Can’t be bothered to think of a title (day 38)

Today I mostly worked on refining the head interior. I’m trying to work out how it should attach to the body, but I also need to work out some kind of keying system so the helmet can stay securely attached to it… Tonight’s work is mostly in preparation for those steps, getting the head interior to fit better inside the head, hopefully with enough space for a clear visor part, and getting the monoeye centered better within the head.


I want to get the head interior parts to a point where I’ll be able to recast them. The problem is that the monoeye assembly will be difficult to work with unless the top and bottom portions of the head interior are separated, and then assembled around the monoeye. My plan is to drill holes through the layers of the head interior so I can pin them together and use the pins to re-align the parts after I separate them. But first I need to add material to the bottom of the head in the area where those alignment pins will go.

I also want to get the connection between the head interior and the helmet a little more settled. This could probably be just a simple friction-fit (much as it is now) but right now there’s always a fair bit of play when I put the helmet onto the head interior. The helmet can wind up tilted forward or turned too far to one side – I’d like it to be more consistent. But before I can make that connection I first need to make sure the helmet sits where I want it to, that the fit isn’t too tight, etc. so I spent a fair bit of time trimming and sanding down the head interior and rechecking the fit.

While working on the head fit I noticed the monoeye was a bit off-center. I think I might have picked up on this while I was installing the monoeye in the first place, but it’s particularly easy to spot on the top plate of the head interior, and anywhere the hole for the axis rod is visible relative to the printed grid. It’s a 3mm hole so it should go 1.5mm either side of the centerline, but it’s clearly more like 1.8mm on the left side of the head. On the upper surface of the top plate, there’s no printed grid but it’s pretty apparent that it’s off-center. I recut portions of the hole to move it more toward the right side of the head, then used CA glue to make the hole smaller again.

I’m hoping to soon be able to move on to building the neck joint and all that; The main puzzle there is that I’d like the head to be able to tilt up a little… Not too much, because I’ve done Zaku kits that could tilt the head up and I don’t think it actually looks very good… But giving it a little bit of ability to tilt the head upward (and maybe side-to-side as well?) is useful for certain poses and expressions. The hard bit is, where should it pivot? If it’s a single pivot point it would need to go pretty far back to prevent the head from knocking into the backpack when it tilts up. I could maybe do a double-joint as a way for the head to move up and forward a bit when it needs to tilt – I haven’t really settled on a design yet.