Digital Redesign » Clyde.A2

A few years ago I designed and released the Clyde.A, a 1/6 scale resin kit which used aluminum ball joints, machine screws, and nuts to make the robot fully articulated. I was able to produce 3 batches of it before the physical kit portion of my Industria Mechanika (iMech) productions came to an end. Since there would be no further physical Clyde.A kits, I decided to redesign it in 3D and make several much needed improvements to the design and articulation.

Some of the changes are small aesthetic changes such as the lighter orange joint caps instead of the smaller inserts to hide the hardware of the resin kit. Others are more pronounced such as the top portion of the thighs where I’ve made the area rounded instead of boxy as well as improving the joint clasp. The boxiness of the original looked cool when I designed it flat in vector art, but on the actual figure, when the thighs are not in that exact position, it looks odd and misaligned. I also made the ankle front/back rotation joint larger and more centered under the shin which will help tremendously with balance.

As of the right now, the overall redesign is completed, but I’ve not added any space tolerances for slotted and jointed parts, nor have I created holes for any specified hardware. I would like to turn the Clyde.A into an actual toy product at some point rather than simply sell the file-sets on my Patreon or iMech. That process however is different than producing in resin and it can be done without nearly as much hardware by using ABS and polycap style friction joints. There is also the possibility of it being 1/12 scale instead of or in addition to 1/6. Without knowing exactly which way it’ll end up going, as well as factory and material specifications, I decided to wait rather than spend time doing work that won’t need done. That frees me up to work on the many other ideas crowding my whiteboard.

And even if that never becomes a reality, time spent on a design is rarely time wasted as long as you’ve learned something. Each design poses new challenges to overcome and that experience adds up and contributes to future designs being even better.