3Dprinting Timelapse Video

It took some time, but finally I uploaded a video to youtube. I do not think that I will do this often, even when I have some ideas for hobby related videos, this stuff takes too much time. But at least it is a start and a place to collect all videos I made for this blog. In the next time I am going to upload them to the new channel.
You may subscribe, but I do not think it is worth it, since all videos will be shown in this blog.

Yesterday was the second try of doing this kind of videos, which was not successful, but today I tried again and as you may have seen, now the timelapse thing works, but the quality of the video is pretty bad. I think the camera is the reason, maybe I will try another camera for that. And for sure, a different camera angle, where more can be seen.
And maybe some nice music, without any sound, this is pretty boring.

The file I have chosen for this print was a P-47 Thunderbolt from Thingiverse scaled down to 1:144. Now the Americans will also have the choice of two planes.

The next roguish Montagsmaler meeting will be tomorrow today, oi that video thingi took long, then it is time to get the scenery piece with the crashed passenger jet done. If my mate Olli will build that one kit, a closer look at it may follow in the evening, when we have finished our roguish projects.

1:100 ZIS-6 With 3,7cm Flak

I recently finished this crude hybrid which was shown in a previous post (this picture). This thing is a combination of the ZIS-6 truck from Zvezdas BM-13 Katyusha "Art Of Tactic" expansion, a 3D printed flakgun and various parts from my bitsbox.
Some pictures from this website were the inspiration for this built.

I did not take a closer look at the 1:100 Zvezda BM-13 Katyusha modelkit but you can find reviews on the web and youtube.

After I removed the rocket launcher from the truck, I added a freightbed made of thin cardboard and some other bits to improve its look.
I did not find a matching Soviet gun for that truck that I had to improvise again. Originally the flakgun is a British 40mm Bofors but after a quick comparison with the Soviet 3,7cm Mod. 1939 AA gun I did not find too may differences between them, that I took the Bofors which can be found at Thingiverse.

The barrel of the gun and its gunsight were printed improperly and I had to replace them. I used parts of a broken 1:72 Zvezda Soviet 3,7cm flak for this.

The crew figures came from the Plastic Soldier Company M3 halftrack kit, they are US minis, but since I do not have any 15mm Soviet minis, once again I had to improvise and used them. But I think this will not be seen from a distance.

I painted this thing with the same colors which I used for the KV-1 and KV-2 from the 2 previous posts and added some decals from the 28mm Rubicon T-34 kit.

I am happy with the result, but to be honest this is an ugly thing which looks very crude on close sight.

Next up is to paint this thing, after I found a matching figure in my bitsbox to operate the (scratchbuilt) gun on its freightbed.
When this thing is done, there are only 3 planes to finish before I can start to create the needed custom unit cards and write the plane expansion for "TANKS".

By the way, I added this picture of the (almost) finished kit to the Zvezda T-72B review.

Update: I mistakenly wrote 3,7mm gun, this was corrected.

1:100 M36 Jackson Bitsbox/3D Print Hybrid

When I built the Achilles tank hunter from its expansion for "TANKS", I had an unused spare M36 Jackson turret that went to the bitsbox. Since I had some time ago the idea to combine leftover parts with 3D printed parts, you may already know what I did.

This chimaera is the result of combining the Battlefront Miniatures M36 turrets with a 3D printed hull from Thingiverse.com, if I remember correctly, I took it from this collection. The last indegrent were the tracks, taken from a 1st generation BFM plastic Sherman. 

The tracks are a little oversized what clearly can be seen when this tank is compared to his British comrade, the Achilles.

While the lenght and the height of the printed hull do not differ much from its plastic counterpart, the printed part should have been 2mm wider, what clearly can not be seen on this picture. Except for that, I am pleased with the print.
Sure, since the machine which made it is, ahm, let me call it, ahm, pretty basic as also the overall print quality is pretty basic and would be better with a better machine. But I am still fascinated with this relatively new technology and what is possible with the cheapest printer we got.

I do not want to get too enthusiastic about 3D printing, I think you can see the endless possibilites of this stuff, not only for modelling purposes but on a bigger level, for yourself. As I may have written sometime in the past, I compare 3D printing to the replicators of "Star Trek", even when these are completely different technologies.

But back to the Jackson, then there are the tracks.

The scavenged tracks are the reason for the height differences of both tanks, while they look ok, they are way to big and I may change them in the near future. This would be the oppurtunity to get some "Art Of Tactics" Shermans, to see if their tracks could be used.

Sunday, funday, and since the next Montagsmaler meeting is on close sight, you may not expect another post for today except for the case, that I will get motivated to drop some lines about another Zvezda 1:100 kit. But at the moment, the chances for that are pretty low.

1:100 Zvezda Opel Blitz With 3D Printed Flak 38

I recently finished another 3Dprinted/modelkit hybrid, this time it is the 1:100 Opel Blitz model of Zvezdas "Art of Tactics" game which got equipped with a 3Dprinted Flak 38, like this one I did some years ago.

The built of the truck went fast and without any issues, all parts were casted fine and had a good fit. There will come no closer look at the kit, but some good reviews can be found on the web and youtube.

I changed the freightbed and added the flak to use it for a final playtest of my planned planes expansion for TANKS. The plastic of the kit seemed very soft but it took modelglue without any issues.

On the left side you can see the 3D printed Opel Blitz of my mate Olli, with a scratchbuilt freightbed and also equipped with the same flak model. Both files came from this excellent collection of 1:100 .stl files of tanks and trucks, the Flak 38 was icluded within the Horch files, at least I think so.

Another time I was positively surprised by our printed stuff. While the Opel was one of the first kits we ever printed, we had no idea what we did and its quality could be much better nowadays, I would not say its is bad, but it is not good either.

The flakguns got very well done with the cheapest 3D printer on the market (1 1/2 years ago). They needed some cleaning from the support structures but would have been ready to paint after that.

A view on the additional stuff which was added, I decided to add a scratchbuilt seat and a gunner from the bitsbox for both Flak 38. The gunners had a shoulder amputation for a better fit, but this can hardly be seen on the finished model.

Another small modification was magnetizing the flak. I glued a 2x2 rare earth magnet into the socket of the Flak 38 and glued a small metal plate right on the freightbed under the carriage for the gun.

When Olli has finished his truck, I will show you how it is applied.

Next Monday the Montagsmaler will continue their roguish projects, since 3 of 4 factions got their mobile AA units finished, the only thing left to do is to get some AA units for the Soviets.

And this will be (what a surprise) more 3D/Zvezda hybrids. I already printed some guns but I think I will have to redo them because the scaling seems wrong.

By the way, is it 3Dprinting or 3D printing, I think I will continue to use both versions.

By the way, all new  kit pictures are uploaded, so stay tuned to get a small overview (hehe) of Zvezda 1:100 wargaming kits which we use and will use for ww2/ww3 TANKS games in future posts.

15mm 3D Printed Gepard and some updated posts

As I mentioned in a previous post, I think the more choices for platoonbuilding in "TANKS The Modern Age" you have, the more flexible you can create your platoonlist.

The choices for AntiAir units are limited (*) to (as I call them) support units with no armour and low hitpoints. Using  the "Camouflage Net" upgrade, combined with "Scout" or "Hammerhead" abilities may give some basic defense, with no speedpoints this are at least 3 dice to defend and missiles will not be affected by their special rules.

But all in all, the available AA units are very weak.

(*): There is at least one exception, but I will keep this for a future post.

This is the reason why my mate Olli mentioned that it would be nice to have armoured AA units. Said and done, I headed to Thingiverse and after a quick search I found this German Gepard AA tank.

I think the hull took 4 hours and the turret parts were printed in 2 hours.

The turret came in 5 parts, of which you can see only 4. The parts were roughly cleaned on the picture above, but I still had to remove the launcher tubes attached to the guns. As I understood, these were equipped in the beginning of the 21st century and would not fit in our late 80ies/early 90ies game setting. And without, this tank would look better.

In the background you can see the AMX-30 Roland turret, another custom unit which still has to be created as also the Gepards unit card. We still have to figure out the values and costs for these units since it may get too easy to make them over- or underpowered.

When we have found some good schemes for point costs and etc, heavy AA units for the other nations will follow too, or at least the British and Soviet forces may get some. I still have not found this type of unit for the US troops, but at least I will make the HMMWV Avanger available as option.

Both turrets side by side. The Gepard turret still needs some filling and sanding but it is remarkable in its shape. The Roland turret is ready to get painted, but this will have to wait until its comrades will have arrived at the homefront.

I magnetized the tankhull and turret using a screw and a magnet. I glued the magnet in the opening for the turret and turned a screw in the bottom of the turret. This way you can simply adjust the point where both parts meet.

Since the US and German tanks have the same NATO colorschemes, I want something different for the new platoon. I have planned to paint the French tanks in a (probably, but I do not care) historic inaccurate multiscale camouflage pattern with desert colors, using a set of 3 stencils which I downloaded from Thingiverse and printed on our Anet A8.

I hope this will work as proposed, especially the big turret of the AMX AUF1 artillery tank would look nice in this digital camouflage pattern. Unluckily, I took a picture of the only stencil which will need some cleanup.

Today Olli started to paint the Flakpanzer Gepard as you can see on the first picture of the post. There is still some color and the sealing varnish to do, but at distance this thing already looks very good.

A custom unit card for this tanks will follow soon.

(update: I forgot to add a picture of the unpainted tank, this was done as you can see below)

Some words on the blog update:

I made some better pictures and replaced some of the old in the "TANKS The Modern Age" stuff, which got a closer look  in some previous posts.

At the moment the starterbox and the expansions for the PAH, Marder, Abrams and T-72 got some new pictures. Tomorrow I will exchange some pictures from the closer looks at the BMP-1/2, M163/M901, Hind and Cobra expansions for the game.

And I will take the oppurtunity to make new pictures for the earlier "Faces Of War" postings, the quality of the actual pictures is simply bad.

I may split the earlier posts and preserve the leftover pictures for future posts, following the parole quality not quantity.

Painted Proxies and Custom Units For TANKS The Modern Age

Just some pictures of 15mm 3D printed Humvees and Zvezda Bradley tanks which are used for "TANKS The Modern Age".

Since I do not have the HMMWV TOW expansion for the game, I thought that I could print some of them and use the matching card from the starterbox. After a quick search at Thingiverse I found this stl-file for the vehicle. I resized it according to the measurements I found in the Wikipedia article about the HMMWV and printed it.

The print took roughly 2 hours, on the picture above you can see the Humvee in different stages. After I removed the support, I cut the Tow launcher, cleaned it seperately and exchanged the front part of the TOW launcher with a piece of sprue. It may be a little thick, but I found only too thick and too thin sprueparts, that I decided this way.
Since the wheels were pretty shabby, I used some Vallejo acrylic putty on them.

Painting these things did not take much time, as usual I used Revell Aquacolor paints, except for the wash I did it as I showed in this post.

In a painted state these cars look great. You still see the layers of the printing process but at distance they will not stand out too much. Overall, I am happy with them, but they will show their worthness on the battlefield, which also got a small makeover.

The official Humvee TOW expansion is still on my list, but first I want to build up a small French force which will hopefully arrive in the next days.

Next are a couple of Bradley APCs which I got for a heavy discounted price. I took a closer look at the kit in this post.

I did not like the original look of the sideskirts, so I made a quick websearch for alternatives and found this blog which shows some modifications to the tank. Again I stole without any shame some ideas and applied them to my models.

The Trumpeter scribe tool was very handy when I added new panellines to the modified sideskirts, but not only the skirts were changed, I replaced the stock barrel with an 1:72 2cm Flak barrel from RBModels, which looks pretty nice. Also I changed the TOW launcher into firing position and the smokelaunchers were placed in a different angle.

Finally I changed the position af the headlamps, and, since they are moulded as solid block, I drilled some holes them to improve their look.

Maybe I will replace them at a later time, but I am happy with the final results from the Zvezda Bradley modelkits

I added some camouflage netting following the method I described in this post. As i did for for the Humvee, the Bradleys were painted in the standard scheme which I used for all my US troops. Except for that I did not use any wash for the hull, and used a rusty brown for the tracks, followed by 2 different rust washes and some graphite from a pencil.

Since I do not have approciate decals for the vehicles from this post, there are no markings yet, but I could not resist to add a Snoopy decal from the Sparebook to one of the Bradleys. Looks great and makes it easier to tell them apart.

15mm 3Dprinted SU-25 Frogfoot (1)

Some first pictures of my selfprinted SU-25 plane. It is 1:100 scale and I found this stl-file in this growing collection, which I mentioned in a previous post.

I am working on an inofficial plane addon for "TANKS The Modern Age" (still unsure, if this will work), and needed some planes. For the first version I wanted to add only planes for the USA and the Sovietunion, beside some new equipment cards and custom armoured AA units.

For the USA I had chosen the 1:100 A-10 fastbuild kit from Revell, you can find this review at Modellversium, but I am still waiting for it. Sure, I could go for smaller scales, but would it not be great if all has the same scale at the battlefield?

Finding an approciate plane for the Sovietunion was harder and ended in this thing. As I mentioned sometimes in the past, I am no aviation expert, but I think these two planes would be almost equal. At least they will have almost equal stats in the future addon.

The print took 7 hours and consumed 0,5 kWh (accourding to my new gauge), the plane was printed with an infill of 15 percent and weights 24 grams with all residue. It took some time to remove it, but when the residue was removed, the plane looked like this.

Not bad compared to the printer which was used, now it was time to optimize the model.

First I added a layer of Revell Plasto filler. This stuff has a strong chemical smell, much more then the Wamod filler I used before. 

One day later when the filler was hardened, I started with sanding, and as you can see, with all the filler and sanding the wings are starting to have a smooth surface.

The bottom does not look as good as the upper surface. To print the wings, the printer builds up some support structures (see the first picture) and, at least our prints, the models sometimes have a very rough surface after removing the support.

This was the case, but a good layer of Plasto and some sanding are a good start to smoothen the lower surface. But there has to be some more filler to add as also some more sanding.

Then it may get experimental. I got the very handy Trumpeter Scribe tool and some templates from Voyager Models, also I found some nice bluprints of the SU-25.

So I may try to add some panel lines. If I will mess up, I can always add a new layer of filler, but I may give this a chance.

And finally, I will have to make my thoughts about the armament of the Frogfoot, since there were no bombs or rockets included in the 3D files, I will have to improvise, print, loot, scratchbuild or whatever ist needed to get this thing some weapons.

More on that in a future post. At the moment I am printing some more stuff which you will see in the next posts, beside some proxies and more custom units for "TANKS The Modern Age".

3D Printed 15mm Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1

While browsing through the net I found this very great collection of 3D printable cold war vehicles at Thingiverse and thought, maybe I could try to print one or two of them, just to check how good our cheap little Anet A8 would handle them.

Since this is a very low-end printer, I would not be surprised if the finished print would look crappy. But as you may have guessed this time the things went fine. I choosed this little thing, the Raketenjagdpanzer Jaguar 1, for a first try.

The piece directly from the printer. It took 3 1/2 hours to print and weights only 12 grams. I did not calculate the energy cost but the material cost for the Jaguar 1 is arround 25 cent which is not much, compared to the 20 Euro we paid for the whole filamentspool of 1000 gram.

I would like to know how many modelbuilders are using 3D printing technology since it is effordable for almost everyone. I think our A8 costed 250 Euro, including all extra parts, the printer itself was at 150 Euro, and this was 1 1/2 years ago. Nowadays you should get better models for this price.

But as I wrote before in previous posts, even this low-class 3D printer makes so many things possible. Maybe one day you will see the glorious troops of NOD defeating their foes in a game of TANKS.

After a cleanup the Jaguar is ready to get some paint. The quality and the grade of detail is good. I had nothing more to do then to remove the residue. A rought check of the measurements shows that the models height and width are in scale but its hull is 3 mm too short.

But I do not care about this, it would only be seen with another 1:100 Jaguar, e.g. from Battlefront, in direct comparison, that is why I definitively will print more vehicles from this collection.

As you have seen on the first picture of this posting, the tank has already got its paintjob. More pictures of finished Raketenjagdpanzers Jaguar 1 will follow when my mate Olli has painted his model.

Maybe I already made and uploaded a new custom unit for "TANKS The Modern Age" inspired from this, we will see in the later evening ;) when I will be compiling some future posts, but do not ask what I will be posting later, I am still unsure about it.

Part Rubicon Part 3D Selfprinted 28mm T-34/76

Finally I finished the paintjob on my T-34, built from a 3D printed hull, see this post, and the bits leftover from building two different T-34 made by Rubicon Models. Since there were so many bits leftover, I had do do another session of bitsrecyling.

The kit got primed with AK Interactive Russian primer, then I added a coat of a generic green as basecolor. That green was toned down with grey and used for a heavy drybrush, followed by a dark brown or black wash.

For the next step I mixed some Vallejo pigments with water and applied the thin paste very generous on most of the lower regions of the tank and some of its upper regions.

When the pigment/water mix was dried I removed as much of the pigments as I wanted to with a dry toothbrush. Then the remaining pigments were fixed with spiritus, a method I found at this forum, it worked pretty good.

The next step was to add some decals, I used the decals from the Rubicon kit. I used the method described in this post. The Rubicon decals came in pretty good quality but needed more time than other decals spent in the water.
The slogan above the red star came from Peddinghaus Decals, the decal was very thin, just as the "Flames Of War" decals from Battlefront Models, it alos needed a lot time in the water bowl. The horse on the right came from an AER (?) T-34 kit.
Finally the kit was sealed with Revell Aquacolor matte varnish.

I am very satisfied with the result. Especially the decals look pretty fine. As also the pigments. When I made my first experiences with pigments, most were blown or washed away by the airbrushpistol when the model was sealed.
But now, when I fixed them with some spiritus, after the final sealing the pigments are still visible as desired, which was not the case on this jeep.

One of the Mariya Oktyabrskaya miniatures from Stoessies Heroes, shown in this post, just as size comparison for the tank. The figure got a quick and dirty paintjob to use her at the Rügen'46 game last year. When I will find some time she will be repainted.

And another time the Montagsmaler went rogue on another Saturday. Olli helped me with the repainting of the windmills shown in the picture below which I got from this lot. Their paint was chipped, so I airbrushed them and he dried the paint with my hairdryer.
At least the finished bases can be seen on the T-34 pictures.

These things will be scenery for "TANKS The Modern Age", they will get their own terrain rules:

For tanks they are unpassable terrain but do not block the line of sight.

For helicopters they are unpassable terrain on both altitudes and do block the line of sight on high altitude.
Missiles will also be blocked by the windmills on both altitudes.

Just two weeks left for the Hamburg Tactica 2019 where I will pick up some helis and AA units, then it is time for the NATO to conquer the East.

15mm Nightfighting Panthers and some 3D printed stuff

Some pictures of my 15mm Panthers for TANKS. As you can see they are equipped with infrared vision. I saw the IR equipment at the Heer46 onlineshop and I could not resist buying some of it. Here you will find a picture of more built IR equipment which is still not finished.

I used "UHU hart" to attach the whitemetal parts of the IR visions. This stuff is pretty fine, glues all the materials I have to glue, and dries pretty fast and hard.

Closeups of the three Panthers. I will have to add decals but before I have to order new turretnumbers, maybe at Peddinghaus Decals, but I also found some nice decals at Skytrex and Dom's Decals.

But this was not the end, I wanted something different and found some nice files at Thingiverse and then I started the 3D printer.

I printed 2 Panther Schmaltürme, they can be seen in the Civil War battle report. The ridiculous big barrels are from the Battlefront Miniatures Jagdpanther. Maybe they are a little too big, but I like that look.

Last month the two turrets were modified, I added new hatches, and attached the remaining IR parts from my bitsbox. Now these kitten look great.

We are needing antiair units for our (w.i.p.) TANKS addon, that I decided to visit Thingiverse again, and look what I found:

I had to rescale the Coelian turret, which I downloaded, but after the second try it was perfectly in scale. After cleaning the residue from printing there was not much to do, I changed the turret's hatch for a scratchbuilt one, added a simple gunner shield from plasticcard and the very last IR part I had.

-

While I was at work, the postman dropped a note in my mailbox, tomorrow I will get the stuff I ordered at Frontline Games, and then it is time to get a closer look at "TANKS The Modern Age".

-

Some kind of update,
I watched documentary about tanks on Netfix and wondered, is it ignorance or incompetence that the Panther tank was not mentioned in it.