General Thoughts/Questions on Mechanical Design

[Gyra Solune]

This topic will be something of an idea thread or some sort of chatterbox-ish thing where we can ask questions about the concepts of mecha design, or just say what we think about certain things.

I'll get us started. So I've been sketching some stuff, and thought of wanting a certain robot to split in half and become Dividing/Gatling Driver-ish tools for another unit. But I have something of a Revoltech-ey structural scheme, where flexibility and movement is key, and the range of movement should match up to, if not exceed normal human motion. For the aforementioned robot, designing in torso/midsection joints seems particularly tricky if the body can split in half. Does anyone have any proposed solutions to keep in both functions?

[Sume Gai]

well looking at toys the main option seems to be that the joints involved belong mainly to one side or another. For example the right side could allow the waist rotation joint to slide in while the left side allows the side to side joint of the torso to fold up in the space left.

basically though both halves are similar the needn't be identical.

[Gyra Solune]

True. Still, I was thinking that would require the body to be segmented and taken apart for splitting in half. I was thinking doing something like...a dual ball joint in each half or something that serves the purpose of one in the middle? What the interior of each is like isn't that relevant, as with the unit in question the wings and arm shields encase most of it to create a spherical shell. Besides, even if I didn't, the Gatling and Dividing Drivers aren't the exact same thing. ^^