Cygnar Storm Strider Casemod

[monkeyfun]

I love the videos! I wish I could have been there to see the whole melting and casting process. It sucks that the shop has to kick you out for a bit, but a lot of people here have experience with resin (myself not included), so ask away if you have questions.

Yeah, I was a little let down that the shop was unavailable this month, but I'm counting my blessings rather than disappointments. They have already basically donated about $1700 in time, labor and space rental towards this projects. And for that I am grateful. It's up to me now to find and make an alternative work if I want to get this done by PAX.

I spent 5 hours last night cleaning up the newly cast pieces and I should be able to make the moulds this weekend. I've pretty much have to hustle on all of the parts. Anthony @ Green Fairy Studios said he'd paint the whole case for me, if I can get the parts to him to paint on the 20th/21st of August. I predict many long hours this weekend and next week.

[monkeyfun]

Update #21: Mould Making.
Count Down: Only 11 more days until PAX 2011.

I've finished cleaning up the parts I recently cast. It's a little rough but beggars can't be choosers when you're trying to make a time-line. In hind sight, I'm thinking I should have started this project about 2 months earlier. Regardless, here's the parts placed together:

Next, I made connecting parts and place holders for both the mould and where the wire tube is going to be. Then I attached the parts with a regular glue gun. I used a glue gun because I wanted them to hold together for the casting but easy enough to pry apart.

Then I made a box to create the mould in... it's big enought for both the leg and the shin guard.

To be extra careful I coated the box seems in Vaseline and then did a light coat of baby powder (talc). This is to keep the plaster from sticking to the box. I also coated the leg with Vaseline.

The leg was suppended in the middle of the box.

NExt I filled the box half way up with plaster.

After the plaster dried, I made three key holes so the two halves of the mould could be fitted back together. Then I coated the top half of the mould with Vaseline and poured the second half of the plaster.

The mould came out pretty good considering I haven't made a plaster mould in 16 years. There will be some rough edges when I do the resin casting but all in all I should be able to sand and clean up finished product.

As a side note... if you're making a mould of this size it's unadvisable to buy the 3 pound box when you need 50 pounds of plaster... lessons learned.

Next update in 2 days.

[monkeyfun]

Update #22: The Enclosure.
Count Down: Only 10 more days until PAX 2011.

I need elves …like those little elves that make shoes for the cobbler… someone to work on my case while I’m at work. :|

The case enclosure has shape!!! Here’s a picture with all the walls in. I still have some more cleaning up to do and filing around the edges but I wanted to get things put together to make sure I didn’t have any design flaws that would keep the parts from fitting.

Each of those panels will end having mesh put into them… but that’s in the future, near future hopefully.

Next I began fitting the cover plate. Since I ended up cutting new pieces (see update #19) I had to file down all of the overlapping parts.

Before:

Half way:

Much better:

Here’s an unfocused over-view of one half. I apologize for the quality of this picture but… I’d rather rush a picture or tow than not get any for the work log.

Here’s a view of the over lapping parts and the mismatched rear-arch.

After I did some filing on the rear-arch:

I had to stop here as I needed to use the table saw to cut some pieces and my neighbors frown on metal cutting at 11pm in the evening. More pictures will be up in 2 days. Tonight repairing some of the casting flaws with bondo, attaching the dome to the top piece, tapping the frame for the lightning coil spine, cutting the pieces for the PSU/HDD enclosure, cutting the frame for the leg resin pieces and cutting the holes for the input/output ports in the back panel. Tomorrow, I’ll clean up the plaster moulds a little bit and make a stab at the resin casting.

[monkeyfun]

Update #23: The Mad Dash.
Count Down: Only 9 more days until PAX 2011.

I know I said I was going to update every two days but I got a bit done last night and … well… you’ll see.

Completed Last night:

Prepared the cover plate for cutting
Repaired some of the casting flaws with bondo
Cold welded the lightning coils seams for stability
Tapped the frame for the lightning coil spine
Assembled lightning coil frame
Cut out Frame pieces for leg resin
Cut wire tubing for legs
Cut out Mesh pieces for side walls
Cleaned up the plaster moulds

Pictures:

Prepared the cover plate for cutting:

The mesh is ready!

Here are the wiring tubes and the leg frames.

This was all the work that I completed on the spine:

And finally for this update you can see a semi assembled case!!! Please forgive the pink lightning ports. I’m smoothing those parts out with bondo.

What’s left? Here’s the To-Do list I have until the case is completed.

To-Do list:
Cold weld Wire tubes to resin leg frame
Cut the pieces for the PSU/HDD enclosure
Create frame and enclosure mounts for the PSU/HDD enclosure
Cut out switch holes on PSU/HDD enclosure
Assemble PSU/HDD enclosure
Cut the holes for the input/output ports in the back panel
Create cover pieces for the spine
Attach lightning coils to spine
Cut Spine attachment pieces
Cut spine space and panels out of top cover plate
Cut out wiring holes in main enclosure base plate
Bend and insert mesh pieces to side walls and top cover plate
Cold weld dome to cover plate
Cast resin legs
Attach legs to PSU/HDD enclosure
Create 3 part mould for shin guards
Cast resin shin guard
Attach shin guard
Cut acrylic windows for all lightning ports
Wire shin guards for LED lighting
Base paint all the parts
Paint the case
Insert the video card mounting plate
Put in all of the hardware and switches
Test run for shorts and issues
Disassemble case for transport


Next update will be in 2 days at latest.

[SXRguyinMA]

this thing just gets more and more impressive!

[monkeyfun]

this thing just gets more and more impressive!

Thank you! I'm slowly but surely crossing things off my list... soon... soon I'll be complete.

[Snowman]

wish I knew why the pictures never load for me....

[monkeyfun]

wish I knew why the pictures never load for me....

Try reloading the latest update again. I keep forgetting that some people might have difficulties if the picture urls don't have the www. listed. It's pissingme off because this is something that my hosting company should have taken care of a while ago.

[monkeyfun]

My hand decided to have a fight with a chunk of aluminum that got caught in a table saw. I'm bruised but not daunted. Sallying forth!

Done:
Cold weld Wire tubes to resin leg frame
Insert the video card mounting plate
Create cover pieces for the spine

In Progress:
Cut out wiring holes in main enclosure base plate
Cut Spine attachment pieces

To-Do list:
Cut the pieces for the PSU/HDD enclosure
Create frame and enclosure mounts for the PSU/HDD enclosure
Cut out switch holes on PSU/HDD enclosure
Assemble PSU/HDD enclosure
Cut the holes for the input/output ports in the back panel
Attach lightning coils to spine
Cut spine space and panels out of top cover plate
Bend and insert mesh pieces to side walls and top cover plate
Cold weld dome to cover plate
Cast resin legs
Attach legs to PSU/HDD enclosure
Create 3 part mould for shin guards
Cast resin shin guard
Attach shin guard
Cut acrylic windows for all lightning ports
Wire shin guards for LED lighting
Base paint all the parts
Paint the case
Put in all of the hardware and switches
Test run for shorts and issues
Disassemble case for transport


An actual update will be posted tomorrow or Friday.

[Snowman]

Try reloading the latest update again. I keep forgetting that some people might have difficulties if the picture urls don't have the www. listed. It's pissingme off because this is something that my hosting company should have taken care of a while ago.

ntohing but white space or broken image icons, i will try a different browser. They load fine in firefox but not in chrome... chrome is really starting to upset me with their funky image rendering.