The Probe Droid Resin Kit Instructions Tread

[moffeaton]

Gather ye these parts, hither, forsooth, etc:

Start a'gluing:

Glue the KVII part to the back end of the assembly, which will serve as a guide for how far apart both M16 donors sit...

Shore up the front of the assembly by gluing this detail to the outer edges:

This glues to the underside - but does not fully bridge the span, so it glues to one side only:

Next up:

This runs parallel to the assembly's centerline (when glued to the Probe Droid itself) so it will be "crooked" compared to the angled front:

It attaches by slotting the "pin" into the forked protrusion and then also can be glued to the piece you just attached, previous to this one:

Almost there!

Final piece:

Now, I'm not 100% sure on the pipe diameter used, as these resin parts are slightly different from the donor kits, so this is a placeholder. There are three cylindrical protrusions on the bottom of the PD, and only two provided in the kit, so we'll have to decide on an appropriate tube to use. This is something I had laying in a drawer - Evergreen, I think?

Need to buy a thicker walled tube:

 

[moffeaton]

Built the gun mount. If we like the look of this, I'll throw out the .ai file.

 

[darth_daniel]

This assembly for the underside is insane. I don´t know what´s more impressive, the creativity by the ILM people or the parts ID by you guys. :thumbsup

 

[CutThumb]

Again, when you take into account the technical additions and detailing improvements made to this kit the results are hugely impressive. Go Jason!
There are about half a dozen people on this board who are producing work of an equal or higher standard than that of the original ILM builders. Arguably having to replicate a model exactly is harder than the effort to originally building it, particularly after thirty years.
When I started building about four years ago there were some great kits, the MIke Salzo X wing comes immediately to mind and people were always quite happy to accept the results without many alterations.
But since then the rate and degree to which some people are improving the overall modelling accuracy with original detail is amazing. Recently we've had superb examples of upgraded castings with the B wings (Guy/ Julien), the Snowspeeder (Lee) ,and the Red Jammer/ Tie Killer Y wings (Jason/ Lee).
But the Probedroid is perhaps the most outstanding example of how both a resin kit and totally scratch build versions have vastly been improved by the hours of research and effort put into making it so accurate by casters and builders alike. That many are STILL not totally satisfied with the results just goes to show how demmanding they've become!

 

[Transcoder]

this is looking so cool! amazing detail..good work

 

[jedimaster]

Wadda waste of a good M16.

 

[moffeaton]

LOL, right?

 

[jedimaster]

LOL....

 

[moffeaton]

Grab your body, it's cylinder gluing time.

Pin the parts for added stability. If you're like me, you'll knock things off every 4 seconds.

Rotating clockwise, glue this greeblie down:

Now these Karl bits:

Two more cylinders! (The kit initially only came with two - you need four)

Now the underside - orient the body as shown:

Glue the Karl halves together and then to the body, here:

Roco assembly:

Put it here:

The next one goes here:

Orient the body as shown:

Smallest tube goes here:

Karl halves get glued together and placed here as well:

Swing it around and put the M16 assembly and larger tube in this area:

 

[vaderdarth]

Wow, you're cooking with gas now!!!!!

 

[CutThumb]

Jason, I need to ask a question of you and other PD builders. In that reference photograph (need to buy a thicker tube)a few posts up on the base of the PD there is a round disk that contains a number of kit parts on the very base of the PD between the legs. I've been looking at alot of photo ref recently and this disk is present in most of the latter pictures but missing in some of the earlier exhibitions.
Nobody seems to have included this in any build or discussed it. I was of the opinion at one point that there were two versions built as the colour of the later droids seemed significantly browner. The disk is very clear in some of Skydivers ref photos. Its totally missing in the Chronicles pics, where the base is used as a mounting point for shooting. In later versions where it is mounted more traditionally on a rod the disk is permanent and has kit parts on it.The whole PD then looks like its been heavily "Rusted". Why is this?

PS Also noticed that the brass rods whilst very clear and clean in the early pictures have been heavily over sprayed and coloured in the latter ones as well. It looks to me as if someone has heavily "retouched" the model well post production ,and going for the rusted effect to blend the later additional disk parts in. Certain areas on the legs have an almost dark blued metalised look thats disappeared benieth the overspry as well in the later pictures. The effect is that the later "versions" appear much more "clumsily" done, particularly the legs.

 

[MonsieurTox]

The dound disk is part of the stand like the rod and the fake sixth leg !

 

[moffeaton]

What Julien said. The disk (with it's details) and the 6th leg are not original to the Probe Droid as built for the film. I also suspect it was browned up and "restored" at some point, too. Personally not a fan of the brown as it's a little inconsistent with the Empire's vehicle aesthetic, even if it was present in lesser quantities on the prop during filming.

 

[CutThumb]

As always it pays to ask the experts.Thanks.They obviously didn't want to spray the brass tubes originally as that would have made animating the PD legs very difficult. Similarly I can see and understand that the round disk was made as a part of an original stand to help with that animation and blue screen work ,but I was just surprised how much detail had been added to replace it later.The new disk (and parts) appears to have replace the old one on a permanent basis for display purposes. There is definitely much more paint over sprayed though. The brass parts shown in the Chronicles legs have almost disappeared under sprays of "brown and grey"dirt in Skydivers pics.

PS So do we include the disk as part of the studio build ,as it clearly is in both the full scale and studio scale models and its visible on screen shots in ESB?

 

[moffeaton]

SUPER subjective, but if you look at the full sized prop, there is very little brown coloring. You can get a sense of the color from these two pics, and note that even with color shifting/photo inaccuracies, it looks like they attempted to make the 1:1 and scaled props match each other, color-wise.

 

[vaderdarth]

I've got PD owners asking me what the styrene tubing and end caps model numbers are for those "air tanks". If anyone can help I'd appreciate it.

Dave

 

[moffeaton]

Back to normal from the hurricane... a little more done

Probe Droid - YouTube

 

[ProfKSergeev]

Next thing you know, it's going to levitate!

 

[moffeaton]

I WISH!

 

[3phase]

Back to normal from the hurricane... a little more done

Probe Droid - YouTube

Man that is cool, wish I had the time, patience and skills to do that to mine.