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Sparky: "There are some updates via the June meeting: We have a six piece base now, one piece being an extended door section that will allow a floating hex. I don't think there's a hard confirm on how much that piece will extend out. I had a complete 2x4 foot sheet there so we could get a feel for how much space we wanted. Without the madcat lower legs assembled though it's difficult to do the visual check. For the bays we did some mock ups, with card boards and then the bases I have with the wood slats that will be used to give us room for the floor elevators and maybe motors. We then used one of my half hex bases to create the faux face pieces. This let us check the bays walls and scaffolding placement. The issue that we were tackling was how cramped the doors and bays looked. Where would the floor elevators go and how big would they be. Since the sheet I had for the extended door section was plenty long we were able to pull back that door section and look at the bay with 4 inches of space from the foot of the door to the edge of that 'square.' Over the coarse of the experimenting we determined that if each base is at least 34 inches long we can have a good space between the door and its bay footings, and the bay footing from the edge of the fuax hex face. We also realized that cutting the center parking lot in half, means that only really small mechs could fit in there, and only 2. There wouldn't be room for the anti-grav tank, or the munitions truck nor its trailer. So we opted to keep these pieces full sized. That means there are 6 squares, all individual entries, to keep the whole under the size limit. |
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Here's what we have: Tony 1 door, 1 bay, he's willing to buy out Neil on that bay, and the mountain side wall, aka MALP parking lot. Larry S, the 'forward' parking lot area. Larry J the other bay. Joe S the extended door section, a Mech (on the door extension or a Hex) out side, and a garbage pile target on a hex. |
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What we need: We need the foam walls for Larry J's bay so he can start cladding it and building the scaffolding mounts. I can probably cut these on my setup, the cross brace came out fine, and cleaned up with a sanding block nicely. Larry will you be wanting a working turntable? It will be on a switch if as you work out the display it becomes apparent that the motion interferes with the placement of junk and what-not. My madcat needs to get assembled up to the torso, and the rocket packs need to me temp attached to the head. My doors need the rest of the major cladding on both halves. Larry S needs one more pillar footing casting. We need 6 new sheets of MDF and they need to be cut. We need pine for the slats of the MDF and that has to be cut. The last 2 items are biggies, I suggest a cutting day where as-many-as we can get tools for come by and help assembly line this stuff. We need a table saw, and that will take 2 or 3 people working a 2x4 foot sheet down to the 34 inch piece, then looping of the corners. Depending on how well these will need to line up with the next adjacent square to be considered acceptable, will impact this operation. We will need a miter saw to cut the slats with whatever joint we choose, but with the looped of corners, it adds 2 extra cuts to every base. most of the pieces I have could be reused. These cuts need to match the bases, and will probably be matched to each base. However we will styrene skin this edge to avoid having to fight with sealing the pine/MDF joints and grain. Did I miss anything? Larry I like the idea of open scaffolding on the parking lot area so people can see through it to the mech parked beside it, and see all the tubing and wiring running up the center. If you get an extra casting of the top piece of each pillar footing assembly and flip it so that the scaffolding mates with it as it dose at the base, then you get a nice little platform at the top of the tower. I should have mocked that up at the meeting, theres another idea that uses 3 extra castings for each pillar but I need to mock it up so you can see it. |