TheBaron

Not at all! All told the project took nearly three years though only about 18 months of that would have involved doing the actual CAD designs in my spare time. The long duration of this project resulted from deciding to do two different versions of the FAW.1 - a Martel trials version and an operational squadron version, which involved different sets of design decisions.

Just a quick midweek update to catch up on replies. Likewise Pete: I have recently discovered the pleasures of the cuffed-leg courduroy trouser... I've recently been listenbing to the Dorothy L. Sayers' audiobook - 'The Nine Tailors' - set in your neck of the woods and can reccomend highly. Alan - sincerely hope all is well at Casa Hendie. My thanks for your kind sentiments. Stop messin' about! 😁 Cheers Bill: with the open nature of the cab on this, it's occurred to me recently (i.e., exteremely late in the day!) that I have to consider the painting sequence as carefully as the construction one. Otherwise a chap could quite literally paint himself into a corner! Thanks Ian: perversely I find the big problems less daunting than small ones a lot of the time, if for no other reason than life is a morbid vale of tears devoid of hope or meaning the former usually results from a better overall understanding of the subject emerging from prior inaccuaracies in my work. Of course such problems initially expresses themselvesin the form of four letter words before resolving into more a philosophical form in hindsight! With putting both sons through university at present, myself and Mrs. B dearly miss getting over to that neck of the woods every summer Terry: sincerely hope we can meet up there in the future my friend. Utter relief to hear that this place is still going strong Terry - the upstairs there is about the closest to paradise I can conceive of for naval and aviation bibliophiles. 'Books Afloat' would have to be part of my Trinity of all-time favourite secondhand premises, the others being the long-closed Thorpe's Bookshop at the top of the high street in Guildford and that other little place with three floors of books and dust at the foot of the hill in Arundel (if it's still there). OoopsI Nearly forgot the Sanctuary Bookshop in Lyme Regis of course. Four. Four favourite bookshops! (Nobody expects the Spanish Inq.....) Gracias Señor. ~puts on some Ry Cooder in the background~ If you're starting a sweepstake Adrian I want 15% of the take. The very question currently exercising my brain! At the start of this build I'd intended to use vacforming for the cabin transprencies however in several critical areas it would be more useful if I could print the windows integrated into roof and nose structures for strength. After doing some background research I'm in the early stages of beginning to experiment with Anycubic's High Clear resin as it's not too expensive. So far I've spent a while dialling in exposure times, as for the Saturn 2 there are no pre-existing parameters to set up in the slicing software. I'm not worried about printing any actual parts with it yet as I want to see how well the cured resin avoids yellowing over time (a frequent fault in clear variants). I've had one thick piece on the windowsill of the studio for about 5 weeks now and have not so far seen any evidence of jaundice. Results to follow in due course if they are successful. From someone of your background Chewbacca I'm am most appreicative of those comments. Thank-you. Fear not, there's still pelnty of scratching in prspect here - especially with regards to Nimbus detailing! Was aware of the first instance but this is the first I've heard of the float bag/rear door cancelling. Grim. I had video of an interview with Lt Cdr Ellerbeck describing how and why they took the float gear off his Wasp down in the Falklands but can't for the life of me find it now to share. Sorry. It's not great quality but here it is: You'll know better than me if this matches the time-frame of a similar shot on the IWM site taken from a different angle. More next week when I should (hopefully) have some transparency results to share. Tony

Beautifully turned out results Ian, colour and masking of the highest order.

We are what happens when the Atlantic and the jet stream engage in a brawl. Often the fight spills over into Wales before collapsing in a heap against the Malverns. Apologies too Pete - I caddishly forgot to congratulate you upon your recent retirement. That makes you an elder statesman now - any plans for tweed? My pleasure Anthony and for sure, you have played in bringing this project to life! As far as the rear of the Wasp is concerned, the recent slew of prints served to resolved any remaining niggles regarding the assemblability(?) of parts, types of resin, nature of supports and so forth. What might be referred to as the first production versions ready for construction are now safely sequestered in their new high-rise accommodation: That way they are safe from me as well as the cats whilst atttention switches now to the front of the helicopter: Not for the first time on this project someone was coincidentally flogging off bits of a Wasp on Ebaygum, to my benefit. Rather cruelly the budget doesn't run to assembling a real Wasp in the garden for reference, but the sale photos do make a useful substitute, especially with regard to (often hidden inside) the rear door latch: Another useful bit of door-lore (albeit frustratingly low-phonecam-resolution when it comes to detail) is this footage of the lads at AFMNZ putting the doors back on NZ3906: By far the best - well, only - footage which I've found showing the process of actually fitting both front and rear doors to the airframe. @Anthony in NZ will doubtless notice a few familiar rivets here! 😁 Resuming work up at the front of the airframe after a gap of about twelve months, I can only wince at (and apologize for having subjected you to previously) some of the initial non-accuracies my untutored eye left littering the airframe. One particularly obvious instance being this footwell window in the front door where I had produced a beautifully-filleted top corner to it instead of a chamfer matching the down-angle of the window above it. How do you miss something that obvious? That howler has been addressed now, along with an overlapping series of adjustments to doors and windows now that there are more surrounding features to compare them with, and once that was done, spending a lot of time on getting the recesses in the airframe for the doors to fit which - due to to the changing contours of the airframe in three dimensions, was no small task. I still need to tweak the rear door but in terms of essential outlines the front one (and its negative space in the airframe) now looks a whole lot better: In carrying out such corrections a nasty flaw in my initial blocking-out designs of a year ago became clear; I'd gotten the vertical profile of the cabin strikingly wrong with regard to the top halves of the doors and door pillar (not to be confused with slightly bulbous nature of some of the windows themselves). Short version is that where the outlines of the window frames in the doors are rectilinear in character, mine curved gently upwards in the vertical dimension in a manner that was quite wrong. Chagrin doesn't cover it comrades. I'm now convinced that there are two types of scrutiny in modelling: 'The cursory examination': a first attempt, often associated with an inner monologue of: 'that bit looks ok/it's the right way up anyway/I might stop these tablets/I might take more of these tablets.'. 'The curse -ery examination': the subsequent discovery of one's own ineptitude, as indicated by outbursts of an obscene nature and/or varieties of fist-shaking/teeth-baring behaviours. Often accompanied by taking of more tablets. There was no easy solution to such a dilemma as with initial drawings being over a year old, I'd found out preciously on the build that to go back and unpick but one drawing would collapse the whole parametric tower of consequences. The way out in the end involved basically creating a process in Fusion to serve as the digital equivalent of a wood-plane, a brute force mechanism to shave away the curvature on the convex side and add a corresponding 'fill' on the concave side. For each door this had to be done twice, once for the door itself, and once for the door frame and sills. Same again for the intervening door pillar as well. The new doors now with correctly-linearized vertical profiles to the window frames: I've begun work on the beading for the front window the doors and begin adding some of the reinforcing panels to the front door prior to the rivet patterns going on. From photos there seem to have been various shapes and sizes of such plates added to operational aircraft over time so I've just picked what seem to be the most frequent examples. The door lock mechanisms for both sets of doors are also in place - although the door handles themselves will be printed separately out of hard tough resin, the locking mechanism for the rear door is so flush with the surface that it can simply be printed as part of the door itself. By contrast, the control rods for the front door latch stand so proud of the surface that these need adding separately from metal rod/tubing: The jury strut for bracing the front door when it's fully opened also clips on (when not in use) just below the window sill; its fitting brackets are too small to print from resin in terms of utility so I've simply left locating holes for the kit-builder to add their own versions of the strut in either stowed or deployed positions, depending upon how they intend displaying their model. A third option for the front doors (and the one I'll be using) is to not have front doors. Frequently removed in the operational environment and replaced with small side windshields (I have a number of photos of Ambuscade's Wasp sporting these), these naval pince-nez will come included as an option in the kit: Finessing the front door frame required several attempts due to the complex twisting nature of the frame's profile as it moves up fromt the flatness of the windscreen to curve around in three dimensions and form the lip of the roof, complete with barely-discernible rain-gutter along the top of the door: Eventually, things were at a stage where the door and window profiles were all corrected with the door framing working in relation to doors (in terms of opening and closing), and the door furniture underway: Hinges and/or mounting points for both doors and the side windshields will be a job for another day. Additional surface detailing is now present on the rear cabin wall, inside: - and out: There's the tubular framework of the rear seat has to clamp onto that rear wall, along with the padded headrests clipping onto the wall higher up. Those will await a subsequent 'furnishing' phase of the build, once I've gotten the main structures for the cabin, nose and roof finalized. I've a plan - I won't call it a cunning one my Lord - for how to deal with both the roof transparencies and windshield areas of the cabin in terms or printing and assembly; there are more materials experiments to carry out first before they merit a report. Tentative results though look promising. Betwixt and between ongoing printing and cadding, casting on the aluminium forks has continued - I've a box of 1/24th ones ready for processing now and a 1/32 batch fresh out of the mould: Various tests on print orientations for the blades themselves also in-train: On the basis of these I think I've got an optimized support and orientation structure now - one straddling that fine line between providing enough support to stop such thin parts moving around in the resin, but not so much that you end up with lots of surface damage to repair after demounting. Wishing you an excellent weekend in adavance. Tony

You're far too kind Ian! Truth is I'd gotten far too lazy in just using the same resin that I started out with when the materials science of UV resins has moved on since then to such an extent that people light years ahead of me arroutinely finessing their own cocktail recipes: Switching over to the Phrozen exposure test for dialling in resins has also proven a much better solution to rapidly finding the best settings for different layer heights (these are mixtures of 3 & 5 micron): The way you put that Steve: expertly seasoned with j-ust enough ambiguity of menace regarding the potential for redress... ......... ? Am prepared to settle out of court for cost of treatment.... Calling that cocktail of his a 'Serkan on the Beach'.... 😁 That's what I like about you Giorgio - you don't skimp on materials! 😁 Kind of you as always my friend. There was another striking aerial phenomena here recently when the missus was driving me home in the evening after a hospital appointment - crepuscular rays from the sunset stretching the whole way across the sky from West to East where they merged into the rising earthshadow: It's funny you saying that Pete as it struck me as ship of the line-esque too with that grating! 😁 Ha! Synchronicity! The rising sun on the studio windowsill the other morning caught the tops of some flotation clamshells in a reprise of the Io mining colony from Peter Hyams' Outland: You are very kind Serkan as always: it's quite likely I ramble on here at times in too much detail but with the old brain not retaining information as well as it used to, very often a post will serve as an aide memoire later on when I've completely forgotten what a part is and where it goes! 😄 Have heard a lot of good about that Sunlu stuff of late so must investigate - thanks for the pointers! Thanks Terry: I always subordinate any ego by reminding myself that the guys at Westland dreamed up all this stuff with analog tools whilst I'm simply copying their work with an infinitely more flexible set of digital means. I don't think it ever will as long as there are modellers CJ: I'd go further and say I wouldn't ever have any interest in either buying or producing a kit which relegated the modeller merely to a production line assembly worker. Both on the Vixen previously and on the Wasp here the design work always ceases at those points where 3d printing is materially insufficient to reproduce particular sets of features in particular ways (wiring and pipework being just the most obvious examples) as on many other kits. You'd have to be chockfull of hubris as a designer to imagine that you've included everything that an expert modeller wants visible on their finished build, so I agree wholeheartedly with your sentiments. I really do want to get over to Telford and meet up with ye all again Bill: my day job though puts the mockers on getting over to the UK handily enough for the weekend this time of year. I must start doing the lotto again with a view to early retirement! I appreciate your kind comments about my parts Keith! 😁 Am conscious that compared to those working in companies I have the luxury of following my own ideas in my own way, so not at the mercy of imposed schedules and the tedium of meetings. On the downside: I'm an awful boss. I will never understand how this charismatic - and in mutliple ways, trailblazing - helicopter has not received the reproductive reverence which is its due Terry. It basically pioneered the whole field of ship-based rotary operations. Definitely gotten better since I started adding a pink gin to the resin each time.

Over the last few months I've been - very slowly - making my way through Freeman Wills Crofts' Inspector French series of detective novels, written between the 1920s to 1950s. The bulk of them have been re-released in recent years by Harper Collins and have proven an utterly gripping read so if you like 'golden age' crime fiction, I'd heartily recommend. Have also be re-reading early (pre-Kraken/Triffids etc.) John Wyndham as a period contrast - strange to think of Crofts and Wyndham inhabiting the same land at the same time with each seeing such different worlds.

Of course it is. I'd expect nothing less on one of your builds Pete as - Now that I wasn't expecting... Lovely mad fantastical elaborations Pete, great to see.

That's looking particularly fine under colour now, which, along the fineness of some of those parts is going to add up to a visually-compelling piece of work without a doubt. Kudos to you Mike. I'm a great believer that a successful method based on personal experience trumps the conventional wisdom(s) with which the internet is awash. Hope you had a good Telford!

I think you've surpassed even you're own preternaturally-high standard of paint finish with the work seen here Steve. I'm just astounded by the richness and presence of it. Congratulations.

Pristine Neil, just a pristine piece of work that's a pleasure to see.

Splendid piece of work CJ.

Superb rendering of the subject Chris. Well done indeed.

Two weeks later: I can't believe I haven't either! Cracking combination of techniques overlaid with your usual top-tier paint work Ian. Glad to se the new printer is working out so well for you too. Lovely progress.

Dizzy with deja vu looking at some of they parts Bill! 😄 Splendid work all round.

Love that shot in particular Chris - a wonderfully sharp looking piece of work in that view. Well done!

Kiss of the Spider Woman Arms Good evening, and hoping this finds all well with all of ye here. Contrary to appearances, around other life matters work has in fact been continuing on the Wasp over the last month or so, however, as much of it has involved materials research and some consequent rethinking of design ideas, I didn't want to post anything until there were concrete results to present to such a knowledgable audience. On to all that after some (grossly) overdue replies to the mail: Most gracious of you as always James. Is it possible that 'Awe' might be a Belgian beer CC? 😁 (Thanks my friend.) Thanks as always CJ - we're getting there (slowly). 😄 Bill, you're like a little scale-devil on my shoulder. At some point I might shrink down an MRGB out of curiosity but a lot of detail would begin to fail long before it got to the 1/72 level. At 1/32 some items like servo rods are already borderline... Thanks G, but there were still several tweaks needed to satisfy me of pulling the maximum quality from the printer. Most generous of you Colin: thanks! That radioactive blue is indeed the native colour of that stuff, however it does come in a number of flavours. I'd never worked with such a translucent resin before and discovered during test prints for the rotor hub/pillar assembly that it suffers from a fatal 'blooming' issue when it comes to negative spaces inside of shapes. At least long narrow ones! In the shot below you can see how the channels for the blade extension mounting pins penetrate right inside the hub for a secure 'grip'; the problem with this light-blue resin however is that it seems to scatter light inside the structure to such a degree that it continues to cure any liquid resin left inside these channels, almost completely blocking them: Taking into account the droop function it was a tough job and time-consuming job re-drilling these by hand - certainly not something I'd be prepared to pass onto others in kit form. Having also found that - with much more in the way of subtle surface details than the undercarriage legs - such 'blooming' effaced visual features on the hub to an unacceptable degree, I readily abandoned the blue for an alternative (and thankfully successful) solution to these issues, as detailed below. Mike you dear old soul, thank-you. I must get over to see how you've been getting on with Pete's Land Rover! Steady-on Terry. I don't want to be responsible for any dental bills... Decent of you Pete: I may have another small bag of parts for you at the end of all this if you feel a deep-space freighter coming on.... 😁 Kind of you Ian - how have you been gettting on yourself with the Siraya stuff you mentioned a while back? Cheers Alan: I can't surely be the only one who goes 'Great! Now I can just print them bits out!' and then finds a whole new series of problems to overcome in the support and printing process - can I? 🤖 Dear heart, thank-you. Nice one Serkan - I hope it's been going well for you at both scales my friend! Pete, thank-you - I enjoyed that enormously. Matters as they stand then. By September I'd come to realize that this project had snowballed to such a significant degree that some form of management plan was necessary in order to simply stay on top of everything at both scales as a one-person operation, so began organizing prints thematically in VDT - partly so that I wouldn't forget what many of them were later on! In terms of the engine itself, you can see that I've not only broken the Nimbus down into four main components, but thanks to the greater freedom which the support systems in VDT have given me now, have been able to integrate a lot of smaller features like the heat exchange and fuel control units into the printed sections in a manner which I hadn't found possible with other packages previously. This isn't simply in terms of facility but also in speed - as a single person I needed a much more efficient workflow when it came to readily designing support structures for so many different types of objects and shapes. Another motivating factor behind including more of these smaller features into larger printed sections resulted from the experimentation with materials and processes which I'd engaged in over the last month or so. This has allowed me to economize on the numbers of parts required - specifically PE, which were beginning to run out of control - and, by adopting different types of resin for different jobs, approach the idea of printability with increased scope and quality. In terms of design strategy, with the projected use of brass PE here involving metal sheet of between 0.15 - 0.2mm thickness, an increase in the thickness of certain flat brass features by only 0.1mm permits them to be printed in resin as part of larger units without unduly impacting visual fidelity at either scale. This eliminates the need to use so much etch down to what were in some cases likely to be unbuildably-small elements. Up until recently I'd also been conservative/lazy enough to continue printing with Elegoo's standard grey resin simply because it was reliable and generally gave good results. With the higher level of detail involved in the Wasp however I felt that the Saturn 2 could be pushed further farther in terms of output quality and so for smaller parts, began tests with Elgoo's 8k resin. Very late to that particular party and much as many people online had reported, not necessarily an easy resin to work with. In fact it was by far the finickiest resin I've ever worked with in just trying to get even half of my prints to stick to the build plate! Over a frustrating fortnight of print tests I finally homed in on its main issues (at least in terms of the Saturn 2): needs much slower lifts speeds than usual, doesn't like temperature variation, and the build plate must be levelled as flush to the printer as you can possibly go without actually driving it through the glass. Since then I haven't had a single failure but paid for it in blood & resin I can tell you. Over the last fortnight then I've been reprinting the Nimbus and all of the smaller parts of the Wasp in 8K resin at both scales: In terms of print quality, these are the quite simply the sharpest prints I've ever gotten from the Saturn 2 (here using a 0.3mm layer height): (none of the parts have been cleaned up yet so please avert your gaze from the stumps of any suports which are curently visible) Some features which had previously been intended as PE like that big mounting bracket on the side of the engine for the heat exchange unit you can see present here at both scales in resin without compromise to appearances: Similarly with that blade-like control linkage for the engine governor, integrated now in a resin form more amenable in construction terms than trying to slip a slither of brass in between already narrow resin parts: Sor far nothing which printed at 1/24 has failed to reproduce at 1/32 - which has been pleasantly surprising. Even features like the tiny rubber collars for the snubber struts, which I didn't necessarily think would work at 1/32, but (gratifyingly) have: Some of the bigger electrical and air pipes have also come out well at both scales: I am definitely now a converted skeptic when it comes to the use of 8k resins; from thinking the increase a cosmetic one resulting from way that light falls on a darker looking printed object, in the flesh I can see an observable improvement in the sharpness of the print. I've read several varying explanations as to why this might be (as well as some intemperate dismissals of it being the case at all!) but overall feel that those related to the diminution of light-scattering in a medium at the printing stage provide the most compelling rationale for increased acuity. Again here on the rear wall of the cabin I've been able to incorporate what would have been PE detailing into the resin print: The flotation clamshells have also been redone in 8K resin: Similarly you can see how by adding 0.1mm to the thickness of the the smallest sets of brass ribs at either end of the clamshell, the need for miniscule wafers of PE has now been superseded by the quaslity of the resin reproduction(as well as allowing the fragile clamshell clamps to be integrated elements as, although they printed happily as standalones, the 1/32 version was a mere weasel's whisker of a thing that would break in an instant. The only bits on these now requiring PE are the perimeters of those rounded ends of the clamshell, which couldn't be printed simply due to the presence of the supports structure needed for printing: For larger components like the combined boom/deck, standard Elegoo resin remains absolutely fine as smoothness rather than detail are the order of the day here. At both scales these parts have also been re-printed to incorporate more features from the electrical system into the surface of the engine deck. As these latter elements are for the most part variations upon the rubberized collar, they wouldn't really benefit from any sharper reproduction at this level: Down at the tiny end of the parts-spectrum, the 'teeth' inside of the rear rotor driveshaft remain present at both scales, whereas previously in the standard resin, they disappeared at 1/32: Likewise the tail rotor assembly has all of its features crisply defined: In my reply to Colin above I mentioned having solved the 'bloomin' blue resin' effect with regard to the rotor hub. I really liked the material strength of the eSun hard-tough resin so discovering that they did a more opaque 'Ab-black' version with identical physical properties, I redid the hub/pillar in that and the resulting prints were excellent: After tinkering around as well to find that I could actually reduce the exposure times on the Saturn 2 lower than those recdommended by the manufacturer, the resulting level of detail with the black version is devoid of any blooming and equal in terms of quality to anything you'd get with a standard resin. One thing you find when it's emerging from the vat though: - is they should have called it 'Harkonnen Black'.... The undercarriage was also revisited in this flavour of Hard Tough to pleasing effect: The strength of this resin then got me thinking about printing other parts in it that would have been too fragile in standard resin alone, such as the compensator flyweights which hang down under the rotor hub: The 1/32 versions of those are 0.22mm thick and yet strong enough to be a practicable part to handle during assembly. For similar reasons I printed the lower elbows and collars of the spider arms using the same stuff: With the now redundant 'bloomin' blue' rotor hubs to use as a test-mule, this latter piece of experimentation was the last remaining piece in the puzzle allowing me to produce functional pitch control for blade-folding, with the pip-pins out, as it were: This is just a rough mockup as proof of principle of course; the important point is that it demonstrates the way that incorporating an aluminium blade fork/extension/pitch change arm assembly with the hard resin spider elbows provides sufficient strength to let you faithfully reproduce the telescoping push-pull rods of the original as a working mechanism: The rotor blades can then be spread for take-off or folded back and cradled as often as display duties require (or just every Trafalgar Day): This works pretty much how I envisaged it would at 1/24, but it was still a nice filip to pull off the same trick at 1/32 too: The relative lengths of those push-pull rods need adjusting for accuracy of course and the lower one will look better in nickel silver to ape the original: other than that though we have a robust working rotor pitch for folding/spreading at both scales now: Aluminium fork/extension/pitch change arms at both scales also means no compromise on strength for either version: Thanks for looking in and apologies for the length of the post but as all those issues and results were interconnected, it made more sense to post them as a coherent whole rather than referring you back and forth over a series of posts. I'll shut up now and leave you with a faint red auroral streamer shooting up through the Hyades and Pleiades as Jupiter looks on: Salut! Tony

You don't say which version of the software you're using but on the paid one if you want to combine auto and manual supports, simply generate whatever type of auto-supports you initially want on your model and then from the same window just proceed to add the manual supports of your choice by clicking the 'manual' button in bottom left: After that you can then edit any support at either the tip or node level, again by going back into manual mode. Worth watching Voxeldance's tutorial channel to familiarize yourself with the software due to the clarity/rigour of the explanations they provide.

Bashed and greebled to the satisfaction of this onlooker. I hear the BBC Radiophonic Workshop just looking at them!

Enviable precision of looks Bill. Congratulations on another state-of-the-art statement. 👏

We need to start a sweepstake. I'll have a fiver on Tweed thong, peephole weskit, and a brass ear trumpet* *Not worn in ear.

Ah P, your work exudes calmness and poise. How wonderful.

I haven't seen any discussion on BM about Voxeldance's Tango slicing software so far but as I noticed that a cutdown version of it (minus I believe the fancy supports) now ships with Elegoo's new Mars 4, I thought I'd add a quick review - either for anyone encountering this software for the first time or indeed those wondering if the paid version is worth it. As this review is based upon the paid version and I currently print on a Saturn 2, please bear that in mind when reading the following commentary - experiences with different printers will always vary! The first thing to say as a longtime user of Lychee and sometimes Chitubox (which have more in common than they differ in many of the basics) is that Voxeldance seem to have started with the express intention of creating a workspace significantly different from their competitors. That's not always a positive factor in software design of course, but in this case they have I feel succeeded in evolving a 'next level' user experience, one with far more nuanced and responsive approaches to the task of supporting and slicing models for print. Interface Look, feel and operation are crisp and responsive - quite refreshingly it feels like you are in a screen environment where the designers have concentrated on letting the workflow, well, flow! Perhaps an odd thing to say about a piece of software but the interface feels more clean and spacious throughout than other slicing software I've used. There are two workspaces which you can easily flip between from the top of the screen - 'Preparing', where all the various preparations for hollowing, orienting and supporting take place, and 'Slicing', which simply handles anti-aliasing and sliced exports: Screen/mouse opererations are smooth and responsive across both workspaces, as well as seamlessly integrating with 3D Connexions Spacemouse - something neither Lychee or CTB do well, if at all. Setup Creating your project uses the familiar start-point of picking your printer from a list (currently there are about 30+ maunfacturers listed - a number of which I've not encountered before) and then customising the profile for the resin you're using: After positioning, orienting, hollowing etc., it's then on to: Supporting This aspect of the software quite blew me away when I realized what it was doing. Eschewing the basic tip/pillar/raft paradigm, Voxeldance have done two innovative things here which single Tango out - creating different families of supports suited to different subjects, allied to some quite sophisticated algorithms which generate connective lattices. In terms of the supports the various families are known as: 'Bar', 'Tree', Smart', 'Dragon' and 'Raft', each with different versions of themselves at multiple scales: Judging by the names of many of the support families, it's clear that VDT already has a significant following in the Gundam and figure printing community. It's a simple process to modify these support parameters in order to create support scripts personalized to your own type(s) of work. A nice feature in this regard is that rather than trying to cram all the parameters into a single window, Voxeldance scale the information across the main panel and a subsidiary 'More Settings' window so that you don't get swamped with too much data in a single place. You'll also notice in the above screenshot that by default, the 'Support' window opens in 'Auto-Support' mode. Normally 'auto' anything I avoid like the plague ( particularly auto-supports in slicing software!) but in this instance it works well, quite unbelievably well in fact. If you prefer to use the manual function instead (which I tend to due to the rather complicated nature of some of the parts I work with at present) you just click on the 'manual' button in the bottom left of the 'Supports' window and you're free add what ever supports you want from scratch. You can also mix support types in full auto mode or mix auto and manual together. Addditionally you can go back and edit any individual support or combinations of support in detail at any stage. I particularly like how the 'Tree' support type lets you grow extra branches from a central core without the need for a whole forest of pilllars. Where VDT score hands down over its competitors is in the supporting lattices which are generated automatically to produce a stable 'cradle' for your object. This enables you to use more supports with smaller tip sizes and thereby reduce surface damage to the object. Additionally, these 'nets' of supports are usually quite easy to tear off by hand before curing. These lattices will vary according to the support type you are using and again are fully adjustable/editable. Another nice touch here are the perforated rafts and customisable extents allowing you to save on resin and increasing ease of removal from the build plate after printing. Outputs The usual twin options of exporting a sliced project for print or exporting your supported work in an 3d object format for selling are present: Notice that the only slice-export format supported for Elgoo printers is the newer open source .goo container so with my Saturn 2 I had to export in the .vdt format and use UV Tools to convert to that ghastly proprietary .ctb format (which Elgoo have now thankfully found the sense to abandon). Object export has all the usual suspects: Anti-aliasing in the 'Slicing' part of the interface contains the usual AA/GL/IB parameters. Annoyingly for me there's a bug for the Saturn 2 profile in the curent version of VDT that sets the AA flag to 8 no matter what I set it to. One of the nice things about Tango though is that the Voxeldance support staff are very active on Discord and I was chatting with one of their tech guys last evening who assures me this problem will be fixed in the next upgrade. Learning curve Despite the more sophisticated environment, if you've 'grown-up' in 3d printing with the likes of Chitubox and Lychee (as I have) then it's just a case of translating your existing skills into a new workspace. It took me a couple of days at most to adjust, and that included learning the new support paradigms. Conclusion After working with it for the last fortnight I've ditched all my other slicer software subscriptions and now solely use the paid version of VDT for print preparation - I found it to be that much better than what I could do previously in the same amount of time. There's no merit however in a conclusion which assumes all users to be identical and that therefore a single verdict is the only permisible one. Tango does in my view have an interface and some unique aspects to its workflows which render it superior to the likes of Lychee and Chitubox but in the end, the kind of user you are should decide whether that is enough of a factor for you to change - which is as it should be, especially where money is changing hands. Probably the clearest way to state the case is that if your work routinely involves complex and/or a wide range of different parts, or you need to produce parts in volume, then VDT provides a deeper and more flexible toolset (at this price level). If however you only need to produce the odd part for you own work and are already happy with Lychee or Chitubox, well there's considerably less reason to change your methodology just for the sake of it. Anway, given that some BMers may be encountering this software with their new printer (looking at you @Brandy 😁) I thought this of interest. Tony

I agree - glad you've gotten better results Nick. The whole lift/distance thing took me ages to work out too!

I think you must have had a dud as you suggested Nick - have been running mine for over a year now with only 4 fails out of about 100+ or so prints, and two of those were due to dialling in a new set of resins recently. Obvious question but was your S2 levelled ok?

Sorry to read of the recent paint woes Bill but tempered by news of your recent triumphs with bus and Belvedere. Warmest congratulations mate. More Wessex here than Alfred the Great. 😁