The BrikWars Forums

The Matrix A.P.U.



My efforts so far.









This is my first attempt at Power Armour and there are a few mistakes I can see but this is as far as I have gotten in an afternoon. What I need is some tips on legs for this. I have some parts that may do from the Star Wars Republic Scout Walker kit...



...but other than that I have not much else but basic old Lego. I can usually see the shape and function of what I want to do before I start and build by feel as I go but I am at a bit of a loss of where to begin. Any ideas guys?

If you search "Matrix APU" on MOCPages there are literally dozens of them on there that are all really good. I would say start there.

wow no joke i was just thinking about building one of these and so far yours looks cool

Start out by working out your points of articulation. Ideally each limb/digit should be able to move in complete freedom, though practically this is not always possible. Sometimes you will need to put on one joint that allows movement along one axis, then another joint which allows movement on another axis.

This might help explain, though these pictures were taken at night (and I still don't understand how the flash works... or basic photography).

Hello Mr. BruteTRON, my handy mech.



Time for a check up. We're just going to borrow the arm for demonstration purposes.



As you can see most of the articulation is in the top half of the arm. Reduced to the component parts you can see the pieces used around the 'elbow'. I found I had a lot of the 'gun shaped' and 2x1-with-round-bits-on-the-end' bricks and used them for articulation.



Now let's look at the leg.



Like the arm, most of the articulation work is done on the top part of the leg.



Reducing down to parts again you see good ole 'gun' and '2x1-plus-weird-hoops' bit (I'll leave brikpedants to post the right names).



Basically - work out where you want articulation and find bricks in your collection to try and make as many stable points of articulation as possible.

i can recommend the EXO-FORCE series two arm pieces i use them on lots of small mechs. although because of this mechs squareish natue it might be problematic.

Technic LEGO may be a solution - the two-by-1 bricks with a hole and the pins with friction (typically black in my collection). Technic may help in general with the austere look you are going for.

most of the ones on MOC pages are over sized.

Wow, fella's. That's great you've given me loads of leads to follow up on. I think my son has some exo-force stuff but he's using it just now (darn-it!) and I have some old technical stuff too so no shortage there.

Funky Weasel, that is an ingenious leg assembly you have devised but I think it may be only just a tad too small for this. I'm looking for something just as stocky though. As you can see in the Matrix pic the legs are short and squat the arms are overly long giving it an ape like look. Which is what I'll call it.

Cheers, for the help, I'll get right to work.

Funky Weasel isn't giving you word-for-word instructions, just ideas. I've got legs that work using the same principles, and stand behind this method.

Articulation is a lot easier to achieve than you might think. If you have just one stud connecting two pieces, you can swivel along that stud. I don't like using technic pins because while they have some friction, there's never enough to support the weight of en entire mech or hardsuit, and they spin around wildly. Minifig legs work great though, as well as plate hinges.

I have used mini fig legs because they fit into a 2x1 piece and I then have an easy hinge. I use the technic pieces, mainly old ones and stolen bionicles from a brother, but it keeps my turrets rotating.

I'll need to give it some trial and error test construction, you know. Stick some bits together and see how they move. I'll be using hinge plates of various types that I'll double up to give more friction and support. I have some with ratchet joints so they should be quite strong. The minifig legs surprisingly looks good, I've seen them used in the forum for other stuff too. I'll keep it in mind while working on these legs.

Oh, I looked at the Bionicals but thought it would be seen as cheating. I don't mind cheating, I just mind cheating here.

Pretty good so far, I'd like to see when it's done.

IVhorseman wrote:I don't like using technic pins because while they have some friction, there's never enough to support the weight of en entire mech or hardsuit, and they spin around wildly.

Try the black pins. They have so much friction some of them are hard to move at all. I agree that the grey ones are useless, but try giving the black ones a shot.

Using em. They hold some weight, but I would never trust basing the entire leg off of a single one of those joints.

That's the tricky part about articulation - too much freedom means that if the joints become loose (or start off loose) the whole figure can collapse. A work-around is to build in limits to the joints so that a default pose does not result in collapse.

In short - building around the hinges to limit limb movement.