RC Shadowsword – cannon – part1

what is the most important component of a tank without transport capacity ??? – the CANNON !!!!

of course i know, that there are different types of tanks existing. and depending on their function the cannon is not always that important as it is at a shadowsword.

there are tanks designed to transport soldiers: chimera, rhino etc …. – not much armor, poor arming, but quite fast.

there are tanks designed as different sized main battle tanks: baneblade, leman russ, predator …. – good relationship between armor, speed and arming.

than, besides all other remaining tanks and the groups mentioned above there’s a third group, which is my favorite one … – those tanks, equipped with weapons perfectly fitting to destroy one specific type of target. like titans, bunkers, airplanes, other supertanks or enemies which are quite far away. to fullfill their special tasks they’re sometimes equipped with rockets, big ordonance weapons, weopons with extremely high firingrate or cannons with just enourmus firepower. such a tank is the shadowsword. capable to hunt and destroy even titans with direct precisely aimed shots at their weakest areas.

all in all the shadowsword is a baneblades chassis converted to carry one of the most brutal guns the imperium uses into battle.

those of you that know me better from previous projects know, that for me, simply glueing a tank according to it’s building plan without any conversion is not a option any more. further you might have already noticed, that the more i personally like a model, the more extreme the conversions normally become. this and the fact that  since i started rc-ing 40k tanks, i always drreamed of a tank capable to fire at least 6mm softair ammo, left no other choice than to try it with this project. of course there ware also practical reasons why it had to be a shadowsword and not a baneblade to be equipped with a bb-gun: the baneblades turret was by far to small to integrate the cannon i wanted to use. this cannon came from a 1:24 leopard2 from heng long.

the firing mechanism is quite simple: there’s a motor that should be driven in only one direction, to slowly tighten a relative strong spring. during this process a small whole directly leading in a small chamber right in front of this spring opens for a short moment. there’s a small 6mm wide cannel leading directly from the magazin to this whole. and if there’s a bullet right next to the shutter, at the moment it opens, the ammo normally directly falls into the firing chamber before the shutter closes again. than the spring  will reach its’ final position, the connection to the small gear will be realesed and the spring extends rapidly, compressing the air right behind the bullet loaded into the firing chamber. the bullet will be accelerated by this pressure until it leaves the barrel. this process continues as long the motor’s running and as long as there are still bullets left in the magazine.

the leopards turret is by far to big to be integrated into a shadowsword. so i had  to find a way to mount the gun into the baneblade-chassis so it could still be moved up and down without colliding with the tanks armor. in addition to that i had to find an easy way to load the magazin. the first aspect was one of the reasons i decided to build my own motorblock using two servos instead of simply using the bigger motorblock that came with the original tank, like i did with the rc-baneblade. every millimeter was precious inside that tank to provide enough space for the cannon. i mounted the cannon just for testing purpose and saw that my plan should work quite well.

i immediately connected the servo to my controler and tested if the cannons up and down mechanism that i meanwhile integrated was also working as planed. here’s the video i made to show you this mechanism:

that’s it for part1. with part2 which will follow soon, i’m planing to tell you details about the loading-mechnism, the guns integration into the turret and ultimately about the first firing-tests. i’m planing to build all that tonight and over the rest of the  weekend. not later than tomorrow evening i’m planing to film this tanks first shots.

thanks for reading. comments welcome … !

BobPanda.