Andy Moore

Thanks Ade, Just regular streaking with oil paint - paint a line, then blend it with a damp brush. There's also a bit of splattering with oils and pigments that softens the effect further. Andy

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Andy

This is a newish release from Resin Scales, a Singapore based comany who produce direct 3D print kits of tanks from the World of Tanks game. The subject is 'what-if' of course, but it's essentially a double barreled IS-3. It's probably stretching it a bit to call it a kit in truth, as there are only five main parts. Both the hull and turret are printed as single pieces, and the tracks are also single units with the wheels, idlers, and sprockets printed integrally with each track run. The detail in some areas is very high, with even the cables for the lights being printed, but in other areas the 3D design is quite rudimentary. The running gear in particular is very basic with faceted edges on parts that should be rounded - you might almost suspect that they've pulled game assets to use for the 3D model To spice up the model a little more I added the mesh armour panels, and the stowage and fuel tank on the back. I also had to do a little printing myself since the mounting ring for the Dushka was warped from the kit's packaging and needed replacing, and I also needed to print out the support brackets for the fuel drum. Overall it built into a nice model, and it was an interesting project as this was the first off-the-shelf 3D printed kit I've tackled. Thanks for looking Andy

Thanks for all the comments everyone Andy

Congrats to everyone who voted, and especially to @Robert Stuart for getting this one over the line so convincingly. Andy

Thanks chaps, The finished shots are up in RFI now Andy

Another 3D printed Gonk droid, this time a four legged version. A few quad Gonks have appeared over the years in various corners of the Star Wars expanded universe, although never on screen to my knowledge. Those ones tend to look like regular Gonks, but with four legs. For this one though, I wanted to create my own design with a more modern, industrial aesthetic, while still looking like something that could have come from the films - hopefully I've got somewhere close to that. This should have been sporting the emblem of the Mining Guild (A faction in the Star Wars universe), but I was unable to find anyone who could print the required decals, so that will have to wait for a future build. Unlike the last Gonk I build (PT-1N can be found here), this one is almost entirely 3D printed, with just the legs, rear panel, cables, and eye lens coming form other sources. The full build can be seen here And finally, a few shots with some of my other droids Thanks for looking Andy

Just a quick sketch I knocked up. Making the guns bigger won't be a problem It'll probably have to wait for next year though, as my printer doesn't like the winter much (or, at least, the resin doesn't) So, I think El Gonko Cuatro is pretty much done now. In the end, I didn't add much more weathering - just a little more airbrushed dirt, some speckling with oils, and some dusty effects around the lower body. The power cells on the top got a little more weathering, as they were looking too clean before. The cable for the power wrench was glued into place, using a short length of aluminium tube as a plug/connector. The face plate maybe looks a little basic, although I'm really pleased with how well the eye turned out. I'd originally planned to add some extra greebles to the plate but I couldn't find anything that worked, so left it as is, apart from painting the two little round holes. If I print another of these I'll probably add some lighting to spice it up a bit. The dusty weathering around the bottom of the body has helped tone down some of the harshness of the previous chipping and streaking effects which I wasn't 100% happy with. The access panel on the back of the body is taken from a Bandai 3PO kit, and is the only component on the model, apart from the legs and the various cables/wires, that isn't printed. The wrench isn't printed either, but I'm counting that as an accessory. It's pretty much looks as it did before, apart from the green knob and a few oil washes to dirty it up. The final addition was Pete's Tail™ which seems to have turned an alarming shade of green. I'd originaly thought I'd be able to glue the printed plug straight to the end of the cable, but in the end I had to use a short length of brass tube to connect the two, which I think actually looks better anyway. So, this is how he looks in finished form. Nigel's even come out of his dusty corner to celebrate, bringing Elsa along too. I'll get some finished photos up in RFI later, but for now many thanks to everyone that's followed along, and for all the suggestions along the way, especially @Pete in Lincs and @Corsairfoxfouruncle for helping to make him what he is. Only wish I could have got those Mining Guild decals printed, but maybe on the next Gonk. Thanks all Andy

You see, it's this kind of madness that I feel my builds on BM have been lacking of late. Thankfully, we can always rely on you to turn up in the nick of time with a suitable helping of lunacy. Yes, I think a Gonk technical will have to happen. Something like this maybe... Andy

Cheers Sarge, great to have you along. The stickers are from AliExpress. They come as a mixed sheet of colours and sizes. I've not tried them for light lenses yet, but the clear and red ones would work very well I'd imagine. I've made an initial start on the weathering, mainly just airbrushed stains and dirt, and some streaking with oils. A lot of this still needs some tidying up and the black areas haven't had much attention yet. Left side Right side The speckled/worn weathering around the rear section is airbrushed Tamiya acrylic that was rubbed back with IPA after the paint had dried. Front Back The power wrench has been painted now too. This was a base coat of Alclad with a heavily thinned coat of Vallejo dark grey sprayed over. When the Vallejo was touch dry, I rubbed the paint back with a dry bristle brush to get the worn and chipped effect. Andy

Enterprise was never my favourite Trek show, but the NX-01 was a good looking ship and you've made a lovely job of the build. Andy

Great build Will. I love the warm/cool contrast of the meteor armour against the hull. Andy

Fantastic build Pete. You certainly have a knack for putting the right random greeble in the right place to make something that looks like it could be a real thing. Andy

Yes, there's a little more progress now Michael. Apologies for the long wait since the last update. I'd been holding off from doing any more work on him until I could get some decals printed for the Mining Guild logos, but I've not been able to get anyone to print them, so I'm just going to push ahead and finish him without the logos. All the remaining detail parts are now painted and attached, so he's effectively at the stage were I can start the final weathering. The orange sticker I've used for the eye is looking pretty good now it's in place. It catches the light well, and almost looks like it's lit at times. Pieced together with the mid section, he's starting to look more like the original artwork I did. I've tried to stick to the colours of that painting as much as possible, although I think the yellow would have benefitted from being a little deeper in tone. The small vertical panel with the four holes you can see on the lower back are where the power sockets will go, including @Pete in Lincs's tail. Well... obviously not Pete's own tail, but a scale representation of said appendage. And in line with Pete's other suggestion of having a power tool connected to one of the blue cells on the top, I've knocked up this little power wrench type thingy. I think the main body was a landing gear strut from something or other, and the handle is the actuator form a snow speeder air brake. The end of the cable will push into one of the cells, although I'll probably add a short length of aluminium tube to form a plug. I'll get cracking on the weathering next, so it shouldn't take too long to get him finished now. Andy

There are a few more shots of the Revell Razor Crest here. The detail looks excellent for the most part. Some of the mould separation lines on the one-piece lower hull might be awkward to remove, and I'm not keen on the over-simplified and rather toy-like hinges on the side hatch, but in general it looks like it's going to be a decent kit. Andy

The AMT release (here). Round 2 are the parent company of AMT, Polar Lights etc. Andy

Seems like Revell have used their 'model' team rather than their 'toy' team for the Crest, and it looks very nice as a result. The surface detailing looks excellent, as does the interior. The only minor qualm I have from looking at the test shots is the thickness of the lips used to seat the glazing. They may need thinning down a little to make the cockpit area look better, but otherwise the kit looks great. I can't really see the Round 2 release being significantly better that this, although I expect it will be significantly more expensive. Andy

The contour lines come mainly from the layer hight on the Z axis, and as such aren't really connected to the screen resolution. All the Mars printers, and I imagine most other resin printers can go down to a 0.01mm layer hight which would smooth out the contouring by creating more, but lower steps. The downside is that you'd get really long print times. In practice, the contouring only really shows up in close-up photos. To the naked eye the prints look fine. The bust in the photo below was printed on my Mars Pro, which only has a 2k screen, and was printed with 0.05 layer hight, and the contouring is only just discernible in the zoomed-in section. I've not tried the Mars 3 or any other 4k printer, but I doubt the extra X,Y resolution would dramatically increase the detail on the print. The Anycubic DLP should presumably give slightly crisper details, but we'll have to wait and see. Andy

I don't have any screen grabs of the original .CTB files that I printed, and for some reason if you import the file back into Chitubox it looks really pixely, probably because it's trying to render the slices. Anyway, I've re-supported the original STL and taken some grabs of that. I used auto supports, which I know a lot of people don't care for, but I find them to be okay for relatively simple shapes like the gonk body, so long as you weed out any of the weirdly placed supports that Chitubox likes to add. The auto supports pretty much filled the cavities, and I left those as they were. The program did a pretty good job with the supports around the rim and frame, although with the original print file I did delete and replace a few to get more consistent spacing. I arranged the body halves level with the build plate, which I know isn't the optimum way of printing them, but I've got the original Mars Pro without the mono screen and they were already 8½ hour prints, and angling them would have made them even longer. They turned out fine anyway. The part was raised 5mm, and I used medium contact points on the supports with the spherical ends, although I've never done any back to back testing to see which contact shape works best. Andy

Cheers Johnny, Can't remember exactly what I searched for, but it was probably 10mm ribbed tubing, or something along those lines. There's a link here to the actual tubing I ordered, which is listed as a cable tidy, but it's just generic flexible tubing really. I used the 10mm size in the non-split version. Size-wise, the quad gonk is 44mm wide and 94mm long at the mid section, which is the largest part in terms of X,Y axis. That uses most of the build plate width, but it's not maxing it out. The support platform added a little more to the width. Obviously, there's nothing here that's troubling the Z axis. I was quite conscious of the plate size when I designed the parts, and made sure nothing was too close to the edges. Since then though I've printed things which have covered pretty much the full width of the plate and not had any issues, so I'll probably be more inclined to push the limits in future. Another great suggestion Pete, and I'll defo be adding a little tool that can be plugged into one of the batteries. Work will resume on El Gonko before too long. He's been sitting on the edge of my bench, looking at me meanigfully for too long now, while I've been catching up on other projects. He'll also be joined by this chap who's recently dropped out of the printer. Andy

Very nice progress so far. Re: the warping and sagging, I've recently printed some Gonk droids that have a similar boxy shape, and I added an internal frame to lessen the chances of the sides distorting. They all printed out fairly well, with only a little light sanding needed on the outer faces to remove any print lines. Andy

Two really nice builds. The chipping on Slave 1 looks excellent. Andy

Thanks for all the comments everyone. Thanks John. Probably a little too much weathering in truth for a Regia Guardia car, but it looked a bit plain in a pristine finish. Andy

That's a great looking Paladin Willy. Really nice work on the painting and weathering. Andy

This is the third CSM armoured car I've built and, like the two Lanchesters I built a year or two back, this one was a really nice little kit. Almost perfect fit, and plenty of detail without becoming an unnecessary parts-fest. There's a nice interior but, as is so often the case, little of it can be seen. The kit's fairly generous with marking options, although most of them are pretty similar being mainly overall dark green. The one here is a Regia Guardia car based in Turin in the early 1920's. Thanks for looking Andy