A Titan Story - Part 7

I've finally made some progress on painting the Titans...

Its only been two years...

Nothing like a tournament to get the motivation humming. 

I ended up going with Legio Crucius, or the Warmongers over Fire Wasps. Something a little different, plus the legion has sworn pacts of fealty to Imperial Fist and one or two other Space Marine Chapters... to be continued

A Titan Story - part 6

Final stages of assembly and preparation before paint!

I located a stack of magnets in the ball joint of the head (Reaver pictured)

On the opposite end I cut a strip of 0.5mm steel and shaped it to fit

A Warhound receiving the same treatment

It dosn't look pretty, but you will never see it

I also glued some 0.5mm metal strips to the inside of the canopy of the Warhound heads. Magnets were located on the head itself

It makes a nice snug fit an the metal/magent combination has plenty of stregth

The head is now magnetized so that it is removable for transport, and also poseable!

The last stages of pre assembly before the model is stripped, cleaned, and primed!

Here is a shot of all three. The Reaver has been finished to the paint stage, where the Warhounds still require a little work on the weapons. Parts such as the shoulder pauldrons have been left unfixed for ease of painting.

So all that is left to do now is to give the Titans a good wash to remove all the residue and dust from assembly, then prime them! I have a little work left to do getting the weapons to sit perfectly and I also would like to spend some more time getting the body to fit more snug.

My plan of attack is to paint the interior first, followed by all the mechanical, then weapons, and finally all the armour

And now for a live action shot. The Reaver now has 3 superheavy kills and one of the Warhounds has 1!

I've promised myself I will not get any Knights Paladin or Knights Errant until I have painted the Titans...

A Titan story - Part 5

So I could not resist the Reaver Titan any more. After the Warhounds got pushed aside for the Fire Raptors, I decided to give the Reaver Titan a good go.

First up the hip joint and upper leg. Nice and simple, single pin and a bit of a tidy up.

There is nice groves for the parts to slot together with ensuring a good centred fit.

Alot of the parts are single piece casts. No issues here, a quick clean and layout to check everything is good

A few dry fits later and we have some legs! There are no groves or teeth like the Warhound Titan in each joint so making sure you keep the right angles requires a bit more patience.

At this point things felt like they were going to smooth. There is alot of detail on these parts and for once I dont think I accidentally cut/sanded off any rivets!

After waiting a few hours for the epoxy to gain some strength, I completed the leg assembly. Looks easy right? This has to be one of the most frustraighting things to do during assemble. I had not placed a magnet on the waist this time so balancing the level and holding the legs firmly on the ground (after making sure the building surface was level) took alot of time, and blu tac! You can see the bits of green stuff in the knee joints where I drilled through and pinned the model. Using an electric drill takes a bit of working up to on your $1000 model...

The end result came out great. There is far less flexibility in the Reaver Titan compared to the Warhounds. Left foot forward, slightly prone, right leg bracing to fire. Damn this thing is huge!

Next up we have the upper body. Nice simple assembly here again. everything aligned ok so no major issues. I did experience some shrinkage with the three parts that make up the rear being about 1mm to short. You dont see any of these joins as they are cleverly hidden with overlaps and undercuts. The weapon mounts where pinned into place and targeting servitors have been prepared for painting before final assembly (not pictured)

A quick look from the rear. The cooling fans in the centre are covered by a grill once assembled. You can also see how I magnetized the void shield generators. So far this Reaver Titan has been very simple to build.

Next update will be the full assembly of the Reaver Titan! Things have gone so well with this that the last thing remaining to do (as of typing this) is mounting the head!

A Titan Story - Part 4

It walks! Or at least, it stands...All the extra effort to prep and balance the legs has paid off. 

Pictured below is the second set with the waist section in place. 

 You may note the large 20mm magnet in place on the top. This was glued into place using epoxy resin after countersinking it slightly to give clearance for the other half of the equation.

The legs sit perfectly balanced even with the walking set on its toes. Spending some time at the beginning working out the pose before gluing the leg sections in a stance really paid off in the end. I could imagine all sorts of problems trying to get the feet to sit flat.

I am rather happy how the prone stance turned out. I was a little apprehensive at first as there are a lot of Warhound titans with very strange and unnatural poses on the internet. 

With the aid of the magnet, I used a metal ruler to give a large enough surface on top to use a level. I used a 3 axis level on its flat to ensure a level centre pivot for the body. I considered leaning it forward as others had done but thought this was unrealistic as far as the machine would operate. It would mean the floor in the interior would not always remain level. I would expect that the advanced gyro's keeping this up would want to remain balanced.

This is the first set, or the walking set all glued together.

You can see here the 3 axis level used to get the pivot mount perfectly level. The magnet came in real handy holding the metal ruler in place.

Next up was fitting the pistons to the feet now that the pose has been finalised.

I've read a lot of people dislike this part and find it tedious and fiddly. The hydraulics come in two parts, piston and ram, of which you will need to cut each one to suit he mount. This gives almost infinite variability in the pose. I worked out an easy approach of dry fitting all the pistons on the bottom, then, using the ram cylinder, measured the right length for each piston and cut them in place. I then remove the set and glue them together off the leg, before finally setting them in place. It worked a treat and I had no issues, fixing everything in place in about 30 minutes.

There are 5 sets around each ankle. There is an additional 3 sets to go around the ball joints on the upper legs, however I have left theses at this point to let the epoxy cure before I pin the ball joints in place.

As mentioned in an earlier post, I used 2x 3x3mm magnets in the shins of each titan leg with the aim of making the shin guards removable so I can swap between each of the two designs. Below you can see how I inserted a piece of 0.3mm sheet metal into the recess grove for the mounts. This was done because lining up the magnets on each side is painfully tedious, and the shin guards tended to wobbly a bit thanks to mismatched slots (probably from casting). Not to mention trying to get 8 shin guards with all the same spacing was going to be a nightmare!

 Here are most of them done. This way i will be able to chop and change the styles at will, along with being able to show/paint the detail that is normally hidden by them. It seamed a shame to hide it all away, as there in a lot!

The shin guards mount up as below, and snap into place nice and firmly. 

You can see how much detail is hidden on the front when fitted.

Here is the other part to the magnet equation on the waist section. You can see the 20mm magnet centred in the pivot joint on this section of the upper body.

If you look closely you will see a pinch of green stuff on the side of the engine cowling. This is where I inserted one of four pins to strengthen the assembly.

Below you can see the second rear body section with the pins being fitted.

All the pins went in at acute angles to help reinforce the assembly in every axis possibe.

The whole structure weighs in at several kilograms once finished, hence why I opted to use 2 N52 20mm magnets for the centre waist pivot. This will allow me to transport the titans far easier.

I used the front section assembly (pictures posted in Part 3) whilst dry fitting and for final assembly of the rear body section. It is very important to get everything as square as possible between the two halves, not only for strength, but for final assembly. The two body halves will remain separate at this point so I can paint the interiors. Once that is done I will glue an pin the two halves together before finishing the outside prep and paint.

We are almost there now. Next steps are to pin the leg ball joints to the waist section, fit the pistons and finish the prep before a bath and undercoat is applied. Before that happens I will need to fit the heads and weapon systems which will both be magnetized.

I also have some progress to report on the Reaver Titan, but that can wait until the next post.

A Titan Story - Part 3

Last week Forgeworld delivered the replacement parts to my Titans enabling me to finish building the Warhounds feet and legs assembly

Pictured above is the second set of feet. The front foot on each picture will be the forward foot on the finished model. You can notice a slightly greater backwards angle on the ball socket. This pose will be more of a prone stance, one foot forward but braced for firing off the rear foot.

The first set of legs is now fully assembled and pinned. Both legs balance perfectly on a level surface. The legs are shown above with one of the shin guards in place.

This side view gives a good idea in how dynamic you can build the Warhound. This first Warhound is in a walking motion and can easily imagine it striding into battle guns blazing.

With the legs lying flat its easy to see the subtle differences are mainly in the positioning of the foot. The difference in angle is ever so subtle between the two.

Another flat angle view of the first leg assembly. Once the second set is finished I will have one Warhound in a dynamic shooting pose and this one walking. A nice contrast. 

This last picture you can see the two magnets in the bracket on the lower front leg. These are what holds the shin guards in place as there are two different designs. Each kit comes with four guards in total, two of each. It would also be a shame to hide all the detail underneath.

The last thing to do to the legs is fit all the pistons around the lower and upper ball joints. I will wait until I finish the waist section and fix that into place before attaching all the pistons. Then its off for a bath to get rid of all the oils and residue from building before getting primed. 

Next up: Second Warhound legs to finish assembling, and progress on the Reaver Titan!