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Chronocidal

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  1. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I'm really curious about that one. I'm going to still demand they give me my packs, however they have to acquire them. If they didn't set them aside, and have to pay more than I'm paying them, it's their loss.
  2. Chronocidal
    Welp, so much for that theory. Anyway, I plan on remodeling those parts all in CAD software soon to attempt a redesign and 3D print. Will probably start a new thread once I get something built.
  3. Chronocidal
    Part of me wants to donate just so I could post, "You should be ashamed of yourselves. There are children starving in Africa, and you spend 10k here? SHAAAAME!!!"
  4. Chronocidal
    Vaguely reminds me of that thing they did on DS9 where they glued a whole bunch of random bits of aircraft and other ships together to build up a fleet. The one with an F-14 fuselage glued under a Voyager saucer was amusing. Except, that was from a long-running, successful series. The fact that they are clearly taking inspiration from DYRL styling instead of SDFM makes me laugh though.
  5. Chronocidal
    Diecast needs to be restricted to unpainted parts, so we don't go through the silliness of worrying they're going to scratch all the time. Freakin' Bandai...
  6. Chronocidal
    Question for those of you with busted NUNS triangles. Which piece actually broke, the upper or lower half? Reason I ask is because after disassembling them and looking at the parts in detail, the upper pieces on mine seem a lot more structurally sound, and aren't damaged at all, while the lower halves are cmpletely covered in cracks. Funny enough, I think this is actually partly due to the way the little lower folding triangles were designed. If the lower half of the NUNS triangle didnt have the rounded cutout to accommodate the folding underside panel's pivot structure, it would be a nearly solid slab of plastic without all the structural integrity problems it clearly has.
  7. Chronocidal
    Is it too much to hope that this show turns out -exactly- like that DS9 episode, and none of the characters are ever heard from again? That would be one helluva pilot episode if you killed off everyone that early. Heck, I'd fund that!
  8. Chronocidal
    Bandai just has absolutely no concept of how to design things that are structurally sound. I'm still concerned that the entire wing structure looked incredibly droopy in that earlier pic. I doubt I'll even leave these things displayed in fighter mode.. though, the stress might actually straighten all the bent-up wings the VF-25s have.
  9. Chronocidal
    Nope, 2nd GIG's outfit was much more tactical, all dark gray. This looks almost like her "I just wear this to appear minimally decent in public" outfit that you see in the CGI opening to the first season. But the shirt Is different, and the jacket isn't open, so I don't know where this was seen. Edit: Looks like this, but I'm not sure what episode this is.
  10. Chronocidal
    I honestly don't think Bandai made enough of them to fix the problem. Their entire MO with what seems like everything is to make you send the entire thing back for a replacement. They don't issue spare parts, and I seriously doubt they pressed enough original copies to fix all the broken ones.
  11. Chronocidal
    Personally, I think it looks like the least airworthy valk out of pretty much all of them. Still better than a Skyfire sort of thing, but man does it look like the parts are slapped together haphazardly.. especially those wings, and the spikey looking backpack booster.
  12. Chronocidal
    I'm absolutely certain they were thinking the same thing as all the other stands they've made. "We don't care how ducking fugly these are, they're functional, and people will buy them anyway." It's why all of mine have never seen the light of day for longer than it took to remove the valk from the box. Also, as far as shattered NUNS triangles are concerned, check the recent posts on the 171CF thread. I don't think the shoulders are a materials problem so much as their hired labor on the assembly line being hamfisted imbeciles. The triangles aren't under any stress... unless you over-tighten the screws in the shoulder triangles, and then attempt to jam them over the metal shoulder blocks. The screws should be left loose until the shoulders are on, to let the parts spread over the shoulders. Not saying there aren't any material or design problems (the parts are needlessly intricate, and the materials around the knee joint tend to shatter), but after comparing a set of broken NUNS pieces with a set of perfectly fine ones, the cracks all originate from near that screw.
  13. Chronocidal
    Ah, yeah, the outer boxes might be a nice structural thing, but I don't know if I'd have the room. Everything fits pretty snug right now. I probably just need a house instead of an apartment (I'd actually have the room to display some too then). One thing I have considered to save space is to take a bunch of the VF-1s out of their boxes, stack the trays inside a thicker box (like a fast pack bundle), collapse the individual boxes, and then partially disassemble a bunch of valks to pack them in styrofoam. The VF-1s take up much less room if you fold them up and remove the nose.
  14. Chronocidal
    Question for those of you with slowly growing stacks of boxes (those of you who keep them).. How exactly do you stack them? And how high do you go? I'm just curious because I recently came to the realization that I have a crapload of valks stacked up in my closet. Fortunately, both the Yamato/Arcadia and Bandai boxes tend to be designed so they can be stacked in different directions, and still come out roughly evenly stacked. I used to have all the boxes stacked laying face up, in tall piles, but noticed that the boxes were bulging out. Not a huge concern I guess, considering the internal reinforcement in the boxes (especially the big styrofoam blocks in the Bandai ones). But I got curious, and now have a bunch of the boxes stacked vertically and reinforced with one flat box after every vertical layer.. it's definitely a real-life Tetris situation. The bigger question though.. how high would people recommend stacking? I have the boxes filling a closet, and try to keep the occupied ones near the bottom, but they're stacked upwards of 6 ft high in there. I'm not overly concerned, because the packages are meant to be shippable, but I'd hate to open the closet and find the boxes have collapsed, and wind up with a bunch of destroyed valks.
  15. Chronocidal
    It probably wouldn't be hard to do, I just need to do a search to find the older posts and pics. Think I've taken at least one of each major type of valk I own apart to some extent, except for any VF-25/29, VF-11, or the new YF/VF-19. VF-1s are by far the most friendly to disassemble, with old VF-0s being close behind. Anyhow, after mixing and matching parts between my two 171CFs, I was able to come out with one solid one. Makes me glad I ordered 2 RVF-171s As far as causes though, that varies. The knee problem above is clearly a materials thing, possibly related to that metallic plastic. The plastic sheared off with obsidian-like edges, right along the flow lines in the plastic. I need to find some way to get the lower leg apart to fix it properly, but the darn thing is screwed and glued together like Fort Knox. The shoulder triangles though..both the upper and lower halves of the NUNS pieces... after seeing how they break I'm convinced Bandai just hired hamfisted gorillas for their assembly line. The pieces are fragile, but not overly so. The problem looks like a combination of overtightening the screws that hold the pieces together (the cracks on my broken ones all originate from the screw) and the assembly monkies just being prone to jamming the shoulder triangles over the top of the metal shoulder joints with all the finesse of a 400 lb linebacker. If that screw is too tight, there's no room for the NUNS pieces to flex to fit around the shoulder nubs. Due to the structure of those parts, overtightening the screw will visibly deform those pieces, pinching them in the middle, because of the way they're built almost hollow to leave room for the outer flap. So, jamming them over the shoulders is just stressing them further, by spreading them along an already stressed direction. If the people building them had the sense to tighten the screws in the triangles after slipping them over the metal shoulder blocks, this probably would be a non-issue.
  16. Chronocidal
    So, this is Part I of a two part series about how the VF-171 CF can completely explode from looking at it funny. This is basically a photo diary of my adventures disassembling a shattered knee joint. Before I get to the knee, here's what happens when you unscrew the hips. They come apart fairly easily, but as you can see, there's a ton of pieces that might fall out and go everywhere. For some reason, they felt the need to pad the lower half of the hip joint with extra plastic pads, instead of molding it to fit directly into the metal thigh. Could be for structural reasons, I guess, but it's a lot of little pieces to do a simple job (Bandai seems to take that as a trademark). So, to start, here's how the leg looks when it's working fine. Here's a second view, with a slightly rotated thigh swivel, and color coded parts. This is the thigh section from my broken leg, still in decent shape, minus the pry marks from trying to get the darn thing apart. Here's what you see once you get it apart (minus the swivel joint, I'll get to that in a minute). Here, you've got a cover with far too much glue on it, holding together two large tabs. Get that cover off, and the thigh comes apart with a single screw, and you can access the upper thigh joint and hinge pin. Here's what happened to mine. I've color coded the parts so you can get an idea of how badly it actually broke. The side cover for the knee had the screw shaft shear off, and the red pieces all used to be the large central knee joint cover. Now, it's broken entirely, and you can see the spring ratchet inside the knee. That pink screw cover is also a pain in the backside. It was overglued horribly, and was literally the only thing holding the entire knee together. Now, why did it fail? Good question. I'd go ask Bandai what they were smoking designing this. So yeah. I seriously doubt there is any hope for this leg at this point, unless I superglue the entire thing permanently into fighter mode (not sounding like a bad option, considering my hate for the 171 transformation). Part II will be later this weekend. I've taken the shoulder covers and lower triangles off of two 171CFs to compare, and think I know why they break, but that's a long way from learning to fix them.
  17. Chronocidal
    Thanks for the heads up, ordered!
  18. Chronocidal
    You know, I wonder if they're working from the exact shade used on the CG model.. before weathering. That blue looks decently similar, it's just missing several dozen layers of photoshopped dirt, dust, and grime on it.
  19. Chronocidal
    Oh, I get what you mean. Yeah, there could be a multitude of reasons. Fortunately they seem to have figured out that people don't like stuff that's very clearly not like it was seen in the shows (even going so far as to make the CF-171s fly apart in a stiff breeze )
  20. Chronocidal
    Don't think you really need a new thread for other stuff, you could change the topic to cover general recommendations. As far as the YF-19 goes, mine are both solid, but like others have mentioned, the ankles are still the bad ball joint from the Yamato VF-19s and the wing pivots are iffy. But those issues aside, any valk based off of that VF-19 mold is on the top of my personal favorites list. You can't really go wrong with a 19S or Fire Valk sale, since those two were overproduced, and are still pretty easy to find. For the VF-1s though, I'd try to find old Yamato releases if you don't need the stand, as they may be slightly cheaper. Otherwise, they're exactly the same, and a rock solid design. In Frontier's case, you picked a relatively good time to get interested, since there was a recent VF-25F re-release, and you might be able to find one fairly easily. As for the other 3 on the team, you're not likely to find either a G or S for anything approaching a reasonable price. Bandai has just been absolutely trolling the market by refusing to re-release any of the other main characters.
  21. Chronocidal
    Actually, no, the v1 VF-25 looked nothing like the 3D data. That was the entire problem. The model division got it just fine, but the toy designers ignored their experience entirely, and fell flat on their face. Also, I'm trying to figure out exactly what those spacers even do.. they look like they're entirely unnecessary.
  22. Chronocidal
    See, this is the kind of thing that baffles the hell out of me with the 171 design... WHY did they need to make all those tiny pieces? Are they so incompetent at designing things to fit together that they need to make dozens of spacer pieces to fill the gaps left after assembly? The internal structure is exactly the same way... it's never just two parts that fit together.. it's a part that gets padded with two smaller pieces before being inserted into a slot that was just designed too wide. Why?!
  23. Chronocidal
    Because bandai doesn't believe in replacing parts, only the entire thing at once... and they kinda refuse to acknowledge that any macross fanbase exists outside of Japan, probably for legal reasons. The VF-1 shoulder issue was a unique instance where we had contacts who were able to get a few replacements under the radar and into the US, and is now a non-issue because of Shapeways. I'm working on a design for complete replacement for the lower triangles, but I need to get my 171 back together before I attempt it.
  24. Chronocidal
    Took the legs apart as far as I could before I hit an impasse of superglue. I can take pics of the parts and put them up, but basically the name of the game with the 171 is "how many tiny little superfluous parts can I throw in here to make the design as complex as possible to assemble?" It's not enough that they have pieces sandwiched between other pieces, and screwed together.. they have pieces, sandwiched between inserts, then pressed into a larger structure before being stuck between layers of plastic, and screwed/glued together.. Maybe it's a way to relieve stress on some of the parts? I have no idea, but the pieces just flew everywhere, and they're ridiculously tiny. I'm probably going to save myself the trouble of fixing the dumb thing, and redesign the knee joint from scratch.
  25. Chronocidal
    Maybe not for the small details, but I'm sure you could make a kit of the larger parts, and assemble them.
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