Magnetizing Turrets

I hope this tutorial can help some of you guys.  :wink:

One important note: make sure you always are sure of the + side and - side of your magnets. I use a marking stick to colour one side of all my magnets.


1) So we start with the middle part of the turret itself:

2) I used 3mm x 1mm magnets. Just glue these in the half circles. I also glued some small pieces of metal behind them to add extra strength.

3) The small pieces of metal I took from a hobby knife and broke them in two.

4) Just use the back of your hobby knife to do is like you would to break off one normal piece.

5) So this would give you this:

6) Another view on the result:

7) Remove the two parts of plastic at the backside that would normally help you assemble the back part of the turret to the middle part. Now we will use magnets here instead. To add the magnets at the back, just drill two holes into the backside (I used a hand drill, a hobby knife and a file). Make sure they are positioned at the right spots.

This is however a bit 'unprofessional' you could say. 8) and 9) will show you how to do it in a better way.


8) Create two half circles at the spots where the two pieces of plastic were (that would normally help you assemble the back part of the turret to the middle part). Now glue two 3mm x 1mm magnets into them. Add a piece of sprue behind them to add more strength to the construction.

9) Now also create two half circles at the upper side of the middle part of the turret. Test if the upper part can be fixed to the lower part before you add glue to it.

10) The weapons should be assembled as usual. Remove the pieces (on each side of the weapons) of plastic that would normally fix the weapon to the turret (and make it possible to move the weapon inside the turret). Now drill a hole on these spots and glue a magnet inside them. As you can see I twice used 2mm x 1mm magnets and once 3mm x 1mm magnets (flamestorm). My experience is that 3mm ones are better suited as they are stronger.

11) As you can see the weapon+turret do great. And in contrast with many tutorials you can find online, I can still move my weapons up and down inside the turret.

12) For the back part of the turret (flamestorm), just glue 2 magnets (3mm ones) in the slits. That's all you have to do. Now assemble the the back part as usual.

13) As you can see, the magnets are more than strong enough.

14) The same is true for the back parts of the regular predator weapons:

15) This gives me two middle parts, 3 back parts, and 3 weapons. I used 20 magnets for this. Which are all strong enough, and which make it possible to still move the weapons up and down.

16) Now the only thing that's left is assembling more weapons, so I'll have more options in how to weapon my predators. Each extra weapon will make me need an other 4 magnets (2 for the back part, 2 for the weapon).

Hope you liked it.

Greets,
BI