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1:48 Babylon 5 Starfury - 3D print [Completed!!!]


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My first* entry in this long-awaited GB will be this 3D printed kit I picked up from a chap caleld Alain Riveard who is ont eh Starship Modelllers Facebook page. He produced this 3D printed kit last year in 3 scales 1:32 , 1:48 and 1:72. I went for the middle one as although it was expensive it wasn't a bank-busting amount as was the 1:32 scale kit.

 

There is no fancy box so lets go straight in and see the bits

 

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The detail on the parts is amazing

 

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and the surface detail is really good

 

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There are channels pre-built into the parts to allow lighting to be installed so that should be interesting to design a lighting system.

I've acquired a set of Decals from JBOT to represent Ivanova's Starfury - I'll add a photo of them later.

 

There is a hole in the underside of the main fuselage to accept a rod to act as a stand but I'm tempted, if time permits to try to be a bit more ambitious and build a version of the launch gantry as seen in the TV Series like this:

 

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So fingers crossed!

 

 

 

 

 

*it may also be the last, depending on how long it takes!!!!!!!

Edited by Kallisti
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Nice,

 

I van see it includes the nose frame but does it include the glazing to go in it or do you have to provide your own?

 

Pete

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4 hours ago, Kallisti said:

Alain Riveard who is ont eh Starship Modelllers Facebook page. He produced this 3D printed kit last year in 3 scales 1:32 , 1:48 and 1:72. I went for the middle one as although it was expensive it wasn't a bank-busting amount as was the 1:32 scale kit.

Looks like that might be worth a punt.  Where would I get in touch with this fellow as a non-facebook friendly modeller? :hmmm: NVM - found him :) 

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Looking forward to seeing this go together, after seeing your posts in the sci-fi thread I bought the stl file from Alain and have been busily printing my own version.

I particularly want to see how you tackle the painting, the texture mapping on the original B5 computer models looks challenging.

 

Cheers,

Stuart

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So after a little while planning and measuring things, the first major realisation of this build has struck me - its bloody massive!!!

As a consequence, I'm going to have to reign back my ambitions as to building the launch gantry for it - its too large and too heavy, so instead I'll use a brass tube to support the model on a base that will also be able to hold wires from a power supply in the base. There is a pre-cast hole in the bottom of the main body that fits one of the brass tubes I have in the spares box.

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Work has begun - first thing is to decide how much is going to be illuminated and I've come to the conclusion that I'm only going to light the rear facing thruster. The reason being it would (in my humble opinion) look silly if all the thrusters were firing/illuminated at the same time! I did this when I built the Revell one years ago, but I think now it just looks a bit silly

 

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So to that end, I've started preparing the rear engine exhausts. The 3D printed resin is actually quite transluscent so all I need to is put a layer of Tamiya Clear Blue over the engine exhaust inserts and put a flickering 'candle effect' LED behind this to get a nice effect

 

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Now the downside of the material being translucent is I need to block the light where I don't want it, so I've been painting black paint on the inside of the engine units to block the light

 

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using this brush through the lmited opening available

 

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I have also started work on painting the cockpit interior. Here I want to leave some gaps in the paint so that am LED on the other side of the rear bulkhead will shine through. For this I'm using Tamiya XF-76 which is a slightly paler version of cockpit green

 

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Even though the photos of the studio set show the colour to be a darker green, I think it will look better with the lighter green. I managed to collect a few photos from around the net, specifially from a site that has recovered the old Lurkers Guide to Bablyon 5 - a site that is now defunct but efforts are being made to resurrect it

 

cockpit1.jpg

 

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These are my guides for the cockpit painting. :)

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Cockpit progress! Painting is done - I've followed the ethos of the original production team and some of the paintwork is a little rough :)

 

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The four white areas are unpainted and will be decorated later. I changed my mind about the base colour on closer inspection of the set photos and went for a darker green for the bulkhead, Tamia XF-26 Dark Grren, then used the XF-76 for the highlight braces plus XF-81 for the seat backing and XF-52 for the cushioning. The side walls have also been XF-36'd and I just need to pick out some of the control panels in a bit more detail.

 

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You'll notice on the right the back of the cockpit bulkhead has been painted black with some holes left - this is for the lighting effort!

 

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So this is to ensure light blocking from this

 

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Its a 5 mm orange LED of which I've got 2 in light masked sleeves plus 2 more 3mm flashing LEDs in sleeves. These have all been attached to the back of the bulkhead 

 

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and produce light through the unpainted bits - this is a bit blurry coz of the log exposure

 

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Slightly better is a very short video I took that shows the flashing LEDs

 

 

Next job is to sort out the stand and power connection so that when the cockpit gets installed in the fuselage the wiring can be connected up.

 

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Further progress in the lighting and wiring front! Spent today soldering resistors onto candle effect LEDs and then using a hot glue gun to glue them to be the back of the engine exhausts. The advantage of the hot glue is the abiility as it cool to pull the LED a bit further away from the part so that the light will diffuse a bit more through the hot glue. I've also measure p and soldered the leads and connectors that will power these LEDs from the central source.

 

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You can see at the back that these leads have a connector - this is so that I can assemble the engines and attach them to the wings withough have to constantly thread the wires through which would be a pain which will be explained later. The big square cross-section connector did mean that some surgery had to be performed on the engines

 

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The circular hole had to be turned into a rectangle and enlarged a bit, this allows the connector to slip inside the engine housing which you can see tested here

 

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As I was testing this on the upper wings I discovered that the channel built into the wings for the wiring didn't have a complete opening into the main body - somehow the hole was blocked. This is in a VERY inaccessible location inside the main body so in order to fix I had to drill holes down through the wing like this

 

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and then  drill sideways from those holes into the main body, trying as best I as I could to align the various holes with each other. It took quite a long time and was a right FAFF! I got it however and here you can see the wires threaded through 

 

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Now the next bit I experimented with was how to connect power to the model through the stand. As explained before there is a channel built into the underside of the main body that will accept a 5mm diam brass rod. However I tried multiple way to try to arrange a power coupling through this that would fit the hole and be robust enough not to break. It turnee out that most of my robust plugs and sockets are too big for this size hole, even when I enlarged it to take the 6mm plastic tube. I did find a way to use the same connectors as I used on the wing to engine wiring but it ended up looking much too flimsey.

 

What this means is I will need to build the launch gantry to support the model rather than just put it on a stick. Then I can fake up some umbilical cables that would have most likely been used to connect the Starfury to onboard system in B5 and use these as power connectors. So its going to be a case of breaking out the plastic beams, pipes, rods and girders. I'll build it "upside down" in relation to the normal spin of B5 so the Starfury will end up launching "upwards" from the base instead of down/out wards from the spinning space station. This model is too big and heavy to build it up the right way! We're in space - there is no real "up" or "down", it just depends on your orientation :)

 

More on that tomorrow!

 

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So the previous post that I deleted was some photos of my first attempt at the launch rail and was utter rubbish and based upon some faulty assumptions, so I deleted the pics. However since then a LOT of work has been done on the launch rail and base and here it is

 

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(full size pic here)

 

The transparent box with the black thing inside will be the battery box and the black thing is the batter holder. There is an on-off switch at the front. This box is a bit plain and will need some greeblies added to it as will the rest of the base

 

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(full size pic here)

 

I've added some features to the flat base to represent conduits, pipes and so on. There are also panel lines engraved in this base but the camera probably didn't pick them up. Now this is not particularly screen accurate as my main concern was to be able to support the weight of the Starfury and not have the thing overbalance as the orignal screen-accurate-ish supports did NOT support the centre of gravity of the Starfury when it was oriented vertical. This is why there is an extra support sticking out to the right in the top pic.

 

Here is what it looks like with the Starfury in place

 

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(full size pic here)

 

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As you can see the two leftmost "prong" go either side of the lower part of the main body. The two larger arms go between the wings and match up to a ridge on the wing roots. The right-most support slots into a gap between details on the upper part of the rear of the Starfury and gives support to the centre of gravity to prevent the Starfury from topping over. 

 

The Starfury cradle is built up of "I" beams and reinfoced tubes and other beams. I added some greeblies to the two central arms already. This cradle would pivot to horizontal for maintenance and for the pilot to embark, then swivel to the vertical position for launch. As explained before, this model is essentially upside down as the spin of Bablyon 5 was used to assist launching, so the base is actually the roof of the fighter bays. The cradle is glued to the two vertical supports so it does not pivot - this is the weakest spot of the whole base and wanted to make sure the rotational stress on this joint was minimized. Inside the join I cut out a small square-shaped "axle" which has a piece of square sross-section plastic rod glued in to provide a more robust joint rather than just have the two plastic surfaces joined. I should have taken a photo of this during construction but forgot!

 

The general arrangement of the launch gantry is based on screenshots and the research done by other modellers, but the details are different because of the design criteria I was working too. Previous build of this gantry by other modellers have been in 1:72 scale to support the quite light Revell kit. This 3D printed kit is MUCH heavier and bulky so needed better support. If you look carefully you'l see two large plastic tubes inside the base f the gantry which are positioned directly under the supports for the "pivoting" part of the gantry. These are the main load-bearing supports and reduce the stresses placed on the rest of the built structure.

 

Last night was the moment of truth when I finally put the Starfury into place. I'd left it a while to let the various glued components cure and settle in before adding this weight and I was VERY relived at the solidity of the whole thing!

 

Next task is to wire up the battery box and add the wires/conduits that will transfer the power to the Starfury.

 

Edited by Kallisti
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Had the day of work today so continued with the scratch building. Having completed the main structure yesterday, today was about adding some greeblies and sorting out the wiring.

 

Digging into the spares box, I found a whole stash of bits which got added in various place, including some pieces from disassembled hard drives. So here was the end result

 

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So as you can see there are wires from the battery box through the superstructure and terminating in in that slot into sockets in the back of the Starfury

 

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So this has allowed me to connect up all the internal wires and add the cockpit to the main body

 

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If you get closer you'll see the wiring inside

 

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Here is the cockpit in place - you can see the wires that will later be used to connect the engine pod lighting 

 

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and here it is on the launch rail

 

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and just to test the lighting...

 

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Thanks @JeroenS :)

 

Progress this week invoved the arrival of the new AAA battery holders to replace the AA one that didn't quite fit in the acrylic box. This smaller 4 x AAA holder fits properly and is now glued in and all wired up properly. It looks a bit of a mess in the transparent box, but this wil of course all be hidden once the paint goes on

 

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Speaking of paint, this morning this got its first coat of paint, a good going over with Halfords grey primer. Once that is dry there will be some inspections for faults and so on before it goes further. The general colour I'm aiming for will be a blue-grey that will be a different colour from that I'm going to use on the Starfury. I've yet to fully decide exactly how that paint job will look, but there will be details and panel work picked pit in different shades and colours.

 

As for assembly, the main job this week was the engine pods. These all had the fins attached as well as the exhaust nozzels for all the directional engines EXCEPT the main rear ones which have all be wired up with LEDs. These have been left off and will be attached at the end, hence why so much effort was put into the wiring and plugs etc.

 

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As you can see, they've also had a coat of Tamiya dark grey primer. Speaking of primer, this effort was continued on the main fuselage/wing components - upper wing

 

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The primer did show up some of the scan line irregularities that were not immediately obvious in the plain white resin, but these were quote minor and easy handled with a bit of light sanding and re-application of primer. Exactly the same can be said for the lower wing/fuselage block as you can see here after its second primer coat after sanding down

 

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The bracket to support the upper guns has been glued in as well

 

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Earlier, I was finally happy with the joint between the upper and lower wing/fuselage parts, having had to sand down the upper part of the gun support bracket to make it fit better. These parts have now been glued together and are sitting in clamps for the glue to set fully before progressing.

 

In the meantime, my thought turned to the overall colour scheme of the Starfury and I've come up with a really nice mix of Tamiya XF-82 Ocean Grey and XF-91 OJN Grey (Yokosuka Arsenal) which is a slightly lighter grey than the usually accepted Extra Dark Sea Grey, XF-77 and I am very pleased with the colour that results, its a grey-blue rather than a blue-grey if that makes sense. I'll leave the primer a day for it to fully cure and settle, then see about doing some more painting tomorrow.

 

I'm still in two minds about whether to attach the engine pods now or after painting. I'll think about it more during today I reckon.

 

 

Edited by Kallisti
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  • 2 weeks later...

Just to update, sadly progress has slowed as I'm having a total nightmare witht he paint job! So far I've painted and stripped back twice as I haven't been happy with the results. I've got a LOT Of dirty Isopropyl alcohol at the moment!

 

I've given the base an initial blue/grey colour but its come up a bit to dark and this thing is to fiddly to paint strip, so I'm just going to have work with that I've got. I'll do some panelling and detail picking out and might try to give it an overall lighter grey coat to brighten it up a bit - we'll see...

 

As for the Starfury, the first colour mix of XF82 and XF91 was much too dark so that got stripped back, then I went for a much lighter grey to think about doing a sort of 'aztec' finish like I did on the USS Sulaco from Aliens (check the link in my sig for links to all my build) but then for some reason over the weekend I got it into my head to mask up all the engine exhausts and paint them gunmetal. This looked TERRIBLE when the masking tape came off so that all got stripped back. What that also taught me was I made a mistake sluing the fins to the engine pods this early in the process - trying to mask them effectively was horrendous, so I've got to get the debonder out to unglue them for painting and reattach them later...

 

Oh boy!

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gosh this is a fine looking #D printed model, from the pictures the printing work looks first class! The 1/32nd version must be a real beast!

 

I love the base you've assembled for it, it'll suit it perfectly, a must follow build for sure....when I have a connection!

 

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