ENTRY #1 Ka-On Lee
ka.lee@sympatico.ca

Hello Shawn:

This is my submission of the leg transform design.  I developed the whole idea using a correct scale picture and LEGO at the same time. The scale picture prove that all pieces will work in a correct scale
figure, while the LEGO model prove that it can be done easily.

I don't have a digital camera now, so I can only sending the drawings.
I will try to submit the LEGO pics before August 17th.

My primary design goal is easy transformation, and good looking.  I didn't use the 'pistons' since they are difficult to hide when I try to use them in the scale picture, but the extending connector idea is still present in my design.

Let me try to describe my design:



There are two key parts of my design - the arm and the shaft block.

The shaft block contain the hip-joint shaft (red), and a key (green) that locks into the hook of the arm.  The whole shaft block in installed in the leg engine intake, and it can slide in the left-right direction.
It cannot be removed from the leg.

The shaft should be made in metal.  The end of the shaft will connect to a ball joint in the nose.  This connection need to be carefully designed such that the leg would not fall off easily, but can be removed without applying too much force.  The rest of the block can be metal or plastic.

The arm connects to the front body by a rotating rod.  The L shape part of the arm can slide up and down, but it cannot be removed.  A hook is extended from the arm which can fit the key of the shaft block.  The entire arm should be made in metal.

The door at the back of the engine intake is optional.  It should be closed in Battroid mode to give it a better look.  It should remain open in Gerwalk and Fighter mode.  It does not affect the leg movement in Gerwalk mode.



This is a cropped picture from one of those original illustrations.



Here you can see the initial placement of the arm and shaft block in Battroid mode.



Open the back door of the engine intake if it is there (not shown in the picture).  Open the body, then rotate and extend the arm such that the hook is inserted into the intake and ready to receive the key.  The main arms and head can be transformed at this stage.



Slide the shaft block, such that the shaft is removed from the nose ball joint, and the key slide into the hook at the same time.  This is the most important part of the transformation.  The toy designer need to
take care of the friction of the parts so that you don't need too much force to do the slide.  The orange block of the shaft block need to be visable and accessable by a regular finger to perform the sliding.



Now that the leg is free from the nose and the rest of the body already transformed, rotate and put the leg at the right place.  If the arm's moving parts do not have enough friction to hold the leg in place, a few
small latches inside the body can help securing the leg.

To transform from Fighter to Battroid mode, just do the reverse.

Advantage of this design:
Easy to implement.  It only took me one afternoon to implement it in EGO while listening to Macross Complete. ;)  The only tricky part is the friction of the shaft and the shaft block. 

Easy to transform.  It is just one or two extra steps compare with the old 1:55.

Works in most scale.  It should be possible to implement it in small scale like 1:72, although you may need a screw driver to slide the shaft block.

Alternate way of transforming is possible.  The user can just pull out the leg, and then attach it to the hook if he want to transform it very quickly without the proper alignment.

Posing ability is not compromised.  Nose can rotate.  Legs can connect to a ball joint.

Everything is hidden in all modes.  The only thing that may be count as visible is the ball joints at the nose.  We just need to do what Yamato did...

Durable.  The toy is as durable as the material allows.  No parts need to be thin or under high stress.

The engine intake can still open.  At least it can in my LEGO prototype. The shaft block doesn't need to be thick.

Disadvantage of this design:
It may be difficult to retrofit the arm into an existing design, since it may get into the way of the main arms and head transform mechanism.
But I think there should be enough room in most cases.

Please let me know what you think.  I think the design is pretty good, but someone may already designed it since it is quite simple.

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I hope you got my first mail. This is the pics from my LEGO prototype of my leg transform design. They match the previous drawings which I sent you. Two close-up pics were out of focus unfortunately.