Reply To: Collab 2020: Modeling Heavy Equipment (Backhoe)

Sorry – I know I’m very late!  But I did get the first blocking stage of the “hinge arm” done.

Firstly, I found out by looking at a maintenance manual I found for the 434E (no kidding, ha) that the proper name for this component is the “swing frame”, and so looking up those terms I was able to find several more nice and clear images of the parts, including a side plan view which was like finding gold!

I found out that the large pink component in the screenshots was a lot slimmer X-wise than the original photographs suggested.  That plus the bizarre shape meant that I had to give up Kent’s initial blocks for this part and start over from scratch (I hope that’s okay!).  I know the part looks quite rough with the harsh hexagonal boltholes; but even though I think I remember we were told no subsurf for this stage, I still anticipate it coming later – especially for that weirdly shaped part.  

But, here’s the finished blocks for all the major components.  There’s a whole mess of hydraulic lines and hoses that runs through these pieces but given their nature I decided to do them on later more-detailed passes.