What do you do with a bunch of styrene sheets, some foam you got from a skip and a tube of Pringles? Make a big-ass robot of course!
ED-209 is the biggest thing I've built to date - and also quite tricky. From beginning to end it took me about 9 months to complete - that's working on him on and off. Pieces would be made from scratch with styrene, things were going to be molded and duplicated - but first everything needed to be planned - Lets get going!
It started with a plan...
I've dolled this plan up, I don't lay them out on pretend blue print paper first it's a bit more scatty than that. I draw everything at the scale I want in illustrator and then set to cutting out the shapes...
This is the basic frame of his head. As I go I cut out test pieces in card to make sure things fit together right and also to keep everything straight.
As things build up there's a better picture of what he's going to look like - exciting! Here the frame for his dome is planned. It was difficult to work out the contour of his head from stills of the film and the various toys you can get. I managed to find a 3D print file somebody had done and this was a great help.
With a bit of foam here and some body filler - plus countless hours of sanding and filling we get....
THIS OOHH. There are many many more pieces to make though, so lets crack on.
Everything starts with a box in a box in a box...
The lower legs... Printing out these plans started to make me realise the scale of thing I'd planned. I'd plucked a number out of the air for total finished size and seeing it on paper outside of a screen was like 'have I bitten off more than I can chew here or...?'
The toes here are interesting, I'd initially thought all 3 on each foot were the same. NOPE the toes on the side are a different shape to the front big toe...
Adding in some Milliput to build the beveled areas.
We nearly have a whole...lower..leg... so much more to do!
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| hip joint |
That strip of styrene you see across the middle there is to make sure the two sides stay the correct distance apart - without this those sides could flop inwards just a little bit resulting in wonkey edges.
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| Torso |
The gun here needed some faffing. It's hard to make round / cylindrical pieces by hand - So as a foundation I used a tube of Pringles - which happened to be exactly the circumference I needed minus 1mm - which would be made up by the styrene it would be wrapped in.
Now things are getting groovy on the lower legs. Pieces are being sanded and primed - things are looking good.
With the lower leg complete I needed another... here's a mold
Casting and test fitting
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| exciting no? |
With pieces cast it was time to assemble - a threaded rod is inserted into the legs to build the frame section of the upper leg.
PVC pipe is cut into shape to fit on the hip pieces.
The rails were made from a master which was essentially a straight off cut of MDF. Then molded and cast 8 times!
Throughout the entire model there are also small bolts. These are M2 allen bolts.
To keep the threaded rod secure a wooden section was embedded into the legs. The whole weight of the head and guns goes through here so it needed to be strong.
Extra pieces for the hip.
WooHoO! Now we're talking. With two legs I can now start to test fit. The union between the torso and the hip is actually a spray can lid - just the right size! To stop the head twisting the torso around 3 rods were inserted into the legs.
Shoulder pieces - where the guns meet the head.
ED has these little collars too where is arms go...
This again in just styrene, Replicas cast in Easyflo 120
The elbow joints were made from a mixture of toothpaste lids and strips of aluminum to stop things falling off - the guns, while not heavy would pull a lot on what is really a small area.
The head was filled with a dense foam and a road was inserted inside to attach to the torso. Most of the load bearing areas are filled with a foam.
ERRmagerrhhD
Trying is the first step towards failure
(how not to do a thing)
I didn't need to mold the head, but a friend wanted one so...
I started making a matrix mold for my ED-head, but a few things went wrong with this. Namely, because of changing commitments it took 2 weeks longer than necessary, and some miscalculations resulted in too many variances in fiberglass thickness... Plus because I'd taken so long my clay barrier went hard. I NO RITE... My parting line plan wasn't great either. Next time I'm gonna do that right...
Needless to say I had to start again with a brush on mold with plaster jacket...
A surface coat of each half has slush cast before the whole this was put together and given a final rotation along the seam line.
This is quite a lot of flashing and to be honest the mold isn't fun to use because it's so heavy - but it works!
Painting and finishing
Two colours were used to get ED-209's base colour right. I used a plastikote grey primer (which is kind of a light grey) and plastikote pale blue. Using the grey took the edge of the pale blue to wash it out a little bit. Little dirty patches were added in later with Tamiya acrylic from my airbrush.
The guns are cut aluminum tubes.
The detail for the dome is underlay typically used in gardening to keep weeds out. It looks pretty close to the texture I was looking for. This was stuck to the head with a strong double sided tape and carefully pulled taut across the surface to remove creases.
Last little pieces you can see on the feet there are some strands of single core electrical wire.
And the last piece being inside his radiator area - this is all just found pieces and painted in a grimy fashion.
The finished article...
I really hope you like the result - and have found the process interesting. I know you can buy ED-209 figures everywhere - there's one for every budget - (and maybe in the case of the more expensive ones...more accurate?!) But this is mine.. and, despite some things I should have done differently - he's unique. I think also it's the biggest toy version you can get... by a whole inch.
Thanks for looking!
