Y-Wing 1/48 resin model [WIP]

[StevenBills]

Thanks for the comments, everybody. @danbuoy I'm loosely patterning this one after Gold Leader. Loosely being the key word there. 😅 We'll see if my paint skills are up to snuff.

 

Little update today. I did some soldering and got the engine lights going! And it's all self-contained in the back of the fuselage. Everything fit in there, so all of my work of making space earlier back there paid off. It's hard to photograph the lights, but they turned out exactly as I'd hoped.
 

 

 

 

I don't think I'm going to put the bent pipes on the back there, as that would extremely restrict my ability to take off the hatch and flip the switch. I'm still debating that, though.

I also worked on adding back a few of the chip panel things on the cockpit as well. These were sanded off when I was working on it the other day. I'm not even sure of the thickness of the styrene I used, but it looked close enough.

 

 

I'm hoping they blend in a bit when more paint and weathering is applied. I ordered some Tamiya tape for curves, and I'll use that to paint the Gold Squadron markings on the head in the next few days. I also got the clamps on the L'eggs sections painted and glued on (no photos of that, somehow). It's really starting to look like a Y-Wing now!

So that's about it! Pretty happy with the lights, and how it's all coming together.

SB

[StevenBills]

Little update from this morning. I masked and painted the Gold Squadron insignia(?) on the cockpit. This was my first time using Tamiya tape for curves, and it worked really well! I'm very impressed with the stuff.

 

 

 

Need to clean up the edges a bit, but other than that, I'm pretty happy with how these came out. Also painted the base black color in the cockpit. Once that's all dry I'll back with a gray or silver and drybrush some of the raised details. I think the next step for this is to mask and paint the blue pinstripes on the sides of the cockpit. That'll be tricky because I need to match the color of the canopy and the stripes on the engines. OR I can just re-paint the canopy with the new blue color, since it's waaaaay too blue right now... Decisions, decisions...

And if any of you are interested, I streamed the masking and painting session this morning on Twitch. You can watch it (unedited) here:

 

 

Geez I hate the sound of my voice. And I'm not sure why the quality is so bad. Just shot on my iPhone. Anyway, you can skip through that to see how it all went. Or not. Whatever.

SB

[StevenBills]

I started painting the bottom of the cockpit today. Attacked it with the dremel first, and then did some detail painting with a brush. Then some black in the airbrush. I need to let all this dry before adding some rusty washes to it, as well as a few more things. Also added decals today. Didn't get a photo of that, though.

 

 

I'm also re-printing the canopy, as I don't like the shape of the Bibby canopy. I found the DaveG canopy (over on TheRPF) for his open-source studio scale model (thanks!) and scaled it to the appropriate size. Hopefully I can finesse it to fit once it's printed.

Anyway, thanks for looking!

SB

[StevenBills]

Okay, I got some paint in the mail, so I did some more work on the Y this afternoon, and I streamed it again, if anyone cares to watch the process. You can see that here:

 

 

I turned the audio off so I could listen to some music while I worked 😀

I worked on the top of the cockpit. First I attacked it with the dremel to give it some physical damage, and then went back in and touched some of those damaged areas up with a fine brush and XF-53 neutral gray. Then out came the airbrush. I tried some XF-69 Nato Black, but it was spurting weird through my airbrush, so I dumped that and went with a highly thinned XF-1 mixture. Anyway, it looks a bit too stark and contrasty now, I think. The paint that I got is a Vallejo rust wash, which I have never used before, but I quite like it. I looked at reference photos of Gold Leader and applied some rust in the appropriate places, and then some. Also notice the decals that were added to the top of the cockpit as well as the body itself. I took some liberties with those as well.

 

 

 

I looked at some more reference and hit some of the pipes on the body with the rust wash as well. It's still wet here, and from what I understand it'll look a little different when it dries. So we'll see about that.

 

 

 

So that's where it's at for now. It's fun to see it with a bit of color on the body, rather than just light gray. Makes it look a bit used.

Thanks for looking!

SB

Edited March 20, 2021 by StevenBills

[Tomjw]

Wow, she looks incredible. 

 

 

[rockpopandchips]

Looking good. Might give that tamyia tape a go i my current build.

[StevenBills]

Thanks for the comments, everyone. I did some more weathering with the Vallejo washes on the top of the fuselage. I think it's all about going slow and building the weathering up layer by layer. I didn't take any photos of it, but I streamed it and you can watch it here, if you'd like:

 

 

 

And I was zooming it around the house, as you do, and just really liked how the engine lighting came out. So I took a pic of that. Just ignore all of the guts sticking out the back:

 

 

I'm going to get onto weathering the bottom of the fuselage this week (maybe later today if I have some time). So stay tuned for that.

 

Thanks for watching!

 

SB

[danbuoy]

Agree, that engine lighting looks great!

[StevenBills]

@danbuoy thanks! I'm pretty jazzed with how those came out.

 

I have done a bit of work this week, in-between everything. I looked at some reference photos of Gold Leader and tried to replicate what I saw, and then added a bit of my own stuff there. So I worked on the bottom of the fuselage as well as the tops and bottoms of the engines.

 

 

I like how the bottom turned out more than how the top turned out. I think that the top looks a bit overdone. I will try to bring it back a bit with some misting of the base coat later. I also got the weathering on the tops and bottoms of the engines as well today. I also streamed it:

 

 

 

 

 

 

I couldn't really find any photos of the bottom of the engines for GL, so I just kind of free-styled it with the airbrush. I'll go back in with a brush to add some more definition to some areas, more chips, laser damage, etc...

But overall I'm pretty happy with how it's coming together. It's hard to believe that this thing started off as some liquid resin in a bottle!

Anyway, that's all from me today. Thanks for watching!

SB

[Ventsislav Gramatski]

That's one mighty good looking Y-Wing! Nice to see more 3d printed models (and this one being quite a bit better in detail than mine). 

 

Wondering how much time it took you to print it in total? FDMs are very fast for coarse detail but become very slow at low layer hight and a thin nozzle for good small scale details, is the resin printer faster?

 

Also, how does the resin hold up from the heat of the LEDs?

[StevenBills]

5 hours ago, Ventsislav Gramatski said:

That's one mighty good looking Y-Wing! Nice to see more 3d printed models (and this one being quite a bit better in detail than mine). 

 

Wondering how much time it took you to print it in total? FDMs are very fast for coarse detail but become very slow at low layer hight and a thin nozzle for good small scale details, is the resin printer faster?

 

Also, how does the resin hold up from the heat of the LEDs?

 

Thank you! Your X-Wing is seriously cool though! As far as the speed of the printing, resin printers cure whole layers at once, although the layer size is much much smaller. I think I printed the majority of these pieces at .035mm resolution, with a few parts printed at .025mm. It also depends on how the part is oriented on the build plate. The body, for instance, took ~20 hours to print as a single piece standing straight up. The cockpit head piece took about 14 hours, etc... 

 

Like I have said before in this thread, I have learned a LOT about resin printing since I began this project almost a year(!) ago. How the part is oriented, how the supports pull at the part while it's printing, whether to cure the part before or after taking off the supports, etc... All of that matters, and it's all on a part-by-part basis. No two parts are the same. 

 

And I honestly never gave a second thought to the heat from the LEDs. It's not much, honestly, and the resin is pretty strong, if a bit brittle. The LEDs are actually collared in a PLA printed O-ring type thing so that they'd stay in the correct position in the engines.

 

SB

[StevenBills]

Little update for today: I did a bit of additional weathering by chipping with a sponge, hoping to tie things together a bit more. Then I added the t-tracks and the engine vanes at the back. Pretty happy with how it turned out, although there are a few gaps that I need to fill, such as in-between the clamps and the t-track. I will do that with some apoxie sculpt later. Anyway, here are the photos:

 

 

 

 

I also streamed the whole session as well, which you can watch here, if you're interested:

 

 

 

The t-tracks and vanes at the back are a bit too clean at the moment, so I'll go back in and do some additional weathering back there once it has dried a bit more. Then I'll do a subtle mist coat using the base color to help knock the contrast down a bit. Then add the canopy and front guns and I think we can call it done!

SB

[Ventsislav Gramatski]

Thanks for the detailed response @StevenBills! I've also found out that 3d printing is quite more complicated than many people imagine, it's not just slicing the 3d model and passing over to the printer a 'fire and forget' missile. 

 

Sadly, all of the complexities of FDM printing seem to be present in the resin photoetch too. So hats off for pulling so much detail and a large scale model!

 

Looking forward to seeing the model finished!

Edited April 3, 2021 by Ventsislav Gramatski

[StevenBills]

Almost there... I repainted the front guns since I took this photo. I think all that's left is to clear coat it with flat clear and then do the R2 unit.

 

 

Stay on target...

 

SB

[Corsairfoxfouruncle]

They ... Came from .... Behind ! 
 

Great work on this Id love to have one but couldn't afford the materials and printer.  

[StevenBills]

17 hours ago, Corsairfoxfouruncle said:

They ... Came from .... Behind ! 
 

Great work on this Id love to have one but couldn't afford the materials and printer.  

 

Thank you! 3D printing tech has advanced so far, even just in the last 5 or so years. You could probably find a used Elegoo Mars for cheap and learn the basics. Probably less than or around $100. Then it's just the cost of the printing resin. This has been a pretty crazy learning experience, that's for sure!

 

SB

[KaizenMaizer]

11 hours ago, StevenBills said:

 

Thank you! 3D printing tech has advanced so far, even just in the last 5 or so years. You could probably find a used Elegoo Mars for cheap and learn the basics. Probably less than or around $100. Then it's just the cost of the printing resin. This has been a pretty crazy learning experience, that's for sure!

 

SB

I think 3D printing is the way of the future model kit wise (besides whatever Bandai's been doing, such as the tech in their Figurise LABO line), especially when it becomes easier to scan already existing models and create things out of new ones. I've seen someone on reddit's /r/resinkits area print out a lot of really well detailed 3D models that just need sanding and paint to look really good.

[StevenBills]

On 4/5/2021 at 12:40 AM, KaizenMaizer said:

I think 3D printing is the way of the future model kit wise (besides whatever Bandai's been doing, such as the tech in their Figurise LABO line), especially when it becomes easier to scan already existing models and create things out of new ones. I've seen someone on reddit's /r/resinkits area print out a lot of really well detailed 3D models that just need sanding and paint to look really good.

I agree. This technology has improved a LOT over the last few years, and will only continue to improve with time. Better screens with higher resolution, larger build volumes, etc... This has been my first real resin model kit that I have taken all the way from printing to painting, and I have learned a LOT in the process. I'm toying with the idea of doing another one soon (maybe after a few styrene kits!), but applying some things that I learned from this build to make it go a bit more smoothly. For instance, instead of fighting with the brittle resin pieces and trying to get them to fit together correctly, I can just combine those multiple parts in the computer. That would bring it down from about 82 parts to maybe around 20 or so. Makes it a lot less intimidating that way. And a faster build. Anyway.

 

I've been working on the R2 unit, and I have found a few different versions that were in Gold Leader. There was a black droid with white panels, and then there was just a blank droid that was painted the base color. Being that I can't for the life of me paint fine details (like cockpits, pilots, droids, etc...), I might just opt for the plain gray droid. But we'll see. Then this build will be wrapped up!

 

SB

[Caerbannog]

Very nice build! Where did you get the DaveG Open Source canopy? I tried to google but could not find a file for download.

[danbuoy]

That is looking amazing! Great job!

[StevenBills]

3 hours ago, Caerbannog said:

Very nice build! Where did you get the DaveG Open Source canopy? I tried to google but could not find a file for download.

 

Thank you! It's in the "Forward Fuselage" zip folder here: https://drive.google.com/drive/u/0/folders/0BwDa06cjX-fra1EyTjRnQjAzcVk?hl=en

[StevenBills]

Alrighty, folks! This will be the final update for this build! Thank you SO much for following along and being patient (life happens, you know?) with me on this. Overall I am very pleased with how it has turned out. There are a few flaws (don't look too close!) that I am VERY aware of, like the back hatch on the fuselage not fitting properly, as well as a few other fit issues here and there. But hopefully you don't see those things when you take it in as a whole, you know? Anyway, here is a teaser image, and I'll post the rest over on RFI:

 

 

Again, thanks for following along! There are more photos on my Flickr if you're interested: https://flic.kr/s/aHsmVnoojz

 

SB

Edited April 23, 2021 by StevenBills

[StevenBills]

And while I'm here, I know that there have been some people who have expressed interest in me selling them a kit of this in 1/48. Well, I have been in contact with Chris Bibby (who designed this model), and he has granted me his permission to do so! My intention at first would be a VERY limited run (maybe 5 to start), and then go from there. Would there be any interest in something like this still?

SB

[StevenBills]

I know this is a necro-post but I made this image recently with my 3D printed Y-Wing and Fine Molds TIE Fighter:

 

 

SB

 

(Yes yes, I know that the cannons on top are ION cannons, and not laser cannons. Let's just call this Y-Wing an "Attack Fighter" variant 😅)

Edited January 17, 2022 by StevenBills

[StarWarsCreation]

Really great job on the build!