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Chronocidal

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  1. 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.
  2. 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.
  3. 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.
  4. 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.
  5. Chronocidal
    Thanks for the heads up, ordered!
  6. 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.
  7. 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 )
  8. 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.
  9. 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.
  10. 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?!
  11. 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.
  12. 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.
  13. Chronocidal
    Maybe not for the small details, but I'm sure you could make a kit of the larger parts, and assemble them.
  14. Chronocidal
    Don't see why that would even be necessary, I'm sure some of the folks on this board could make them from scratch, offer up a printing, or just make a set of shapeways parts.
  15. Chronocidal
    It's really a combination of shoddy materials with pants-on-head engineering techniques. After taking apart the leg of my 171CF, I have to wonder what the people designing it were smoking, because it is just such a ridiculously overengineered piece of nonsense, I feel like I need to redesign the knee joint from scratch so it doesn't hurt my brain anymore.
  16. Chronocidal
    I'm fairly sure it could potentially be removed... but that's assuming bandai's assembly monkies don't dunk the thing in gorilla glue like they did on several of the other valks I have. Bandai just really doesn't want their valks coming apart for any reason, and it tends to completely stifle any kind of attempt to repair their shoddy engineering when it fails.
  17. Chronocidal
    Eh, when you consider that the legs are held on by a small shaft going through the nose, I guess the backpack is pretty beefy by comparison. I guess I just like being able to pick up the VF-1s by their packs without worrying something will break. The 1/48 always felt dangerous to hold there, since the backpack was held down by that tiny hook in the backplate.
  18. Chronocidal
    I'll admit, I never had a problem with the VF-1 fast pack bracket, because the 1/48 packs always scared the crap out of me that I was going to snap off the backpack. Even in-universe though, the idea of that backpack hinge being so strong that it can just hold all that weight and thrust just feels wrong somehow. I know, overtechnology and everything, but it still looks like a really questionable way to mount something that heavy.
  19. Chronocidal
    Build a bridge out of him! And sadly, now I want to see a Robotech Abridged series that completely eschews any form of storytelling, and simply lumps all three generations together, with the entire cast being completely aware of how little sense it makes.
  20. Chronocidal
    Every time I do that to a bandai valk that I've decided not to transform? The parts go all explodey, and I'm left with a pile of debris (I'm looking at you, VF-171CF..)
  21. Chronocidal
    Glad I'm only buying this for the fighter mode.
  22. Chronocidal
    Yeah, I would pick up the white/purple scheme in an instant if it were an option. It's just so pretty. I see what you did there.
  23. Chronocidal
    I've kind of plotted my VF-25 purchases with future displays in mind (no room yet.. but someday), specifically so I can get a nice range of display types without too much clutter.. so far, my plan is this: 1 armored Alto in fighter 1 armored Ozma in battroid 1 bare Alto in fighter (with Ranka in the back seat) 1 tornado packed Michael in fighter 1 super Luca in fighter (possibly gerwalk) 1 VF-25A in fighter 1 VF-25A in battroid (possibly with a spare set of Luca super packs) I basically picked up at least one of each exclusive pack, so I can mix and match them some. In hindsight, I wish I'd waited to get the VF-25A brownie packs, but I grabbed a second set of Luca's packs instead. On the plus side though, I don't think the green will look bad on the 25A, and I get a spare set of Ghosts to mess with (probably will be heavily modding one and painting it red). I might switch out the armored Alto for a tornado pack, or a super in battroid, posed with the rifle over his shoulder. And if they ever release the VF-25G again, I'll pick another up, and have him posed for sniping with super packs. And I'd probably pick up another Ozma as well, if that ever happens, but dunno if I'd use the super packs for him, or just display him in bare fighter mode. Oh, and the YF-25 will be in fighter FOR-EV-ER.
  24. Chronocidal
    Actually, that's kinda the funny part.. my triangles are fine.
  25. Chronocidal
    Well, it's half plastic batch, and it's half pants-on-head engineering. The knee pivot is such a stupidly overcomplicated design, it's begging to destroy itself. Instead of putting some kind of rubber insert,and using a solid rotation peg, they decided they were going to make the peg hollow with a spring pin in the middle to provide friction.. Of course, this hollow pin is what shattered, and destroyed the knee. Nice job, dipwads. Should say, though, that's not the only part of that part that broke.. that entire section of the knee joint just seems to be crazed and cracked to high heaven, and the thigh swivel peg is only one of the parts of it that have broken off. Frankly, it's broken into so many pieces, the only way it's going to stay together is if I glue the leg together in a single position forever.
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