06.08.2007 » Concepts/Initial Progress

I actually designed this a few months before announcing our new forum group-build called Sci-Fi GPX. Check the GB out here. I've based it off of a real-life monowheel as well as a racer from Venus Wars. This will hopefully be a sleek racing looking craft when it's complete. What I really like about it is the large area for graphics on the sides of the wheel. That'll be fun to design for. I've thrown together some quick designs, but am not sure what my final will look like.

The difficult parts of this build will be the rounded sides covering the engine and such and the wheel/rim. The sides I have a solution for as you'll see below. As for the tire/rim, a friend of mine offered to maybe lathe it up for me if he can get access to the equipment. I still need to find a cheap 1/24 cycle kit with a rider (Heller makes some) so I cna use some of it's parts and modify the rider. I'd like to try and make this a resin kit so that I could do a couple different designs and see if anyone else is interested.

For the sides, I wanted nice smooth round parts. I bought my daughter a wiffleball/bat set a few months ago and saved the part of the package that covered the ball. I LOVE blister packs for cheap clear plastic. I ended up using it as a sort-of mold for making the rounds. I poured some resin into the blister and swirled it around until it hardened. When removed I got fantastic round shapes as you can see below. The figure is a 1/24 Tamiya figure I'm using for scale reference.