Sci-fi drone's arm & sensor
Militia mecha drone: the sensor's hole
Following the fuselage cuts, I am adding a sensor hole. First, some 3D measurements in Blender:
Note how only some stripes are printed out. I can drill without stress.
The sensor is of a box shape, to be glued by the user. So I need guides to facilitate that in the invisible interior area. Also, note that the hole has been plugged with thin plastic to make this part correctly castable in resin. To be strict, to make the part possible to pull out from the silicone mold I'll be creating.
A fit test for the sensor.
Militia mecha drone: the arm
The mech features a torpedo tube mounted on a robotic arm. It's time to finalize the construction of the arm. I printed a side view template to get the correct angle:
Adding fancy support:
Having a rectangular hole in the fuselage ensures that the modeler enjoying the mecha's resin kit build can easily position the arm at the correct angle.
As for the sensor, some massive guides have been glued. They will be cast as an integral element of the fuselage part.
I think we're done here, the angle is just good:
Other parts of the militia mecha drone resin kit
The bottom area of the fuselage will feature lots of mechanics with cables and such. I found some unused parts I owned before but needed to make it longer. For that, I used various putties and lots of sanding.
A final look of the cable unit as well as parts, ready for molding. The circular part is a polished back of the fuselage. On the bottom-left, there's a bottom part of the fuselage, with a place to glue the cables unit. On the bottom right you can see a cannon, modified to be easy to mount it on the other side of the fuselage.
I am casting the top spherical part separately once again before it is glued to the entire fuselage. It takes some effort but helps to avoid disasters if I break that part during adding further modifications that I have on my list.
On the right hand, you see a post-processed bottom unit ready to mold too.
Finally, the upper part of the drone has some reinforcement to hold a tailplane.
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What challenges do you face while designing your miniature parts? Please share in the comments section below. If you're planning to produce model kits or parts you can contact me for support.