Project review

Structurally only sheet metal and rivets (w/ washers) were used. 26 gauge plates are about 0.5mm thick, which is half as thick as a penny, or slightly thinner than those used for gutters.

Some stats:
- Weight: About 5.25 lbs (2.4 kg)
- Number of metal shapes/cutouts: 32 (for example, the antenna assembly is made of 5 pieces: 2 antennae, the front center cover, the back cover, and the attachment hook)
- Number of rivets: about 146 (most of them are hidden on the inside by design, which is why I can't do an exact count anymore... only about fewer than 40 are readily visible on the outside, and most are located on the side or the back of the head, very few are visible from the front)
- Time taken: 35 hours paper draft + 148 hours metal version = 184 hours total span over 3.5 months
- Cost: All materials shown in pic cost around US $100. Around $60 worth of sheet metal, less than $20 worth of rivets and washers, plus other misc items such as LEDs and stuff. However, tool cost would be quite high if I were to buy them just for this project. I already have most of the tools (drill, dremel, pliers, tin snips...etc), so the biggest tool investment I made was the 4" vise (which costed like $50). In total, I think I spent less than $200. I guess if I were to count labor cost as well, then at minimum wage of $7 and 184 hours, the project cost would be around $1500! It sure is not a wise investment :p

Now a couple of comparison shots against my "plan" / reference:

Completion!

Almost done!

It has been a while since the last update. No matter, not many people know about or read this blog anyway. The project is near completion. All the structural (sheet metal) work is done! All that it left are misc stuff like LEDs and such. It will look much much nicer once the masking tapes are removed. So far about 140+ hours had been spent working on this thing, it's quite a challenging project. I'll bring this to a con in town this weekend, see how it goes :)

Oh Crap Moments...

This is when riveting went wrong. The washer on the inside slipped and got wedge and so the rivet got locked into an angled position, causing it not to be flush against the surface. Solution?

Drill the whole thing back out carefully and fish all the loose items out. (Notice the holes are also misaligned, which I had to fix...) So far I've had quite a couple of such Oh-Crap-Moments, not fun...

75 Hours and counting

It is now about 50% completed(my very unscientific estimation). Everything on top of the head are still not riveted, they are just temporarily mounted together with fasteners. Even though I've already spent over a month on this, nothing is getting easier. Every pieces have their own unique challenges. For example, the last piece was the top of the head, which was very big and didn't work well with the tools I had (too big for the vise, difficult to fold ... etc). It basically covered 9 sections and has 66 drill holes... :P haha, that probably was overkill...

Antenna is done

This is what the Z currently looks like at the 60th hour mark. The antennae were not as difficult to fold as anticipated (I was afraid of bending or curving issue before, but the metal held up much better than expected! The pointy tips are much nicer than I'd hoped for). On the other hand, the diamond shaped center was very problematic. The antennae and the diamond together used up 14 rivets all in the same tiny area, and I had to drill 2 of them back out to undo mistakes. The gap/opening between the two were much wider than I had wanted, but fortunately nothing bad really stood out so I hope they don't get noticed. Hopefully none of the future pieces will get as tricky and difficult as this one (and I don't expect any), I sure hope I'm right :)

Face mask try-out

This is a major milestone since I have always feared that the parts wouldn't fit together when I try to assemble them. Next is going to the be antenna part, which is really complicated... (at least the way I made it so...)

Pics of shiny parts

Finally got done with the first couple of the many many parts to be created...

If you have to ask what the above part is for, then you're not a Gundam fan :P

Any guesses as to what these ones are for?

Keyword being "Over"

I started clocking my progress after finishing the paper draft. So far I'm 18 hours in (spread over a week) but not much to show for it! Some "simple" revisions to the paper model ended up costing me hours and hours, and I think I've over-designing the piece, making it too complicated. Trying to hide the rivets (as many as possible) is a big design challenge. Not to mention I'm overly-ambitious with this project given the limited amount of experience I have in working with this material. I'm hoping to get the metal face mask done by the end of this week and get the forehead antenna piece (which needs to be redesigned) started by the weekend. Ordered some LEDs today, hoping I'll get to use it if I ever finish the metal work. I do think I can get the helm done, however the current fear is that I may make mistakes that can destroy the piece beyond repair. Rivets are hard to undo, I've already tried it twice because of earlier mistakes!
There will be an anime convention on Halloween, I'm trying to get this done by then (again, me being overly-optimistic), or else I'll try to go to the next one on New Year's Day.

Tools

Most of the tools that I'm using are shown here. I'm not a "shop" person, so I don't have a lot of tools to play with. I've never worked with sheet metal before either, so I'm learning a lot on the fly. The head will be constructed using sheet metal and pop rivets only, with maybe some exceptions of nuts and bolts here and there, that's to be figured out.

So far I've already sunk a good 4 to 5 hours on getting the "base plate" done. I also call it the "head hole". It's basically a simple "crown" around the head along which most of the other surfaces will be mount onto. Using tin snip is tough, mostly because I don't have a strong arm. Wish I have a scroll saw or something...

The paper draft toke me a good 30 to 35 hours to complete, I suspect the metal version will probably take similar amount of time, if not more...