Loose legs fix

Lately Kaori's legs has become loose that she couldn't hold her legs out. The part which was loose was the hip joints. I remember seeing a post on goodsmile using superglue to stiffen joints for nendoroid stands, and decided to try this method out on Kaori.

 

After using a hairdryer to warm up the hip joint and pulling hard to pull it out. I applied a few blobs of superglue on the peg and used a toothpick to spread it out. Then waited a hour or so to make sure that the glue has dried completely, then twisted the hip joint back on.

 

Now Kaori can hold out her legs. One word of warning, do not apply too much superglue. As you might find out that the hip joint has got stuck when twisting the joint back on. If you applied too much superglue, you could lightly sand off the excess glue.

It might be an old thread but very useful. I have the same problem with my DDS body. The problem is not with the hip area but with the knee. I can't seem to get it to hold a pose. I am scared of pulling the leg out of the knee joint. Is there a way to fix the looseness problem?

Well, looking at this http://www.figure.fm/post/en/24521/DDS+internal+frame+part+2+whole+body.html , it looks like the DDS has screws in the knees similar to the DDII.

 

I recently tightened the knees in Nanoha, and took pictures. They're on my Flikr for now, but hopefully tonight or tomorrow I can post a thread with commentary on the process. The DDS procedure should be pretty similar. Pull off foot, pull off outer calf vinyl, tighten screw, and replace other parts.

That would be a nice resource to have, Poofiemus! That is great you dobleepented the process.

If nobody minds, I figured I could stick the pictures in this topic. . . Pardon the quality, it's really hard to take photos one-handed without a tripod.

 

DDII Knee Tightening

 

 

First, pop off her feet. Don't pinch the leg part, just hold it steady, and tug the foot. It should come off without too much pressure, though it feels at first like it might put up a fight. It won't if you keep gently tugging.

 

 

Next, pull off the calf vinyl. This is easy to do but hard to photograph, since you need both hands to do it. There's a slit in the back of the calf vinyl, meant to increase knee motion I believe. Pull the sides of the slit apart at the top, as near the knee as you can get, and then work it downward toward the ankle. After a little bit to get it past the armature's built-up knee, it should slip right off.

 

 

Here's the legs with the calf vinyl off. Interestingly, even though the outer vinyl is mirrored for distinct left and right legs, the inner frame is not.

 

Take your Phillips (X style) screwdriver and give them a little twist. It may seem like they're not tightening, but apparently just a little tightening makes a big difference, so even if it didn't seem like anything happened it probably worked.

 

 

Now put the calf vinyl back on. Again, you may need to hold the sides of the slit open to get it over the knee joint, but then it should pop into place. By the way, in the top edge of the calf vinyl near where the knee will go is a teeny tiny letter indicating which leg is which, L for left and R for right. Then pop the foot back on.

 

 

Hooray, knees are fixed! As you can see, Nanoha is now ready to go running, jumping, climbing trees, and poking badgers with spoons.

 

Now, while the DDS skeleton design is different, looking at the Figure.fm post I linked earlier it seems there are still screws in the knees, and there are definitely slits still in the back of the calf vinyl, albeit somewhat more discrete. So, by that logic, unless there's something seriously messed up, this should still work in principle for DDS and DDIII.

 

I hope it helps.

Thank you so much for those Poofiemus.

I will give it a try sometime this week and let you know how it goes.

That is a great tutorial. Watch out badgers!