Mining suit

 While boring real life is meddling in the way, I've managed to finish a tiny achievement. Some time ago I got a Necromunda Ambot thanks to a pal.

You know, one of these guys

I immediately thought I had an use for such a beast within my Genestealer Cult project, as a mining support device of some kind, which is quite obvious, of course. But instead of being a poor Ambull augmented and trapped into a metal framework (however, how cool is an Ambull Dreadnought, uh?), I soon envisioned it as a suit of some kind. There are many conversions of the like over the internet, and I knew that it certainly works.

I had to face a setback quite at the very beginning of the process. The hip. It's purely mechanical, it enhances the robot vibe, but you cannot pretend there's a person inside there (and the torso is not large enough for a human sized being to fit in). So I had to replace it. First thing I found that could work was a bit from a Terminator:

Yup, from the Space Hulk termies

Preliminary view of what I had in mind

It's a little bit forced, I know, but in my mind it worked better than the robot waist and hip. Next step was to remove the cogs and make the central part look as it was the inner part of the armour.

When in doubt, add cables and tubes, you can never go wrong with that

Hmm, I can see it happening

You may have noticed I didn't use the pulley and hooks over the head. Instead of those, I used the grav weapons. They are supposed to be the laser cutters the suit uses for working with hard rocks.

First colour test

You may have noticed the main flaw in this suit's design. It's a huge, bulky armour, with two laser cutters over the user's head and two enormous claws with fucking saws attached, ready to cut and smash the hardest rocks in the mines.

So the user's head is exposed to the crushed stone flying away like shrapnel all over? Hmm, no wonder the union guys were so tiresome on the subject.

I found a solution in this air freshener bit. The liquid inside got spilled right as I first tried to use it and it was kind of unusable, but its shape was appealing enough, so I kept the thing.

Finally got an use for it!

I only needed quite a small piece as a visor:

But the shape was essential

Just to make a first impression. Hmm, it could work...

But... it didn't. Though I cut it more or less to fit in the armour, once I glued it the fumes of the superglue fogged the whole piece.

I had already unglued it before taking the pic, that's why you can see it doesn't really fit in the shape

After cursing in several strange languages, I took a deep breath and started again.

New piece, different approach

I used a tiny piece of card and allowed some ventilation on the model, as much as I could afford.

Will it work?

It worked! I had a minor fogging problem, but on the whole I called it a victory. I sealed the imperfections with greenstuff and gave it a more industrial looking with the front protection bars.

I can live with that level of fogging

Well, you get a rough idea

On the process of highlighting that yellow

Little mystery on the arms. I painted the Fodinae Conlegium ('Mining Guild' in HighGothic) signs and some random numbers and stuff. I also glued a staple on each arm. No particular reason, they looked nice as additional bar protections over those gears.

Oh, and remember, when in doubt... right, cables

 

Here you have the thing finished!

I love the shape of the suit. It's not elegant at all, but crude in its design, it really works perfectly as a heavy duty industrial armour. You could replace the claws with forklifts and would have the 40K version of Ripley :D

A size comparison shot:

Come on, Humpy, go smash the infidels

So these are my main heavy support devices for the Cult so far:

Yellow is the new black

Oh, and you know what's the best part? The sprue comes with two different sets of legs. So now I have another pair of legs I can use for... I don't know, I guess I'll have to make up something!