[MOC] AT-AT in progress

[Mandalorianknight]

Very nicely made- I'm sitting by my UCS AT-AT right now, so I'd keep looking between the two while going through the images. While they're about the same scale you definitely have some major changes to the detailing and skeleton. 

As for the next, I can't tell for sure. my immediate thought in that last image was that the technic bars would snap like twigs, but with the wheels to support I think it's about the same as the UCS one. It'll droop, but I don't think it'll snap off. If i were you, I'd buy the parts and check manually to make sure. (Not the entire AT-AT- just the neck and attachment points. The body is heavy enough that you can treat it as a fixed support, and then you can just use a weight in the right spot instead of manually building the whole head.)

[erik1]

27 minutes ago, Mandalorianknight said:

Very nicely made- I'm sitting by my UCS AT-AT right now, so I'd keep looking between the two while going through the images. While they're about the same scale you definitely have some major changes to the detailing and skeleton. 

As for the next, I can't tell for sure. my immediate thought in that last image was that the technic bars would snap like twigs, but with the wheels to support I think it's about the same as the UCS one. It'll droop, but I don't think it'll snap off. If i were you, I'd buy the parts and check manually to make sure. (Not the entire AT-AT- just the neck and attachment points. The body is heavy enough that you can treat it as a fixed support, and then you can just use a weight in the right spot instead of manually building the whole head.)

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it a lot!

In my design the head doesn't get any support from the wheels. In the UCS I've noticed that the head sags down and pushes the wheels togheter, since you own it, does the head get extra support from the wheels? I've looked at the instructions but it's hard to tell.

If the technic beams aren't strong enough alone, I need to re-design the neck. I'm not going to build it in real life, it would be too expensive, so testing it isn't something I'll do.

[Mandalorianknight]

4 hours ago, erik1 said:

Thanks for the feedback, I appreciate it a lot!

In my design the head doesn't get any support from the wheels. In the UCS I've noticed that the head sags down and pushes the wheels togheter, since you own it, does the head get extra support from the wheels? I've looked at the instructions but it's hard to tell.

If the technic beams aren't strong enough alone, I need to re-design the neck. I'm not going to build it in real life, it would be too expensive, so testing it isn't something I'll do.

The technic beams are distributing the forces applied to them onto the wheels, due to, as you mention, the head sagging and pushing the wheels together (ang against the technic beams). They also restrict the motion of the head- if it was just the beams, at least in the UCS model, the head would sag a lot more and the beams would likely snap. Looking at your model, I think a similar thing to the UCS model would happen wherein the wheels will support those beams.

[erik1]

On 7/20/2025 at 12:45 AM, Mandalorianknight said:

The technic beams are distributing the forces applied to them onto the wheels, due to, as you mention, the head sagging and pushing the wheels together (ang against the technic beams). They also restrict the motion of the head- if it was just the beams, at least in the UCS model, the head would sag a lot more and the beams would likely snap. Looking at your model, I think a similar thing to the UCS model would happen wherein the wheels will support those beams.

I get the sense that I've been waaay to optimistic about how strong Lego pieces are. The legs will carry a lot of weight and they don't carry it in a straight column, but the internal technic skeleton moves to the side (a 2-hole technic beam to the side), which I guess is too weak to carry the load.

I guess that building something as complicated, heavy and fragile as an AT-AT when you try to do what I did, with poseable legs that are also thin, and a poseable neck, is too difficult if you don't test the lego in real life. I feel like giving up, since it's not fun to build if it wouldn't work in real life.