Okay so I took a new job a couple weeks ago. I knew it was going to give me more hours so I'd have less free time for 40k. What I didn't know was just how much it was going to get me in terms of extra hours. A month ago I was averaging 22 to 28 hours a week plus 10-12 hours for school work and classes. In the last three weeks I've consistently been scheduled for 32-35 hours a week, and due to a combination of work load and staffing issues I've been working 45+ hours a week plus the 10-12 hours of school and homework, and I've had to travel a fair amount for training for the new job. So all in all I've been pulling 50-60 hours a week for work and generally when I got home I have just enough energy to log online for half an hour to forty minutes to check my email, catch up with a couple folks, and then promptly crash for the night. Now things seem to be settling down a bit and I'm getting a bit of normalcy back in my life.
So I've effectively hit a dead end in building the paper hammer thunderhawk.
But this basically concluded phase 1 of the thunderhawk project; building the paper hammer version.
So what's next? Well now I get to go back over the model and search for problems, areas where the thickness of the cardboard creates problems, areas where the parts just flat out don't work. So what am I talking about?
Well there are a lot of places where the cardboard stacks up in such a way that parts that should mesh up, have a gap between them.
Like so:
Another problem I encountered was that cardboard as a tendency to warp causing a bending in odd ways. 2 really great examples are on the top of the paper hammer thunderhawk:
The upper housing warped inwards, causing the Thunderhawk cannon mounting to angle inwards while the upper body warped inwards as well. A liberal application of glue allows the upper mounting to be attached to the upper body, but if you look you can see the warping.
Ahhh, very sorry to hear you hit a wall with it. To be honest, I hit a similar problem with the Thunderbolts over at In The Grim Cheapness of the Future.... :(
ReplyDeleteOnward and upward, though... :)
@Virtual Stranger-
ReplyDeleteYeah I saw your post. I was looking at your progress as you were building the thunderbolts while looking at the template. I was seeing the problem but I thought you had a plan for dealing with it, so I didn't say anything. Didn't want to sound like I was trying to be a downer on your work. Oh well, live, learn and apply what you learn to the next project right?
Great build. I am contemplating a plasticard/foamcore version, although I can't seem to find satisfactory templates. The search continues, or I might just sit down and work it out myself.
ReplyDelete