wing and had adapted your mechanism from his. As he uses two arms per wing I thought you had probably ruled that option out for a good reason. Maybe you didn't have enough space because of the droid slot or something like that. Glad to hear that wasn't the case though and I hope you get even more joy out of this already fantastic model! And you're very welcome for the tip, that's what these forums should be about. You didn't share this WIP to show off after all but to discuss it with other builders. It always makes me sad when WIP-Threads just get One-sentence-answers, so I'm glad to have been of help. :) 

[atlas]

more photos in the pipeline!

https://www.flickr.com/photos/atlaser/41379879581/in/dateposted-public/

 

[TemjinStrife]

Nice! Any plans for instructions/LDD/other means to recreate?

[atlas]

11 hours ago, TemjinStrife said:

Nice! Any plans for instructions/LDD/other means to recreate?

thanks. I don't think so for a digital build or step by step instructions. As it stands i am still not completely happy with the front, but it's complete for now. Some breakdown or interior images might be easier.

[atlas]

  Hello again, just posted a thread of the basically complete second edition of this model. Here it is :