Photon

Beautiful work, Pierre. I love the paint job!

Unsure of how to make some of the more organic forms, I started to consider 3D Printing. After finding out that Polystyrene filament was readily available I decided to go for it. I bought a cheapo (sub-$200) printer kit and proceeded to improve it—mostly by stiffening the frame and replacing the laser cut acrylic parts with machined aluminum ones. I also upgraded the hot end with a higher quality one (E3D V6) and made some safety upgrades to the electronics. After fighting with print bed leveling for weeks, I made a removable mount that would allow attaching a dial indicator. I’ve been able to print some parts that are quite usable. The styrene filament is really easy to work with. It sands beautifully and bonds readily with Tamiya cements. Alright...so much for the condensed history lesson. We are up-to-date. All posts on this model going forward will be in the NOW, baby.

Thanks for the warm welcome everybody! Are you ready for more? Hang on... To add a little more interest, I thought it might be cool to vary the surface levels a bit more. I cut two square holes and fit a couple of small boxes. I used a heat gun to bend some .080 plastic rod to form pipes and glued them in place. Starting to add model bits. Not everything is glued yet -- the stuff up top didn't make the cut. I also added some panels to the front hull & cut out two sections where some additional detail will go. I built 2 shallow trays out of styrene to stuff with some model parts.

Here I'm starting to fill out the rear "engine" area. I built an under-structure out of basic shapes that I'll detail with kit parts and styrene bits. Everything's just balancing there...no glue yet. These two pods were made from 1" styrene rod. I glued in some kit part detail and also the acrylic hemispheres.

I built a box out of sheet styrene to fill in the back of the vac-formed hull. Probably a bit hard to see in the photos, but there is a 5 degree taper on the vac-formed hull to aid removing it from the mold. This has made fitting subsequent parts tricky. I added some 'board & batten' style styrene sheet to the sides of the insert. I thought it looked cool and would be fun to weather.

Hi everyone. This is my first post here. I’d like to share a model I’ve been working on for a while. Its based on a drawing by artist Rob Turpin <https://thisnorthernboy.wordpress.com/> I really like the design of this ship . It has a real Moebius/Heavy Metal/ 70’s sci-fi paperback vibe that I really dig. I also like that its just a marker sketch and I can flesh out the details as I go. I found a 40mm styrene test tube, so I'll be using a piece of that for the bubble canopy. Based on this, it follows that the final model will be about 300mm long. The scale is ~ 1:87 (HO) I turned the base for the canopy on the lathe from some 2"polystyrene rod that I got from a local supplier. I also made the bottom ring to be glued on to add some extra detail. I cut a section out and fit in this gunpod from an airplane kit. The kit part was sanded to match the contour of the test tube. The gap was then sculpted in with epoxy putty. I vacuum-formed the front section out of .060" styrene over a form made from some high-density foam. The final thickness wound up being about half that. I had just made the vacuum former the month prior and this model is it's maiden voyage. The convoluted middle section was turned from the same 2" rod. That's all for now. Thanks for tuning in.