So the plan is to do a bunch of Daleks in their different liveries throughout the years for our Dr Who 60th SIG display at the IPMS this year in November. Original plan was "every" version, until I realised just how many there were, so now we're going for "major designs" (and will probably end up as "one or two" at this rate!).
The problem with most Dalek kits is they are a b*gger to build and paint - especially the skirt section, so I decided to have a go at doing my own design specifically designed to simplify the process. I started off with the plans from Project Dalek and started building a full-sized version in CAD, but broken down into components the way I wanted. They can then be printed out at what ever size I want by scaling the exported STLs.
First up was the skirt - this was created as one piece without the balls, so there's no fiddly assembly and no fiddly masking. The balls are modelled as strips for each section that are stuck in from the inside - again, making painting simple with no masking!
Test print at 1/16th scale with one strip of balls
Slap on some paint
Rest of the ball strips printed & painted
The next fiddly bits are the collars around the shoulders. I can remember struggling with bits of cut out styrene sheet trying to fit them on both the Comet and Sevans Dalek kits in the past, so these have been modelled as single pieces with the mounting blocks in place - these hold the collars slightly away from the shoulder section. They slide exactly into place over the shoulder. They came out a bit thin at this scale but I've not broken them yet!
I'm not yet sure how to do the mesh around the shoulder - I think that's doing to be too fiddly to model and may have to use some ally mesh - although the go-to car body filler mesh used on the other models is probably too coarse at this scale.
The neck piece has an engraved pattern to simulate the wire mesh of the real Dalek. A bit of drybrushing should pick this out nicely. The 3 neck rings are modelled with their vertical support rods as a single piece which then drops down into place over the neck.
Shoulder and neck components
And assembled...
And that's as far as I've got. I have modelled the head, eye and arms, but still need to come up with a system to allow then to be attached whilst remaining movable.
looking forward to following this thread. 
