Brad's Dai X work in progress

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Bradster
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by Bradster »

Quote Quote: from felice on 2:55 am on Nov. 4, 2002but the entire end of the arm could slide open to let the hand through, then close around the wrist.Aha! :cheesy: That's just the kind of idea I needed!The actual end of the arm can split open allowing the fist itself to comfortably slide inwards. I'll work on just that concept tomorrow.At regular right angles, the fist is indeed too wide. However, twist it juuuust right and -- voila!
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by AndyThomas »

I'm still confused though - that'll allow the fist to retract, but how's the engine going to come back out? Logically a lot of it will have to have moved waaaay back into the forearm to allow the fists to go all the way back in. This is presumably what Felice was trying to avoid with her hands unfurled method so that the engine could effectively stay put, but I still can't quite picture the mechanics...?Felice, you're certainly right in that we do see something akin to teleportation in the series, although that's Imperial technology rather than EDF tech. Anyway, Brad now has a flood of ideas to work with so we'll see what he comes up with!
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by CondorJoe »

i have anohter idea. The underside of main bodys lower arm structure could have openings or storage space for the hands. I was thinking about your problem with the hands today then as i was packing away my time force megazord i noticed it has this area that opens and flips its other set of hands out which lock into place. So if you placed and area on the underside of maimbody arms, durring the junction a small hatch would open out of view and flip the hands from thier storage 130* and lock into place. I'll send you a shot later brad if you need an example
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felice
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by felice »

Here's a rough sketch of how the unclenched hand might look inside the arm, base on Brad's last post. The fingers are pointing out, and the thumb is twisted sideways; this allows the inside of the arm to be much more solid. I imagine the center of the external exhaust port to be the top of a long pole that the hand slides up, and the larger circle around it to iris open to fit the wrist.Of course, this would take up significantly more _length_ within the arm...
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by felice »

A mockup of the arm, closed and open, without the hand:The exhaust port half on the left is shown closed, and the one on the right irised open. With both open, the end of the arm could close around the wrist.If you really want it to look feasible, I think you're going to need to redo the visible engine components in the upper half of the forearm; they show too much of the internal structure, and I don't think they'd be compatible with any possible storage of the hand inside the arm.
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by AndyThomas »

Thanks Felice, that clarifies your idea. You could also do something similar by virtue of hinging the end of the forearm so that 2 sections could come open and turn the arm into a "T" shape, allowing the hand to slide out. The sections would then snap down into their original positions and lock in around the wrist, like a sort of bear trap. I've had a look at the shematic that appears in the Fantastic Films article and the wrists are "retractable" according to that, but the 3D cutaway doesn't give any indication as to where they might retract to!I've got a couple of close-ups of the fists and they do seem to be smaller than the forearm's width - I think the Manga Max versions exagerated the size a little. So I think the idea is that they should retract, but the turbines for MainBody's engines do still need to be there of course and that's the whole problem. Hmm. Let me run this by you. Our problem at the moment is caused by us assuming that we have a car-like exhaust running down the middle of MainBody's forearms, right? Now, in order to get hot exhaust gases out to the outlets, do they need to take that direct route? Think of a thermos flask. It's hollow in the middle, and has two skins sealing in a vacuum. What if, in Dai-X's forearm, there are two skins but the space in between actually takes the exhaust gases out to the outlet? They only need to get focused right at the end of the arm. So you end up with a nice big space inside the arm where you can store the fists. When the engines disengage, you can open up the outlet area, move the fists forward, and then shut the outlet area up again. Let me attempt to illustrate...
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Bradster
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by Bradster »

Blast! I had just started an excellent write-up on my new idea when Andy went and stole it and used it as his own! ;)Seriously, though, Andy is thinking exactly as I was. Rather than having a traditional single exhaust cone in the center, the thrust could come from around the exhaust ring itself.I gave some thought to NASA's aerospike engine (pictured below) and I believe it wouldn't be too farfetched to extrapolate a similar design based on a small ring of these as the engine in MainBody's arm.The whole arm assembly would split as Andy described. The engines themselves would be housed in the perimeter of the arm.Of course, actually *counstructing* a working 3D model of this is going to take some time...(Edited by Bradster at 2:38 am on Nov. 5, 2002)
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by AndyThomas »

Heh. Well, y'know, great minds and all that! Perhaps I should have studied engineering... Nah ;) As you say Brad, we've all got these great ideas but putting them into practice is something else again!
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by Bradster »

Okay, I've "fattened up" the forearm a bit and slightly shrunk the fist to so they would better fit together. I've also adjusted a few other polygons and added in these yellow placeholders for the aerospike-like engine exhausts. There will be four, one on each side. This is just an early model; so, everything may not fit perfectly yet.I'm still working out on paper how the hull will split to pull in the fist. I think I know how to do it, but it's difficult to quickly put into 3D because there will be several moving parts. I'm trying to keep movement to a minimum.
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Bradster
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Brad's Dai X work in progress

Post by Bradster »

Voila![img]http://brad.project-think.com/starfle....e movie (175 KB, requires QT6).This is how it'll be done. The extending of the fist and closing of the wrist is a tad slow, but otherwise everything here is complete as-is.I put a lot of thought into other methods and even built a few new meshes to try to get Andy's multiple-layer folding technique to work, but they were becoming extremely complex and difficult to manage. After pausing and looking over it all again, I decided that the simple sliding out and in of the front plate was by far the easiest to execute and would also look realistic enough to work.(Edited by Bradster at 10:36 am on Nov. 6, 2002)
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