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Joining the 32" Falcon club - Printable Version

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Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 04-15-2012

I've been on a time crunch with just about everything lately. I leave on a 3-month business trip next week. If you've seen any of my other builds, you'll notice that I make and use laser cut parts. Unfortunately, this weekend will probably be the last time I get to use the cutter. It's been a good three years! :cry

Soooo....I decided to hurry up and get the basic shapes of the Falcon cut before my trip. Mission accomplished! Man this thing is huge!!!!

[Image: 32mf-0001.jpg]


I used Joshua Maruska's drawings, imported them to the program I use and made vector templates from them. As with most Falcon builds, I'm taking a different approach. Due to the table size, I had to break the body up into three parts. It's ok, though. If it doesn't work out, I'll just have to cut a new hull by hand. I also incorporated a few guide notches for some parts. Oh, and there are 38 ribs in all! To tell you the truth, if I could have only done the ribs, it would have still been worth it! Call me lazy, it's ok! :lol

All in all, I used one 72" x 24" sheet of .060" styrene (cut up into 24" x 20" pieces) for all the parts.

PM me if you would like a copy of the cutting file. I have to warn that although I have spent a lot of time on these parts, there may still be some errors. I think it's a good start though. BTW, I can provide drawings with and without the 3-part body.

[Image: 32MF-CuttingTemplates-preview.jpg]

Oh, and I misspelled Joshua Maruska's name in the preview above. I'll correct it later.

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - JAWS - 04-15-2012

Ok you definately have more builds on the go than I do now Joe.
Nice to see though.
Great template youve mad up too buddy.
We need more work like that being shared or distributed.

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 04-15-2012

Hehe! I wish I could concentrate on one thing and see it all the way through but I haven't had any time at all. I'm hoping the Fall will bring some more model making time.

And thanks about the templates. But the real thanks goes to Maruska....whoever he is. His drawings are crazy awesome! They just needed a little extra work to make the ribs and such.

BTW, I wouldn't have ever dreamed of building a Falcon had I not seen Phil and Cory's builds! Phil also gave me some good advice. Thanks guys!

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - Wombat - 04-15-2012

Thats a really nice thing to offer the community here, good stuff, Joe!

Enjoy the build when you have the time, for a SW ship it ain't half bad this one.. LOL





RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - kbilly - 04-21-2012

I'll be following this thread for sure! Look forward to seeing it come together.

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 04-21-2012

Thanks, k! I gotta say, all them awesome builds out there did inspire me, without a doubt, but your superb id'ing skills worked it's magic on me as well. Without your contributions to the community, I probably wouldn't even have imagined attempting this build! I hope to bring it! I've got a few months to plan my next move.

BTW...go Spurs!

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-15-2013

Frank, thanks for returning the motivation to dust off this project. Not much to look at still but here's what I did the last two days. Luckily my plate is less full these days....hopefully for a good while. I don't have room in my current house and may have to build a carrying case for this as well due to me having to move every few years (military). Nevertheless, I got the itch to continue with this so here is my recent progress.

Here are most of the parts for the basic body. About 70 parts will make it up NOT including the 1-inch sidewalls and inner support located in the middle of the pic. Not pictured are the mandibles and the 1-inch square and round aluminum tubing that will make up the armature. These parts alone have already given me an idea of how much this thing could potentially weigh! I'm shooting for under 25 pounds if I can help it!
[Image: IMG_20130214_184319_zps77cc08f0.jpg]



Here you can see the way I designed the hex tunnel boxes. The increasing side angles on the three ribs follows the curve of the hull. I calculated the crap out of this area! Hopefully it'll save me time like I envisioned and not bite me in the butt!
[Image: IMG_20130214_184304_zps01aeec7f.jpg]

Again, not much. However, between Frank C's build and his comment about how most builders stop after the drawing phase, a fire has been lit under my ***. Let's see how long it stays lit, job permitting! :lol

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - Tsophika - 02-15-2013

Cool! Now, how can I convince you to put that effort into a 5' version?

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-15-2013

You'd have to give me a brand new laser cutter! LOL! No, but, wait.....my friend has a giant CNC routing table at his work. If I can convince him to cut a 5' hull......hmmm! I think I will be looking at those 5' blueprints now. Realistically, though, I'm not sure if I could hunt down all those donor parts for a 5-footer. I have a bunch of them but not all. Dammit, Craig, you've got me contemplating it already! Tongue

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 02-15-2013

Nice! This is my next step this weekend if I can get a few hours. Look at all of those clean lines! I'm so jealous! Tongue

I guess when I get the chance, I'll start a thread too. Found the 1" aluminum tubing at Lowe's. Good call...it was just over $11 for a 3' section.

I'll be in touch!
-Dave

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-16-2013

(02-15-2013, 11:27 PM)daverep Wrote: Nice! This is my next step this weekend if I can get a few hours. Look at all of those clean lines! I'm so jealous! Tongue

I guess when I get the chance, I'll start a thread too. Found the 1" aluminum tubing at Lowe's. Good call...it was just over $11 for a 3' section.

I'll be in touch!
-Dave

It's not all clean, Dave. See that tear in the styrene in the last pic...hehe! I got over anxious when I was popping it out of the sheet!

Cool about the tubing! I was under the impression that they only sold it in 8-foot lengths. I'll also be making a Lowes visit this weekend. I was going to go with round styrene for the mandible lighting tubes but if I find a good substitute at Lowes, I'll do that.

Right now, I need to think about all the maintenance holes around the ship. I'm trying to figure out if I need to build those first. The mandible holes will definitely be attached before the top and bottom plates come together but I still need to get the proper circumference and depth first.

Joe



RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 02-16-2013

I got some 1" piping while at Lowe's. I had thought about getting some square styrene tubes from Plastruct or US Plastics, but figured I was already at Lowe's and it was probably cheaper just to do the 1" pipe from them.

I'm also at the same place on the maintenance holes. Trying to figure out how deep as well. I want to work on those before I skin the top & bottom. I was going to try and match up some kit parts with the ref photos in order to figure out the depth, but I'm missing some important donor kits to be able to do that effectively. I wanted to cut into the ribbing I've done in order to use those as support for the wells.

Might email you sometime this weekend to run an idea or two by you. So, fair warning! Big Grin

-Dave

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-16-2013

I'm down, Dave. Email away.

Oh so you got round tubing. OK, maybe I am still correct about the 8-foot square aluminum tubing. That's what I saw online for about $30 or so bucks.

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 02-16-2013

(02-16-2013, 02:09 AM)joewhite Wrote: Oh so you got round tubing. OK, maybe I am still correct about the 8-foot square aluminum tubing. That's what I saw online for about $30 or so bucks.

Sorry...my post WAS a bit confusing. My apologies.

I actually bought both. I got the 3-foot, 1" square aluminum tubing for the body and the 1" pvc pipe for the mandible lighting tubes.

I was thinking the square styrene tube would give me better bracing on the mandibles, but I plan on glueing it in, so I thought it wouldn't make a difference if it were round or square. I might add some supports to the pipe if needed.

-Dave

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-20-2013

So, I went down to Lowes and bought some aluminum square tubing. Had to return it though. I wasn't thinking of all the extra work I'd have to put into it to cut and drill holes. And naturally it adds more weight....I thought I could live with it but it was a little heavier than I imagined. I was going to drill a bunch of holes to lighten the weight but I decided to order some plastic square tubing instead. It sucks how the plastic stuff is slightly more expensive than the metal....oh well.

I know ILM used round tubing for the mandibles. Has anyone used or thought of using square? I was thinking that it would serve as the inner mandible sidewalls as well as inner support and lighting access.

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - kbilly - 02-20-2013

You need to consider the mandible wells, I remember someone saying that the end wells are boxed to go around the internal tubing.

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-20-2013

Yeah, I was looking at that. Going square will shave off .060" by eliminating the wall. It's not much but kinda helps. Building it with a wall, square or round tubing brings the tube very close to the forward wells. I did feel that the wells would barely fit round but barely. Hmmm, so was only the side facing the tubing boxed? I also don't see why the tubing couldn't be altered. Looks like I will have to research them wells a little more.

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 02-21-2013

I have my aluminum tubing. If I get the chance tonight I can maybe check mine using the aluminum tubing. 1" is 1"...shouldn't make a difference if it's aluminum or styrene I would assume. These wells are giving me fits as well...and the docking tunnels...and just about everything else so far! HA!

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-21-2013

Looks like I may have some bad news! I hope not but I think it may be true. I'm coming to discover that the Maruska files may be off!

I slapped together some of the port mandible wall parts. Now, they aren't in their absolute correct position vertically, but the horizontal spacing is really close. The last pencil line on the left side, underneath the Gepard gun, is the tip of the mandible. I measured 13 1/2" inches from that line to the left edge of the Porsche engine part. A little longer than the MR Falcon mandible measurements. I think they measured 13 1/8". So I was pretty close considering I took measurements from some of my unmodified parts instead of tacking them on to the test strip.

So, it turns out that the same length of mandible on Maruska's drawings only measure 12 1/2"! Dammit! From the tip of the mandibles to the back of the ship measures 30 1/2".....a little shorter than the Studioscale.com plans which measure 33.74".

This sucks! I apologize to all those who are using the plans I made but I used the source material which were known to be reliable plans. Someone please correct me if I am wrong!

Joe

[Image: IMG_20130220_201427_zps857a4717.jpg]

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-21-2013

On one good note, I verified that the three barrel gun underneath the Flak 51 part is from the Yamato or Musashi. The base of the guns sticks out a mm or so from the edge on each side. Only these two kits have that feature on those guns.

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-21-2013

Oh and one more thing. I used the 1/76 Matilda versus the 1/72. The measurements are spot on to the ref. Kind of confusing. Anyone have any info on those two kits? Was the 1/72 actually 1/76?

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 02-22-2013

Joe
If you see this before you check your email, go check it. I've emailed you what we discussed last night on two drawings.

-Dave

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-22-2013

Dave, your work saved my build! Hehe! Your research and build are great pieces of work! Please post anything you would like here. It will definitely help all of us out.

I apologize for not posting this here but here is a quick background on an area that I noticed. Dave has been helping me to dissect this area to better understand it.

[Image: equatorstudy2_zps9634c181.jpg]

You can see that the port side mandible wall extends longer than expected before it meets the curved hull. The top arrow shows the hull notch and the bottom shows the sidewall intersection. None of the popular blueprints show this area like this.

[Image: pswstudy_zps77394272.jpg]

In the above pic, you can see the bottom arrow shows how the parts drive straight past where the curve of the hull and mandible would meet according to most blueprints. The top arrow shows the Tyrrell part which is not curved to the hull as in many builds, but in fact straight.

I was aware of this but I still panicked when my test strip didn't match 100%. Dave re-assured me by quickly comparing the more common blueprints out there. I'll let him chime in if he would like. Thanks Dave!

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 02-22-2013

Okay...first my apologies. I'm dead tired from working on this stuff early this morning and I'm literally going to copy/paste my RPF post. I don't typically do that, but I'm fried. Tongue

Here's what Joe and I have been working on. Last night when I got home I saw his thread about possibly having an issue with the cutting plans he derived from the Maruska drawings. I've been using Joe's patterns to build my own Falcon and have also been using the Maruska drawings as well.

So, I thought we should probably compare all of the drawings by overlaying them onto each other. I've got experience in Illustrator and could do that. So, I created a simple version of the studioscale drawing and placed the Maruska Falcon on top of it to compare the dimensions.

[Image: FalconComparisonA.jpg]

I also wanted to show both versions side by side.

Next, I took Joe's cutting pattern he derived from the Maruska drawing and laid the studioscale on top of that. Sadly it was really early in the morning this morning when I did that and forgot to save it out. But what I did do before all of that is create an image that had all three...Joe's cutting pattern, the studioscale pattern and Maruska's pattern. They all matched perfectly.

[Image: FalconComparisonB.jpg]

The nice thing is that the studioscale pattern had the equator sidewalls and I was able to determine earlier in the week with Joe that, based on some of the parts listed on mensaboy's part maps, the walls should indeed be inset by 1/2".

Next I wanted to help solve Joe's problem with the port-side mandible being too small. I noticed that on the Maruska drawing, that since he wasn't creating a pattern as such, he didn't continue the mandible wall up to the equator wall. Which is correct, because the way he drew them, the hull hides that. So, I decided to continue the wall up until it meets that circle that makes up the equator wall.

[Image: AreainQuestion.jpg]

Joe took a look at it and determined that Maruska's drawings are accurate based on the port sidewall map. What threw him off, and you can sort of see it in the above image is that on the port side-view of Maruska's drawings he didn't include the intersecting point of the straight sidewall to the curved equator wall. I drew some rough lines to show where these points are. But when I created the line for that intersection, you see that I drew it over the side wall.

So, I think we've determined that the Maruska drawings are very accurate. I've been working on my own build and can tell you that the parts fit very snugly. I'm unlucky enough to not have access to any laster cutters, so I've been doing this by hand and the drawings/template are spot on. Just wish my cutting was!

Hopefully I've explained it well enough. I'm pretty delirious right now with only a couple hours of sleep and on top of that, I'm working on one hell of a cold. So, I'll get my thread going tomorrow night.

I may work on it a bit more so I can have more pics to put up.

Thanks all!
-Dave

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 02-22-2013

(02-22-2013, 04:42 AM)joewhite Wrote: I'll let him chime in if he would like. Thanks Dave!

Joe- You are most welcome, my friend! I'm glad I could help!!

..sorry, almost forgot to respond back to you...lack of sleeeep....

-Dave

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - kbilly - 02-22-2013

Great work guys, wish I was where you guys are with your builds.

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 02-23-2013

Thanks again, Dave!

Thanks, kbilly. Your research is part of the reason I am even at this early point in my build. So thanks again to you and the many others who have shared their work!

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 03-08-2013

I know 3D models aren't as cool as plastic one's round these parts. However, as I was teaching myself Rhino for my TIE wings I decided to make some time to build a Falcon as well. The idea was to visualize any problem areas before hand and to also gauge the amount of materials I would need. I'm using the Maruska drawings as well as measurements of various Plastruct products. I'm also using my templates for the docking tunnels.

I'd also like to create a complete template of the curved hull complete with docking tunnel wall and maintenance hole cutouts. The chances of a skin fitting perfectly are probably low but it's fun to see if I can do it.

One cool area I've been working on is the support object underneath the gun placements. The base of the placement has a diameter of 5.7"....not a common measurement in say a tube. So, my little project is helping me solve what I will use, like say a 5.5" Plastruct tube and possibly stronger joints where the ribs meet said tube. All in all, I can play around with this as much as I like until I figure out what works best.

Julien, I used your build as inspiration for the center square tubing. I'm also using square tubes through mandibles. I think it will add more strength and they also serve as the outer mandible walls.

Eh....it's something to do.

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - kbilly - 03-08-2013

Very cool. I think doing a digital model will help immensely.

Looks like it should be quite sturdy. I was planning to do my docking corridors the way you've shown them in your last pic.

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - Stefan Hacker - 03-08-2013

Wow that´s pretty cool! That explains a lot how cunning your plan is to build up the superstructure.

Can someone confirm that the radius of the disk of the baseshape in 29 cm (11,41") and the diameter 58cm (22,83 ")

If i printed Joe´s plan right the Falcon should be 79,50 cm long that´s 31,29 niches. Is that right?

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 03-09-2013

kbilly, the ribs seen only what sticks past the curved hull. I'm doing it differently than most builds. I am trying to make a flat template with cutouts for the dock tunnels and the maintenance wells. Not sure if it will be as sturdy as other builds where the curved hull is laid out and than the tunnels are attached on top. We'll see, I guess. I will, however, make templates for the latter as well in case I need to take that route. I'll eventually build a few of these for some of my nerdy cousins, so there will be trial and error involved. I'm lazy when it coles to cutting plastic so making templates on a program is the way to go for me. I hope to get mine laser cut.

Stefan, diving in already, huh? Awesome! Good question! And here is where I must finally confess that my templates are off. The base radius is 11.45" (29.083 cm) going off of Maruska's drawings. That's just the round part of the hull, not including the length of the mandibles. My radius is slightly larger at 11.54" (29.31 cm) which is actually the curved hull radius. So, I will have to trim my hull circumference a bit. Don't have the entire length at the moment but I will measure later tonight.

Joe



RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - Stefan Hacker - 03-09-2013

Ah thanks Joe! That explains a lot.

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RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 03-15-2013

WTF?

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 10-09-2013

So, just a quick update on my Falcon. I just talked to the machinist. It looks very hopeful that an aluminum vac-form buck for the hull will be CNC turned.....possibly as early as next week!!! Still not 100% but looking very hopeful! So if you've always wanted an formed acrylic hull, please keep your fingers crossed!

Joe

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - Wombat - 10-09-2013

It's not something i want but fingers crossed for you with that just the same.

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - Stefan Hacker - 10-09-2013

I hope you get what you want Joe. But i guess it would not be a big fun to glue the armor panels on a acrylic hull. Styrene on styrene would be better i guess.

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - daverep - 10-10-2013

Anxious to see what it looks like, Joe! Send pics when you get it in. And this reminds me...be expecting an email from me. I got an X-wing question for you.

-Dave

RE: Joining the 32" Falcon club - joewhite - 10-10-2013

Thanks fellas!

Stefan, you've got a point. I honestly don't know if they used styrene or acrylic. They used acrylic for ther 5-footer so I assumed they did the same for the 32-incher. However, just to make it easier, styrene all around might be the way to go...depending on stength, of course. But I don't want to get ahead of myself. I've talked to quite a bit of machinists and this is the most helpful but I still need to wait and see. If I can get this going, I plan on vac-forming both the hull and plating.

Dave, will wait for your email!

Joe