IWM Magnetization Project

[sozin]

Hi everyone! Earlier this month I commissioned White Metal Games to magnetize 6 IWM metal miniatures for me. My big picture goal was to make it so that legs and arms are magnetized, torsos are magnetized for turning, and interesting bits like big weapons are magnetized. Besides looking cool, there is a functional element as well (losing limbs in battle, adjusting firing arcs), which I'm really excited about.

White Metal Games has never done a Battletech project before, so the goal of this project is to learn as much as possible about all of the different ins-and-outs of magnetizing IWM Battletech miniatures. My next step is to send them 6 mechs from which to learn. After that, I'll commission them to finish the remainder of my army. (I have about 30 mechs; here's a google sheet with all of 'em).

With this in mind, I've created a Google doc that has all of my IWM miniatures photographed and commented in order to help decide which 6 candidates to send White Metal Games. I would love any thoughts or commentary from you guys on which ones would be the best to select!

I'd like to pick ones that are representative, and, in assembling the doc, have noticed the following patterns:

• complicated mechs with lots of parts like the Atlas and the Phoenix
• Mechs that will need to have their legs and feed cut away from the chassis (Wakazashi, Shogun, Hammerhands
• "top heavy" mechs like the Crab or Hussar that could pose a challenge for the magnets. One design goal is for any single mech to be able to lose a leg and still be standing on its base! Note that because of this, each leg will have two magnets: one at the top where the leg meets the torso, and one at the bottom where the leg meets the base.

As such my current candidate list is:

• The Hussar, to test the "top heavy" design
• The Atlas III AS7-D3 to test a complicated design with a bunch of bits and heavy limbs
• The Highlander, to test what it is like to cut up a mini (both legs need to be cut out, and the torso needs to be cut out) and also a mini with heavier arms. Note that the Battlemaster would also test this.
• In the "heavy arm" area, the Bellepheron BEL-1X.

Thank you in advance for thinking about this!

[Cache]

I don't see the Hussar working, at all. The surface area available where the legs connect to the torso is small and a magnet small enough to fit there will not be strong enough to hold out against gravity.

[Luciora]

Best to stick with torso twisting and arms only.   You might end up compromising or destroying too much of the mini itself to make it worthwhile. 

I've magnetized a number of minis primarily to give some torso twisting and others to have omni-loadouts.  Any more and again you will have an extremely fragile mech on your hands.  Also if not set up correctly, it's possible the magnetic fields could interfere with each other as well.

[Luciora]

Other than that, especially for the idea to have it stand up after losing a leg, you probably want to go with a custom post & socket build instead, but again for some of the mechs you want, there is very little metal there to work with to begin with.

[Luciora]

This Battlecobra uses paired 3mm magnets for the arms.  The surface attachment area is where the elbow is, so there was very little area to work with to begin with.  As a result the weapons tend to be a little loose.

[sozin]

Good feedback, thanks so far guys.

W/rt magnetic fields interfering with each other -- thanks for bringing that up, the White Metal guys have an established solution for that issue; see their magnetization home page.

W/rt to top heavy bits like the the hussar -- yeah, good points. I'm going to send the Hussar to them as part of my set of 6 to see if they can make it work :-)

[Luciora]

The Stalker II here has bigger magnets, so the arms hold on better, but if I were to do the legs with the idea you had, the weight alone would cause it to fall over once one of the legs were to be removed.

[sozin]

WMG finished their prototype project on the 6 minis I submitted; here's their flickr album of the work

I'm sure you'll be surprised to learn that ... it happened exactly as you guys thought above, the magnets weren't strong enough to handle the leg idea  :(

But with magnetized hips and arms its still pretty awesome, so I'm going to have them do the rest of my small army. Cheers!

[Luciora]

So long as you are happy with the results!  The work looks really good too.