C3 Day 86 - Jan 24 2005

As part of C3 there will be droid races. Part of that will be mouse droids. Instead of a mouse droid I decided to make a sandcrawler. I recall a cartoon of this sandcrawler bombing around this land and jumping over bumps and stuff. I will see if I can do this with this sandcrawler. I anticipate some rough driving so I can see this thing crashing and rolling over. So being super accurate is not a priority. The basic shape should be good enough. To make it crash worthy I intend to make the shell out of styrene and then fill it with expanding foam the same way I did for the R5 dome and mini body.

Searching for plans and references on the internet did not turn up much. I finally stumbled upon a paper model. I used these to draw up some rough plans. I am going to assemble the paper model and if it turns out OK I will enlarge it to fit the RC car I have.

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Here are the printouts ready to go. In the top left are the printout of the paper model I used for reference to draw up the new plans. Exactor knife to cut the paper and glue stick to glue it all together.

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8602.jpg

Soon everything was cut out. Now to figure out where everything goes. No instructions with the paper model.

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8603.jpg

Well I know what the front section looks like so lets start there.

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Done. Cool

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Top view

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Ok the base is also fairly straight forward.

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All done. This is the bottom view. Some of the stuff I did not need as the RC car chassis will be underneath

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Top view

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The back section. The little rectangular section on the print helps to figure out where they go.

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8610.jpg

Done

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8611.jpg

Back section glued on

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8612.jpg

Front 3/4 view

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8613.jpg

The middle section ready to go

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8614.jpg

Ah so that is where that little section goes

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All done

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Installed

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The final piece of the puzzle added

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Front view

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Side view

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Too much fun

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This is the RC car I will be using. It sure has quite a bit of suspension travel

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8622.jpg

Soon the paper model will be translated into plastic

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8623.jpg

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I am also helping out with a Star Wars puppet fanfilm. I think the puppets are 1/4 scale. I am helping out by making mini light sabers. Here is my first attempt