[WIP][MOC] X-wing, alt-build of the 10497 Galaxy Explorer

Astatine-209 · Saturday at 04:37 PM

I'm not sure if this post should've been posted in the Star Wars forums, and I apologise if I'm mistaken in posting it here.

I've only seen 1 X-wing alt-build of the 10497 Galaxy explorer, that being the one designed by Clinton Matos (he has a blog post about it, it's pretty cool!). This surprised me, considering that the 10497 has the official X-wing canopy included, with quadruples of important engine parts. I decided to take a shot at it myself. I wanted to see if I could make a working S-foil mechanism with the Galaxy Explorer's pieces, as Clinton Matos' X-wing's foils have to be moved individually.

I based the S-foil mechanism on set 75301, the 2021 play-scale X-wing. It's a very simple and elegant design, probably the best out of any official X-wing yet (even though the wings don't all rotate around the same central axis) and was quite easy to implement with the available technic parts (or so I thought). The S-foils are connected into parallelograms (red and blue), which are then sheared into the X shape by another assembly (highlighted green) being pushed downwards.

After deciding on the mechanism, I designed the nose. I was inspired by pictures of BaufmanBricks' X-wing. The nose is too square to be accurate to the actual X-wing, but I think it looks decent on the "finished" model.

I then built up the core section at the same time as the wings. This was by far the hardest part, as I kept running out of plates (and parts in general). Below is a render of the "finished" product.

As far as I can tell, no illegal techniques were used.

Finally, it was time to build it and test if the mechanism worked in real life, with the weight of those massive wings. After finding out that building it was almost impossible, and making some last changes, I could try it out.

Spoiler

It broke after about 5 actuations.

I actually suspected that this might happen, as the push rod (previously highlighted green) in the mechanism relies on clutch power to stay together. The problem lies in the fact that you push on the middle section, which transfers the force through stud connections, highlighted below with dotted green.

I left it be, because I thought that I would be transferring the force tangentially to the stud connection, which wouldn't force it apart, i n t h e o r y. And if it ain't broke, don't fix it.

Well. It broke and I'll have to fix it.

I think I'll be able to replace the assembly with the two white technic beams included in the set. Unfortunately, one of them is used in the nose, where it's quite important for structural stability. :ugh:

Finally, here are some photos of the build model. I apologise for the relatively low quality pictures, I'm not getting the DSLR out for a broken moc.

PS: This thing is HEAVY! I was quite surprised. According to Lego Studio it weighs almost 0.7 kg. I think it must be denser than the Galaxy Explorer. It's also swooshable, excepting the fact that the wings don't hold together.
PPS: I built an astromech too.