Robotech SDF-1 Papermodel

[rapierdragon]

actually after reviewing the toy pictures I've noticed that the forward white tips of the main cannon match up perfectly with the shape of the boom regardless of being in robot or cruiser mode... this means that your rectangular-shaped booms is wrong... they should be square!

see picture below... see how

I kept looking at it in both modes and I just realized it today. In effect this means your model (when viewed in cruiser form) has been squished in a left/right direction (that or stretched top-bottom wise)...

from what I can tell the shoulders and arm-carriers (Daedalus/Promethius) are correct, but everything in between was squished by roughly 20%... most likely the results of working off a slightly distorted picture.

Look again at the two pictures. See how the white tips of the long main cannon match the blue/white section behind them? Well when teh cannon opens up to fire these white tips "rotate" 90 degrees relative to the booms, but their shape still matches up the blue/white section behind them, so that means their hight and width has to be the same... which means they are square.

[rapierdragon]

I'll try to get pictures up of my corrected/rebuild version in the next day or so. All that's essentially left on it is the shoulders/arms and the turrets.

I've followed the pictures I have on the toy much more closely then Thunderchild (whose version is probably closer to as it appears in the anime). I've also cheated some (pipecleaners planned for elbow joints, a nut/bolt/washer carefully hidden to allow parts to rotate both tightly and smoothly, etc).

Mine does lack his nice surfaces though (all flat colors, none of those layer-on-layer rectangular blue varients and white varients. What's the term? Like some ppl do with the Star Trek models... an "aztec" type pattern? You know, to simulate where paint jobs are a bit off-color and various large metal sheets meet giving a kind of messed-up checkerboard type appearance to the armor?

Then again, mine's all done in windows paint so what do you expect? Hand-pixeling in that kind of detail takes too long.

[rapierdragon]

As you can see, just the feet/engine's and arm/shoulders and turrets (and odd small bits like the back of the knees) left.

Model length in ship mode is 9 inches. (well, 8.5 atm, but that's without the feet/engines, which are roughly a half inch).

The main cannon booms are loose and I've used a clear elastic band (found in some Transformers packages) to hold them together (its causing a slight warping but its just till I can tighten up the beads and elastic string I've used for the shifting mechanism for where the cannons attach to the chest pods. A bit of tape will fix the warping once the cannon/chest gear is tightened or replaced.)

Overall shape is, as you can tell by my earlier toy-picture posts, nearly identical to the 1987 SDF-1 toy (right down to transformation). This has resulted in a slightly more box-shape in a number of areas, but also simplifies construction and part endurance/stability.

The whole hidden nut/bolt with washers thing really adds a lot of stability. Parts not only stay tightly together but can rotate along the bolt's length, and then you just put a drop of glue on the nut to lock it into place (otherwise rotating the parts will slowly loosen it). In my case I used #4-40 x 0.25" bolts (a pack of 14 bolts + 14 nuts is $2.00 and a similar sized pack of metal washers is like $1.50).

Using nuts/bolts, internal plastic supports, and a layer of tape really adds to the shelf life. My oldest surviving paper model (a star trek ship) is now approaching its 5th year and it looks as good as it did the day it was finished. I can even wipe off the dust with a damp cloth without having to worry about making the materal wet (and thereby protecting the ink from becoming wet and running/smeering).

[the_gungrave_666_xD]

very cool that one eh?
XP

[rapierdragon]

arms nearly finished
-just tiny features like the bridge/conn towers on the Daedalus/Promethius left
-2 long shoulder turrets left to build (going to try to find tiny nuts/bolts to fix them on as paperclips don't hold them on very well / don't hold position well)
-used lego for the elbow joint (somewhat covered in paper to match color)

turrets all on except for:
-2 turrets on top side of main cannon missing their little cannons (made the barrels too long, need to shorten the barrels to fit when the main cannon rotates open/sideways)

non-turret feature in the "behind the knees" area (odd white round shape)

All in all, model is complete minus some tightening up of joints. Will attach a zip with the windows paint bitmaps shortly.

[rapierdragon]

NOTES: Thunderchild, Getter 1, you can use the shape-adjustments I've made to adjust your own models if you want.

Dang... zip upload limit of 48k and my zip is 891k (almost 1 mb)

So anyone who wants it, please email me (or post yur email here) and I'll email it directly to you. (Thank Sivar that most hotmail accounts have a 10mb upload size limit)

For the most part, my mk3 transforming version won't have any real changes to the shapes/construction... I've just got to make up bent paperclips with a few tiny nuts/bolts for places like the 4 long shoulder turrets... maybe find some means to produce a double-hinged joint for the main cannon so it has more stability and doesn't flop around so much.

I'd love to do a double-size version, but I don't have anywhere to put it in my room. (Course, a double-size version would allow for lots of room in improving rotating joints and other such moving bits)

[Getter1]

Rapier D,

You can send the file to one of the moderators to add to the download section. That's what I did for my Roland C.II as it was nearly 12mb.

G1

[rapierdragon]

Free file hosting by Savefile.com
free download site.
20 pages of parts (not all pages fully used so parts easier to identify and construct)

model is like 99% complete

fully transforming

[chaosbiker]

Originally Posted by ThunderChild

Got it done before year's end! Whoohoo!

Here's wishing everyone a happy new year and hope that it exceeds the previous in all ways!

Me want, me want, where to get??

[ARMORMAN]

click on the savefile link.

[loratadine]

Thx for your gift, I will make it before christmas day this year!

[ThunderChild]

Getter1 and rapierdragon: Thanks for all the inputs throughout the course of this project. A real inspiration and motivator!

rapierdragon: Fine looking model! Some parts do look familiar...

Everyone, just to prove that this project hasn't completely stalled, here are 2 screengrabs of the SDF1 v.3 design.
After a little soul searching and a lot of consideration, I decided to go with G1's design idea concerning the leg-transformation part, but made some changes to the application.
Weather or not I succeed still remains to be seen, But I feel confident that my most pressing design-concerns have been solved. Don't worry if you can't make out heads-or-tails of the images, they're just a quick update...

[Getter1]

Lookin great there TC Much more refined

G1