The Warforge Miniature Modelling and Conversion

Turbines and prongs

So the Shadowsword cannon base fit together with minimal headache, and I started on the front end of the gun. Using another Shadowsword cannon part for the front end, I managed to snugly fit the motor inside and glue it in so it was centered.

Now, some of you may wonder why there's a turbine on the front - after all, the videos above pretty much demonstrate that I have a SAG spinny front bit.

However, after a bit of eyeballing, I've come to the conclusion that the SAG spinny front bit has three problems that prohibit me from using it on this project. First off, it's too small. Since I'm making a very large Shokk Attack Gun, it seems only proper that the front spinny gubbin be much larger than the standard bit.

The second problem with the bit was that it was (surprisingly enough! ) never designed to actually spin, meaning that it spins horribly off-balance due to the 'prongs' not being angled out equally.

The third, and last problem with the bit was that it was heavy. While the Thunderfire Cannon chassis is more than weighty enough to hold the gun down and in place, the weight puts more of a strain on the motor, and I need the motor to survive a good, long time.

Thus, I started on what you see above by making the 'axis' for the new SAG spinny bit. The turbine on the front is one of the bits from the underside of a beakie drop pod, with styrene tubing behind it to help bulk it out a bit. There's a smaller styrene tube in the middle of the turbine that goes back through the front of the gun casing to the motor, which spins the part wonderfully. All assembled, we have the following:

 

You can see the stock SAG bit for scale here.

So, if I'm making my own SAG bit, how would I possibly make one that spins better than the existing Mega-SAG? Surely anything I make would inherently be offbalanced, due to it's hand-crafted natureWhat's worse, it could be fragile in the long run - how well does Superglue hold up to repeatedly being spun over and over and over again? I could picture one of the arms of the gun just falling off after a few years! Well, this is where the magic of casting comes in.

Here's the general idea: Make one prong out of styrene. Cast the prong three times. The resulting prongs will be extremely lightweight due to the fact that they're made out of resin, which means there's a lot less strain on the motor. They're also going to be all one solid piece, meaning that there's much less chance of any parts like rivets going flying off after years of use. Lastly, they're all exactly identical, which means that they are all the same weight, and will balance the front SAG bit perfectly as they spin!

With this in mind, I set about making the 'prong' for the SAG and came up with the following:

 

You may wonder what the heck's going on at the right side of the prong - it looks like two cylinders are just pointing out to nowhere. The answer to that is actually quite simple - there's going to be ribbed cabling between the two, from the base of the bit up to the spherical 'head', between the ends of the two cylinders. However, ribbed cable texture is a pain in the ass to cast, and is prone to defects that can be monstrously annoying to clean up. What I'm going to do instead is basically cast the bit as it is, and then get some very short, evenly-measured lengths of guitar wire to put in each end of the cylinders between the head and base of the prong.

So now, we cast the prong three times over!