Sorry for my lack of photo taking abilities... a little more
than a year ago, my old phone broke, I had no digicam, and decided,
after reading all the hype, that I could get both in one shell by
the name of Viewty. A little more than a year after... boy
did I realize I was wrong. Cellphone cameras are just not
that great no matter how much the phone looks like a camera.
Not to mention, I only have a reading light.. so that doens't help
either.
On with the pics:
Only the head was modified - the face mask/eyes was set around
1mm inwards. The neck was raised by around 1.5mm.
Antennae sharpened.
Now for the problem - I don't know what the engineers were
thinking when supporting a 3/8" rod (not to mention a hollowed out
one) with a 1mm thick plate. It just doesn't work when the
rod needs to handle 5 degrees of freedom - the only one not
required being on its parallel axis. The torquing ripped the
rod right off the plate and this was after I finished the model...
*sigh*... into the surgery room we go for a hip replacement.
Advice for those building a MG Hi-nu - take a knife and scrape
the rod on AT MOST 2 sides (one side on Z axis and one side on Y
axis) before inserting into the socket. Save yourself the
pain.
I was searching for hollow 3/8" rods and didn't find any nearby, so
used the shaft from a Display Base.
Cut to length and checked to make sure that the fitting was
correct, then filed down both sides flat to make sure there's a
good gluing surface.
The next step requires a pin vice and some small drills. If
you search up Japanese websites, you'll see that most people go
with one rod down the middle to reinforce - that's NOT a good idea
when dealing with a piece that torques - it'll leave you with the
same problem as before. The idea is to restrict the degrees
of freedom so the rod cannot buckle. Since the main movements
are forward backwards, and turning, I went with 2 pins on each
side. Note: you cannot do 4 since the southern part of plate
connecting the rod (-y axis) on the otherside is required for the
slide gimmick - putting metal there will destroy the internal
frame. 3 is probably the max - more on that later.
Of course, this side needs to be drilled too. At these spots,
even if the pins are protrude on the other side of the plate, it
will not interfere with the functionality.
The reason for a hollow rod? Here it is - the 3rd rod down
the middle for final reinforcement - this one is just for strength
of the shaft and not so much for torquing. I filled the
middle with cyanoacrylate + baby powder mix.
The shaft itself is a bit large for the socket in the leg. So
I filed down the entire shaft until I obtained the optimum
fit. The key is to get it smooth (and looser than OOB), but
retaining enough strength to hold poses. As shown above,
that's not a problem.