How did Trunks beat the Androids?

[Papasmurf]

A time machine seems to be much more difficult to make compared to fixing/building one of the artificial humans (once you know their design through blueprints), seeing as #16 could be fixed without issues by Bulma in the Cell arc while it took her days to figure out how to build a time machine even with her future counterpart's notes in the Super anime. Not to mention the fact that Bulma hadn't come up with the technique of creating a time machine in the first place years after the Boo arc. Considering this, I don't know if the "there aren't many resources left in the future" thing can be used as much of an excuse.

 

[Captain Cadaver]

Apples and oranges. It's very unlikely the materials necessary for a time machine would be in any way similar to those to upgrade someone on a cellular level. #16 is also fully mechanical, so he isn't really the best benchmark for how long is necessary to upgrade a human base into an Artificial Human, not to mention we don't know when Gero managed to finalise the plans necessary to create human base models in the first place aside from the far different #8 (and that's assuming he was a human base model as varying sources either support or contradict the idea).

 

[Papasmurf]

#8 contributed to the Genki Dama used to kill Boo, so I'd wager he is a cybernetic model. (Not to mention that #17 said that Gero "went back" to his cybernetics design implying there were cyborgs before.) Don't really care about what official sources have to say on the matter when AT himself can't be consistent about that one.

 

[Captain Cadaver]

Can we say for sure he contributed though? We never saw any physical sign of Genki leaving him and he certainly didn't know how the Genki Dama worked. For all we know, all he amounted to doing was just putting his hands in the air.

 

[Papasmurf]

Why would AT have put a panel of him raising his hands with the other people in his village if his intent wasn't to have #8 contribute? Could've literally been replaced with any other set of characters, like the dog king at King Castle or the Budokai announcer and the other people working for the TB if that was the case.