In this chapter Caleb and Jeff are building Mando's rifle and the mouse droid.
Welcome to Chapter 7 of our Mandalorian series.
Over the past couple months Hacksmith Industries has been
piecing together our very own Mandalorian suit.
In chapters one through six we built the Flamethrower
Blaster and Spear
The Helmet
Baby Yoda's Cradle
The Jet Pack
And the Grapple Gun.
We're getting so close to the epic finale where I
don the suit for the first time and put to the test.
You definitely don't want to miss this!
Now it's taken a ton of work and ate up most of my spare time but I'm almost finished with the armor.
That build is coming up soon and will be available early
exclusively to members so stay tuned for that.
If you're not already a member and want early access to that video
and future videos click the link below.
And if you've been enjoying this series
why not grab one of our limited edition Hacklorian t-shirts available from hacksmith.store.
A long time ago in a galaxy far far away they didn't have Roombas,
instead they had the MSE-6.
More commonly known as the mouse droid.
Is this janitor on wheels an integral part of the Mandalorian suit?
No, but as our old business cards used to say sometimes we do things for shits and giggles.
Look, it's cool so we're doing it.
But much like in the series itself the MSE-6 is but a small part of this chapter.
The main focus will be Mando's iconic rifle.
Aside from the ability to evaporate Jawas,
the rifle looks totally awesome and really helps push the whole spaghetti western style of the show even more.
Since he did such an awesome job on the spear in chapter two,
we're going to be turning this design and build over to Caleb while I finish up Mando's armor.
So I'm going to start with this.
It's just a simple flare gun but in our galaxy that's as close as we can get to a blaster.
As we learned in chapter 2 this will shoot a high-energy very hot projectile.
Which is excellent for our purposes.
The only problem is this is blaster-sized.
I need to make it rifle-sized.
To do that I'm gonna have to design some parts
and build it up and to make sure it looks just like Mando's amban rifle.
I'm gonna need to go find some reference images.
We aren't going to over complicate this mouse droid.
My plan is to buy an RC car, tear the top off, and mount the new chassis on it.
Easy right? Let's go on a field trip.
Right around the corner we have FliteCraft.
They're a local hobby shop that's been around for 36 years.
They have everything ranging from airplanes boats
helicopters and most importantly for me, a ton of RC cars.
There are three things I'm looking for from the RC car.
First, street wheel compatibility.
The mouse droid has pretty slick tires.
Street wheels as opposed to knobby tires are closer to this aesthetic.
Second is 1-10 scale.
We will be able to resemble the dimension
and the size of the mouse droid as close as possible in real life.
Lastly, it's two wheel drive.
I have concluded that two wheel drive is more than sufficient to get that mouse droid moving
and honestly four wheel drive is overkill and way more expensive.
I have decided I'm going with the Traxxas Slash.
It is two wheel drive and one tenth scale.
It does unfortunately come with knobby tires but it is still street wheel compatible.
Fortunately they do have street wheels in stock so I'll get a set.
Let's ring it up and head back to the shop.
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So I made a quick design of the chassis in Solidworks and discovered that if
I use the metal I was planning to it's gonna weigh over 40 kilograms!
And while this car is tough I'm not sure it's that tough so we're gonna have to do some tests.
So I stacked 40 pounds on this car which is approximately 18 kilograms
and as you can see the suspension is almost bottoming out.
Let's see if it works!
So it actually does work but 18 is nowhere near 45.
Let's try to stack more weights on it.
90 pounds just above 40 kilos.
Fingers crossed.
I guess the 40 kilo chassis is out of the question, this thing won't even budge.
I'm gonna have to use a lighter material.
I managed to find a bunch of really great reference images so I can see
the gun from all sorts of different angles.
I've broken the design into its basic components and I've modeled each of those in Solidworks.
Mando's rifle has a removable scope.
I'm not an optical physicist so we just bought this on amazon.
There's a lot of parts in this assembly so before pulling the trigger on the build
I'm going to make a prototype out of cardboard.
Cardboard prototype is all done.
Everything fits and it's to scale.
Alright Jeff how's the mouse droid coming?
Not too bad.
I just bought a 1-10 scale RC
car and I made a design of the mouse droid based on the scale of this car.
It's gonna be made out of sheet metal.
I'll be bending and welding the side panels and then I'll set it on the RC car.
Isn't that gonna be a bit heavy though?
Yes, initially I was planning to use a 1-8th mild steel.
1-8th mild steel?
Yep.
And I realized that it's going to weigh over 40 kilograms!
So I had to make a new plan.
I decided to use 20 gauge steel and that will only weigh about 15 kilograms.
This car can handle it.
Yeah.
You did some tests to make sure the suspension?
Yeah, I put some weights on it.
I put all 90 pounds on it it, didn't move.
I put 40 pounds which is slightly above 15 kilograms but close enough it worked.
So how exactly are you going to mount the sheet metal onto this?
Well I'm glad you asked.
So if you see this you can notice the four spokes on the RC car.
So what I made in the design is
a mounting bar that goes across the chassis and the bar will just sit on top of here.
And I'll put a cap on top and it should be able to handle the weight of the entire chassis.
Awesome.
And these are fairly strong?
they're rigid enough, it handled 90 pounds so it should be no problem with 15 kilograms.
Alright awesome you're gonna be able to drift this mouse droid?
Of course.
Now Caleb what do you have over here?
What I have here is a CAD model.
This is the back half of the amban rifle.
We got the stock and the receiver.
And then I guess this is the barrel?
Yeah that's going to be the barrel.
This is going to become the prongs at the front.
Okay.
I'm also going to be doing some woodworking lay out the cardboard.
That is something the Hacksmith channel hasn't done in years!
Trying to make it real and in a galaxy far far away
they still haven't figured out 3D printers so we're going to use real wood.
The receiver is all going to be made out of folded mild steel so that's
why I wanted to make the cardboard model to see how it folds and comes together.
And I see we're using a flare gun again as a base which is awesome because looks like a blaster.
How about the reloading mechanism can you tell me how you're going to manage to do that?
Yeah so we have this metal plate and it's going to go directly over top of the barrel.
This hole is going to have a bracket welded to it where I can attach a string.
The other end of the string is going to be attached to a
triangular portion on the barrel that's going to act sort of like a pump action
so when you pull it forward it'll put some force here.
That'll be enough to crack the barrel open.
Oh cool! Yeah cause otherwise the whole thing would have to crack open like a like a flare gun
but that would be kind of silly because it's a rifle not a not a shotgun.
I like it.
Okay these designs look awesome! Let's make it real.
I have all the pieces for the rifles receiver cut out.
And now I need to bend them just like I did with the cardboard model.
When that's done I'm going to be welding it all together.
So I've got all of these parts welded and this is enough to have it
cosmetically looking pretty good.
That looks a little bit more like an amban rifle
once we have the barrel cut we'll be able to align everything and weld it all together.
This is the base of the mouse droid.
As you can see there are cutouts where the wheels will fit in.
By bending it I'll be able to reduce the manufacturing time
significantly since I wouldn't have to weld the side panels together.
Once we're done bending all the remaining pieces I'll be able to stack them up together
and weld the seams to create the shape of the mouse droid chassis.
I've never welded before.
Here goes nothing.
This is our barrel.
The flare gun cracks open to reload the flares so I've cut this on an angle so that when it cracks
can just pull away from the bottom of the barrel and come back together no problem.
However I don't want to leave my finger in there while I'm welding
so I'm going to use a drill bit with the same inner diameter as this pipe
so that I can keep the drill bit inside and align these two pieces as I weld.
So it turns out welding sheet metal that's less than a millimeter thick it really isn't my thing.
So I got James to help me out.
I'm no expert tig welding either but I have been
getting quite a bit of practice with all the Mando armor I've been doing.
So it might be an adventure.
Why don't we trade spots and I'll show you a few techniques that will hopefully help.
Alright so the first thing I want to show you is an easy way of tacking it together
into the general shape which will then
let you take your time with actually filling in the whole seam.
What you actually want to do you're going to push the two pieces together.
Masks down.
You're going to do a really quick tack just like that and you don't need to use too much power.
So I'm not even pushing down on the pedal that much.
Now what we can do is we can actually bend this up gently into the angle we want.
Just like that.
So why don't we try doing a bit of a seam weld on the inside when you step on the pedal slightly.
You just wait for the metal to melt or?
Yeah so basically what you want to do is when you're starting your puddle
you're watching it and it's important that the puddle is forming on both sides of the metal.
Yep.
And when that happens that's when you want to start dragging the puddle down very slowly.
Why don't you try doing a little bead here.
Do you have a puddle?
I do have a puddle.
Alright.
Start moving.
Alright let's stop for a sec.
Alright not terrible.
Oh it's kind of tough.
I mean people go to school for years for welding
and we're just trying to pick it up in our part-time.
Yeah.
So why don't we try one of the actual pieces.
Step up the power.
Mando's rifle has two metal prongs that protrude off the end.
They are what make this design stand out from an ordinary rifle.
I made two prongs out of stainless steel and welded them onto this
pipe so that it can slide easily over the barrel.
Now the interesting part is I'm going to oxidize the surface of the stainless steel
to give it a multi-colored shimmering effect just like it has in the show.
This is where the fun begins.
Oh looks like we're getting some colour here.
So see we got some blue on the edge right where my flame is pointing?
That looks excellent!
Alright that's quite a few tacks.
Quite a few.
Yep.
Hopefully we can just bender up. It's in shape now.
And we just need to fill in the gaps.
We might need a bit of help from the team because there's a lot of welding left
but I think if we work together we should be able to get this all welded
and we'll be off to the races with our very own mouse droid.
Sounds like a good plan to me!
Alright let's start the montage!
In the show there's a smaller pipe underneath the barrel.
Tops welded, bottoms welded. Time to grind.
All the metal working's done.
Let's paint it.
Edges are smooth.
Back to welding to connect the pieces.
For the stock I'm going to be doing some woodworking.
Stupid mouse droid.
Sneaky scavengers.
You take the one on the left, I'll take one on the right.
Most definitely.
Between the blaster and the rifle this Mando project is packing a lot of heat.
And the mouse droid, well like I said why not?
But we all know there's more to the Mandalorian than just firepower.
And in Chapter 8 you'll see what we mean.
And if you just can't wait, become a member now for early access.
This is the way.