Project Mars Emperor Titan - feet

The Mars emperor titan is now starting to take shape.  The most important part of this build with be the legs and feet as this will ultimately be carrying alot of weight considering the emperor titan has a cathedral literally as the top structure (estimating all the plastic will weigh upward of 20kgs).  I will be trying to hollow out or use as little volume to minimise the weight especially in the top structure).

The feet is cut out from egg grate and measures around 30cm (this is 21 egg grate squares from edge to edge)

I managed to find an australian seller of wooden balls called wood bits and bobs (http://woodbits.com.au).  For the feet joints, I will be using 2 x 2" wooden balls as the sockets.  This will be built up using egg grate and plastic card to ensure a tight socket joint.

Before making up the housing, I will be pre-drilling the wooden balls to allow some nuts to fit in first.  A forstner drill bit is handy to create a slot for the nut to fit in.

To make the legs strong I will be using threaded metal rods which will screw in the feet and hip joints and carry the load so to speak once the top structure is built.

Pics of the socket joint and threads in next post

Project Mars Emperor Titan - hip joint

So after the top plates were cut and sanded down, now the sides of the hip joint was cut out of 2mm plasticard.  It is easier to use a hole cutter first before trimming the sides as shown below.  Yet again a light sand is required to size the hole to 41mm so it just fits over the pipe ends.

A useful hobby tip is to use priming fluid as an all in all glue.  Most traditional glues only bond like to like plastics i.e. styrene to styrene or ABS to ABS and not different types of plastics together.  After a bit of research, the key ingredient to a popular solvent is methyl ethyl ketone.  This is commonly found in PVC priming fluid (comes in clear or red tint) and is normally used for cleaning and priming PVC pipes.  For safety, it is always good to wear gloves when using any chemicals.  I found using priming fluid to be very effective at bonding egg grate (ABS plastic) and plasticard (styrene plastic).  For a strong bond, I use quick clamps to ensure proper pressure is applied.

Once the hip section is glued it was carefully sanded to make sure all the edges were squared up.  The hip joint is effectively complete and 25mm PVC pipes were cut and join 2 x 25mm compression couplers and 2 x 32mm compression couplers together.  Note,  one side of the 32mm coupler was cut and sanded down to reduce the total width to around 32cm from end to end. 

Project Mars Emperor Titan

I have been following Black Adder's great work on his Lucius Emperor titan project and thought I will use some of his ideas and also implement some of my own in making a Mars version.  The Mars emperor titan is an iconic titan from the titan legions boxed set and bigger than most buildings.

In terms of scale, this titan is approximately 2 times the height of a warlord titan with a warlord height of around 23" making an emperor approximately 46".

Using Black adder's posts as a guide, I started with the hip joint first.

The aim of this project is to source parts which are readily available in Australia from Bunnings and other sources as I find it.  I hope any reader can follow if they wanted to build one too!

To create the hip axle, a 25mm PVC tee which has a 41mm outer diameter was used.  Markings on the tee was carefully sanded down.

Using 2mm plasticard, 2 x 74mm squares were cut and sanded down (aloowance of using 1mm plasticard on the sides later on).  I used a 40mm holecutter to cut a hole in the centre.  A light sand using 80 grit sand paper is required to size the hole to 41mm.

Next the pieces were test fitted, eventually a hip housing will made as it will cover this part and also form the lower gun housing.

My next post will show the hip housing and also the hip joints.