pengbuzz

Hey, i was just wondering if you made any progress on this concept?

Thanks! Hoping to hear word soon so I can get going! Planning on looking at all the mods everyone has made in this thread: A lot of good ideas , suggestions and fantastic groundwork done by some really talented folks!! Also recall some folks in that thread with unfinished projects; I'd love to hear if they ever got back to them!

Here you go:

More like when. lol

Er...Waspinator from Beast Wars? O.o

Agreed. The thing about Trek was not a "shoot-em up" for the sake of violence, but only when it had a reasonable and logical place in the action. I like them, but when they are gratuitous it hurts the story and makes characters and even whole groups out as violent sociopaths with uniforms and a ship. I don't like space combat simply because of the perceived need for "pew pew pew". I would not say "darker" so much as recognizing that the "edges of the plate are not as clean as the center". In other words: per Sisko's "saints in paradise" discourse, it's easy to be "squeaky clean in front of the throne". That's where the rules are enforced the most and peace reigns the strongest. But in the distances away from the seat(s) of power, where the concepts and rules aren't as firmly entrenched, people face situations and scenarios where the "official" way isn't going to necessarily work, and the "dirt of life" with all its' imperfections really shows. As an example: there's the way things are done at the Pentagon, and there's the way they are done on the frontline. Dark? Perhaps. Does it depart the core values that made the people who they are? No; it just means that doing what it takes to "get the job done" may require a different modality than the "spit and polish" required at the higher levels of the service. To an extent. But movies just about blasting people into FRM get old after a while, and JJtrek has yet to solve any conundrums such as: - The existential dilemma suffered by an alien entity which is in actuality an old earth probe; - Debating the morality of using an unimaginably powerful terraforming device on a populated planet; - The harrowing pursuit of an old enemy who now has a tremendous vendetta against you personally (not just "the service you are serving in); - The limits one will go to, even the loss of their career and everything they have worked for, to save someone whose life meant so much to them, the duty to save your homeworld from an alien threat, even though returning most likely means imprisonment and punishment; - The pursuit of the relative of one of your group, whose "visions of God" may or may not be "insanity"; - Having to lay down your old vendettas in the spirit of fostering a possible peace between two great warring factions, even though one of that faction murdered your only child. So far, all PineKirk™ has managed to do is: get drunk, catch space STD's, swipe command, wreck the ship he swiped, and act like a smug, pompous @$$ along the way.

I feel for ya!! Lately, been trying to get back some like the 1/3000 SDF-1 (only to have the arms come off at the shoulders; worked out a fix for it though).

Good to see it back up! As of late, been visiting it (and crying about all the neat mecha I don't have! rofl! )

ROFL!!! Right? THe old "Roman Candle" trick! lol

That reminds me: I have to watch the original again sometime.

Okay...so we have a valk that can effectively shoot holes in its' own booster.... "Impressive... even the way it burns up..."

Not one bit: I ground down the bolt head to allow clearance for the arm to rotate. I did my best to get the bolt head about level with the black piece's upper edge all around; a dremel tool and a grinding stone should work. You don't need the absolute hardest steel (even aluminum bolts will do), but metal is preferable to plastic here. On that note: make sure the upper shaft is smooth about 1/4 of an inch from the bolt head before the threads start! This will prevent the shoulder from "riding" the thread and trying to undo itself. Since I'm modifying mine anyways, I also took the precaution of grinding down the top of the bicep slightly and beveling the "squared-off" edge on it, so there would be no issues with the shoulder. But yeah: the shoulder ratchets ("clicks" ) with no issues whatsoever and is very stable. I'll try to get an internal pic of the shoulder with housing in place in a bit.

*replaces Gordon with Chef Gordon Ramsey; let's see what happens....*

Minor update: removed the main "canopy" from the SDF-1 Bridge; going to scratch build the interior of it with a transparent canopy. But for right now, I'm on hold pending possible parts coming in. Stay tuned...

Also, one major problem: Chekov's dead, Jim.

Not interested. I don't need to see them screw up yet another childhood memory. >_>

PM sent to discuss this. Definitely would love to take you up on this!

This might help: https://screenrant.com/jurassic-park-book-movie-differences-michael-crichton-explained/ I do know that in the book, Hammond couldn't care less about his grandchildren.

Not at the moment, but thanks! I'll keep that on the side of my mind!

Definitely on all counts, Thom! And thanks!! I knew the shoulders were an issue on these due to the blue plastic's fragility ("blue plastic syndrome"?); I just wasn't expecting it practically right out of the box! I don't know anyone IRL who can do it (or anyone else for that matter!). But it's for the best anyways: I wanted to make the carriers' hulls narrower on the bottom and more like they're supposed to be.

😭

Necropost (but for a good reason): finally got one: After some repairs (broken shoulder joint), going to be fabricating booms, shoulder guns and carriers, and doing some of the mods spoken about, albeit 2 years later.

Well, I finally found one. An SDF-1 in 1/3000 scale. Not the best condition of course, but enough there to being with. Here's what I bought: Booms were broken off at the lower rotational joint, the antennae are all loose and in poor shape, the rail guns (save one) were missing, and Prometheus and Daedalus were gone as well. Get it out of the shipping box, and 30 or so minutes later: Yes, the shoulder joint let go. This was followed in short order by the right shoulder. All I did was sit there in disbelief. I wasn't going to blame the seller; with the age of these, this can happen at any time without warning. And even if I were to get my money back, what good would that do me? I'm lucky to be able to buy anything before an unexpected bill or another stupid "family need" eats up the money and my wife just buries her head in my shoulder in tears. This was my birthday gift (B-day is next month but we had the money now, so don't wait for March to inflict more bills!), and its' first act was to fall apart. After about 2 projects that pretty much tried to end themselves, this was the last straw. I began by tearing the ship down and removing the shoulder boxes. As confirmed: the plastic was brittle from age and cracked posts were inside. I promptly removed and cleaned these, and set them aside. I then disassembles both chest/ boom parts into their respective components: I promptly took all the blue pieces, and put them in boiling water for one minute. Before any objections accrue: this is a technique that RC races use for their car shells when they get brittle. By placing the plastic parts in boiling for just one minute, the plasticizers in the plastic redistribute throughout the piece, removing the brittleness and restoring at least some level of functionality. But I was far from even started..... My next act was to redesign the shoulder/ boom joint. The peg for the shoulder and the peg for the boom are slightly skewed from one another, making any sort of repair nearly impossible under normal circumstance. With a pengbuzz, "normal" never applies.... I took a look at the setup for the boom joint: a metal part that was hollow on one side and had a slot cut into it, with a spring and part to connect to the internal peg: So, I removed the other stupid peg from the inner chest: Sanded it flat so anything that needed to slide could do so unimpeded. After this, I took the metal boom joint, used a file to widen the slot a tad, and slid a nice, hefty 1/4 inch bolt into place to hold it. With hat done, here is my setup: The nut for this remains on the inside, plastic-welded in place so it won't work itself loose in any way. Meantime, the head of the bold ends up in the actual shoulder, where the rotational forces aren't able to affect it. I had to grind down both the nut and the head, but they fit respectively where they are. Meanwhile, the boom slider slides just fine on the bolt (the threaded end goes past where any parts are located), with the spring tensioner part in place. One metal bolt acts as the shaft for both, and the stupid "staggered post" is GONE. The spring tensioner and the bolt: Once the plastic welder was cured, I ground a "hollow" into the metal piece that the legs and chest connect to (to make way for the bolt head, which now protrudes through the inner blue housing via a hole that I had Dremeled into it). This is so the bolt could be glued to the spar and further secure it: (Yes, that was quite a bit of metal dust. My mask came in handy!) And since I don't use the "splay the booms out to the sides" feature that is built into this, I could simply plastic weld and screw the chest boxes back onto the figure: So now, my SDF-1 is back to it's old self: Only this time, it has drop-forged steel bolts running through each shoulder, which could probably take getting plowed by a linebacker and ask for seconds!!! The shoulder joints ratchet and click as they should, and no sighs at all of any stress or anything coming loose is even remotely showing. All stresses now reply on the bolts, which are connected directly to the metal frame, as are the boom joints. So, the "impossible shoulder repair "has been made possible. This is only the beginning though; I have the materials to manufacture two new booms, the carriers and the antennae for the ship. I'm also seeing about getting new rail guns done up for the shoulders by a friend with a lathe (really good guy all around!), and reworking this using all the plans I've made since discussing this toy in the other thread! Or, to put it another way: Stay tuned...