Halo 4 BR85HB SR (Pic heavy!) - First Major Project

Masterchief0624 said:

cleaned up the thread, thank you Chernobyl for explaining how creating a new thread works.
RobTC, as always sir, excellent work

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Ah, it was you. Thanks and thanks!

Final bits and pieces for beta build!

For some reason, the chamber is about a millimetre narrower than the two pieces on either side of it, so a little bit of surgery is necessary. Few grades of sandpaper and some filler, no big deal.



I'm doing it pretty sloppily here, it's possible to get a nice smooth finish.



Mag painted.



Srsly you guys, Design Master Premium Metals paint or whatever it's called is amazing! Well, the most amazing thing this side of an airbrush and Alclad II.



I then proceeded to butcher it with the laziest paint job ever. MUST GET FINISHED SO IMPATIENT ARRGHRGHR



The bits to rough up for epoxying the grip.



One bar clamp required per gluing... I only have the one. Could have been done in two days if I had a second!



Magnets! Be very careful, of course, how you orient them prior to gluing; confirm to yourself several times! Epoxy is pretty permanent stuff. Of course, I do sell spares...



The spots to sand for the barrel jacket ( and obviously the mating points on the rail).



Because epoxy is so strong, I could torque down the slight bend of the rail with the bar clamp and it held position once it set.



The foregrip and barrel gluing... DONE



WHEEEEE



1/4" hole, the charging lever pretty much friction fits. Of course I still added superglue.



Ok, NOW done.



It's... It's beautiful! (ish)



Paint job cleaned up and final parts glued on... All that's left is weathering!



Kept it simple for this build, just an acrylic blackwash...



And some silver drybrushing/edge highlighting:



Now for the best part...

Yeah, some parts of the silver are... Better than others. It was a rush job about an hour ago.

Casting begins Monday!

wow man it's amazing i love it

Ok, meant to do this last night, but didn't get to it because it was so late. Scaling, gloss, texture and all that good stuff:











Bear in mind this is a half-assed assembly with second-grade castings, next-to-zero sanding and filling of imperfect seams, and a really sloppy paint job. It can be MUCH better than this, if you want it to be.

THAT.LOOKS.GREAT o.o

i love it

Even with the small imperfections that you mention, the BR looks amazing! It's going to look more epic once the electronics are put in place.

The amount of detail and pictures you provide is really astounding. This is a subscribed thread for sure!

Thanks guys!

Frozensnot said:

Even with the small imperfections that you mention, the BR looks amazing! It's going to look more epic once the electronics are put in place.

The amount of detail and pictures you provide is really astounding. This is a subscribed thread for sure!

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Oh yeah, the electronics are going to make this insane. Not sure when I'm going to get started on those, it might be a little-by-little kinda project rather than one big thing, but it should be pretty ridiculous!

Thanks man, glad you like! I try to put it all out there as much as possible; I've learned everything I know from knowledgable, detailed forum threads, Youtube videos and blog posts, so I try to give back in the same ways as best I can.

RobTC,

The whole setup looks like it assembles really well. Beautiful work. It always takes longer that you expect to get to this stage, so congratulations!

RobTC said:

Thanks guys!

Oh yeah, the electronics are going to make this insane. Not sure when I'm going to get started on those, it might be a little-by-little kinda project rather than one big thing, but it should be pretty ridiculous!

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There is never as much space as you think inside for mechanisms or electronics. My advice is to spec the whole electronics suite together so it is efficient and compact. I did my Splaser electronics by designing a circuit for each feature I needed, then grafted them all together in a way that made sense (to me). I placed the physical components on the gun outline also to incorporate the physical limitations into how I integrated the circuit design. That eased service somewhat by using multi pin connecters to join different modules.

Redshirt

Redshirt said:

RobTC,

The whole setup looks like it assembles really well. Beautiful work. It always takes longer that you expect to get to this stage, so congratulations!

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Thanks! It does assemble quite well, yeah- not quite as cleanly as the master did prior to surface finishing, but quite well enough for practical purposes. I ground bits away that actually didn't need to be, too- figuring out the order of assembly makes a difference since the margins are so tight.

Redshirt said:

There is never as much space as you think inside for mechanisms or electronics. My advice is to spec the whole electronics suite together so it is efficient and compact. I did my Splaser electronics by designing a circuit for each feature I needed, then grafted them all together in a way that made sense (to me). I placed the physical components on the gun outline also to incorporate the physical limitations into how I integrated the circuit design. That eased service somewhat by using multi pin connecters to join different modules.

Redshirt

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Yeah, the thickness of rotocast parts, non-removable load-bearing walls, etc. certainly affects matters, though I believe if I forgo the con safety aspect and just use CO2 like a sensible person for the "real" build, I can shrink the overall footprint and power requirements quite significantly. The scope is also an entirely separate system, though it might need to draw power from the main body.

That said, I do have to build the entire internal system as a whole before I can assemble that final-final version anyway, so I suppose the point is moot. But actually constructing the whole system will probably take a period of time into sometime next year, I wouldn't be surprised. I have lots of other stuff to do as well in that time frame... Like casting this first run, using this test version for shooting with, putting together a 3D printer and building a FO4 Pip-Boy! Probably some other stuff too, I tend to have a lot of balls in the air at any given time.

But yeah, it'll be modular components connected by pinned connectors... Mostly just two-pin binary I/O (eg. from a reed switch in the mag well), but the ammo counter will require some kind of SPI or I2C datastream to keep the various bits of UI updated. Haven't quite decided how dismantle-able I'm going to have it yet. Complete takedown functionality may interfere too much with the surface finish, so we'll see where I compromise there.

Edit: 10,000 views! Crazy!

An appropriate post for my 400th, I think! First kit, ready to ship. Been a bit of a hassle what with expired resins, damaged moulds and rapidly dwindling supplies, but I got it done! Just gotta rig up some packaging for it and get it weighed. This 'un is SuprWeenieHutJr's, I believe.



Obviously I had to add scifi font and orange stripes to the little logo, otherwise how could you possibly tell it's a prop?!



Currently still two slots left at $230 + shipping. I then notify you of casting errors and offer the option of recasting or using as "battle damage" or other weathering. Shipping I'll obviously know in advance once I've boxed up and priced out this completed kit, but I'm still assuming somewhere in the region of $20 or so to the lower 48.

very Nice looking kit.

Kusak3 Thanks man!

Just finished writing up the package literature/build guide! The details might be of interest to some, whether they're considering buying a kit or building their own BR85. A fair amount of it's a repeat from the thread, but I think some of it is a little more in-depth. SuprWeenieHutJr Harri51 m00sem4n

Super low-res PDF for attachment limits/download speed: View attachment test.pdf

The actual printed versions I assume I'll sign/number/date/whatever somewhere.

Took a look at that snazzy build guide, it's got that great combo of professionality and personality that I've come to expect from your work, haha. I certainly hope prospective buyers appreciate such extra lengths! :thumbsup

I just wanted to say how helpful RobTC has been through this whole process. He has been sending pictures of several of the pieces to make sure it's all ok, and constantly updating me on the process. For the last two people that may be thinking of getting this rifle, I can't recommend it enough.

m00sem4n said:

Took a look at that snazzy build guide, it's got that great combo of professionality and personality that I've come to expect from your work, haha. I certainly hope prospective buyers appreciate such extra lengths! :thumbsup

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Haha, cool! Thanks man. Wasn't sure if anything in there was relevant to your build or not, but figured I'd tag you anyway just in case.

SuprWeenieHutJr said:

I just wanted to say how helpful RobTC has been through this whole process. He has been sending pictures of several of the pieces to make sure it's all ok, and constantly updating me on the process. For the last two people that may be thinking of getting this rifle, I can't recommend it enough.

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Yay!

#1 is now officially shipped, as of an hour ago! Here's the lower layer:



And the upper layer:



(From IG: https://instagram.com/p/4zq7OfNkA1/?taken-by=robtaylorcase)

Wheee!