I always like these as it gives some real designer insight onto how the drill ended up the way it is. Lets check it out.
via the Warhammer Community
https://www.warhammer-community.com/2019/02/01/1st-feb-designers-notes-the-tectonic-fragdrillgw-homepage-post-2/
Designer’s Notes: This Is Not A Drill
What’s cooler than a massive industrial drill? Not much. What about a drill so big that it can cause localised earthquakes? Probably nothing! Well, the Tectonic Fragdrill can do just that! Given that this awesome scenery piece for the Genestealer Cults is available to pre-order tomorrow, we thought we’d find out a bit more about it. With that in mind, we spoke to the architect of the kit, Ray Dranfield, to glean some insights into its design…
Ray: The original concept for the Fragdrill was inspired by a drawing Dave Andrews did when we were designing the Sector Mechanicusscenery range. However, given the mining aesthetics of the Genestealer Cults, we decided that a huge industrial drill would work better as a bespoke terrain piece for the faction rather than as a universal kit.
The first thing I wanted to do was make sure that the Fragdrill fit with the Sector Mechanicus range of scenery. That way, anyone could feasibly add it to their terrain collection or use it as a feature piece or objective. To do this, I had to make sure that it could be attached to the existing floors. I almost used the same clip system that fits underneath the walkways but decided against it to avoid any hanging cables or other components getting in the way.
By having it slot onto the side of the walkways in the same way as the railings, it not only avoids that issue but, provided you don’t glue the fragdrill to another scenery piece, it allows you to move it to different locations in between games.
The next problem to solve was how to mount the drill itself. Dave’s original sketch had it on small trolley wheels clamped to an upright stanchion. I opted to change the structure to rails, enabling it to fit alongside different sections of the Sector Mechanicus scenery as desired. I also added a rack and pinion (the cogs) to show how the drill would be able to move up and down, all the while being securely held in place so that it wouldn’t slip from its mountings.
If the drill was going to sit on rails, it would need a carriage to house it. That gave me the idea of matching the mountings to the carriage from the Galvanic Servohaulers so that you can even have the drill being towed around the gaming table! In fact, I had a bit of spare space on the frame, so I even added a component that enables you to attach the Servohauler’s carriage to the back of a Goliath instead of one of the unmanned tugs.
Yet there was something still bothering me at this point – if you had two Tectonic Fragdrills and you assembled one so that it was being towed, you’d be left with some spare rails. So I went back and redesigned them to stack – now you can put multiple sets of rails together to make the rig as tall as you like!
The last details I added were the ancillary drills (smaller heads designed to free up the main drill should it ever get stuck). We always try to make Imperial technology look and feel really old, reasoning that these things have been running for hundreds, if not thousands, of years – whenever there’s a problem (and because it’s rare that anyone knows actually how to fix it), they bolt-on extra components or run wires around offending circuits. This means that it’s unlikely that any two Fragdrills would ever look the same. That being the case, I designed the ancillary drills to fix onto the primary drill anywhere around its head so you can mix and match your configurations.
You can pre-order your own Tectonic Fragdrills from tomorrow,