The Energon Pub

I was always disappointed with the fact that my Classics Sideswipe figure didn't come with his iconic shoulder cannon. I also missed out on the upgrade set for this figure and Red Alert released by Beelzeboss.

Using my skills as a civil engineer, I picked up Autodesk Fusion 360 and got to work on my own solution, and it's now available on Shapeways for everyone to purchase!

The cannon mounts on either of Sideswipe's shoulders in the 4.1 mm hole. Be sure to raise the shoulder slides as far as they can go so that there's enough clearance between the back of the cannon and the roof on Sideswipe's back. In car mode, the cannon stores on one of the roof's available slots near the windshield. See the pictures below.

The kit has two pieces: The mount with the C-clamp and the cannon itself. You may want to pinch the C-clamp portion of the mount enough to deform it to make it fight tighter on the cannon, but be careful and don't break it!

My stretch goal is to finish my design for a trailer for CW Optimus Prime and Motormaster, but this may be too expensive to put on Shapeways!

My cannon extensions for Bruticus are now available for purchase! See pictures below. The last picture with UW Bruticus has the extensions colored grayish-silver with a silver Sharpie permanent marker. I imagine it would match the cannons better with some Testors silver model paint.

What CAD's would you recommend for stuff like this?

At first, I tried out Trimble Sketchup, but I felt that the user interface was clunky and hard to follow. I tried it first because I knew that Autodesk traditionally only had free use licenses for college students. Frustrated with Sketchup, I did a little more research and discovered Autodesk Fusion 360, which is pretty similar to Autodesk Inventor, on which I learned CAD and CAM years ago. Plus, being a civil engineer, I am very familiar with other Autodesk products.

I believe Fusion 360 is optimized for use with 3D printers, and it's really easy to export my 3D models to a format that Shapeways uses for their printers. Plus its license makes the software free for hobbyists as well as companies that make less than $100,000 a year. I highly recommend Fusion 360

I received a request from a TFW2005 member for Powerglide-Style Booster-Guns so that person could modify a CW Air Raid figure into a Powerglide combiner limb much like the one found here: http://www.tfw2005.com/boards/threads/combiner-wars-powerglide.1123100/.

However, I have found that this style of Booster-Guns looks great on Alpha Bravo as well. Perhaps he can now keep up with his jet brethren?

The model is now complete and up for sale on Shapeways in pairs!

https://www.shapeways.com/product/XSQBU ... d=65243327