More Bitsrecycling With The 3D printer

Building a matching tank for Mariya Oktyabrskaya in 28mm is a little pain in the ass. If you are orienting on the picture in this post, the choices of 28mm/1:56 tanks are limited.

I made my decision for the Rubicon model kit of the T34/76, but even when there are two different turrets to use, the turret from the picture I mentioned before was not included.

Since I like the Mickey Mouse-ish look of the hatches I had no other option then to get  my hands on the Rubicon T34/85 kit because the matching turret is included as a bonus in the kit.

And guess what I did...

First let me say, both kids are great. No sinkholes, no flash, and clear instructions. The builts went without any problems. And the finished tanks are looking great. At the moment they are primed with AK Interactive Russian primer, I like this stuff, but it needs some time to dry/harden.

I am still unsure which color I may use, but maybe the 85 model will get a camouflage pattern.

But now the struggle began, I had not only two completed tanks, but a big bunch of bits. Two unused turrets and a almost complete pair of tracks had to disappear in the bitsbox.

As you may know from earlier posts, for me this fact is totally annoying. So I browsed through the files at Thingiverse, trying to find a T34 hull to use with the leftover bits.

And I found this T34 and printed it. At the first try I messed up the scaling, the first print was way too small. On the picture below you see the result of the second print. This hull took 9 hours to print, the fitting parts took two hours to print. The hull is 5mm longer than the Rubicon hull but I do not care about this, it is still looking fine.

Sorry to say that I forgot to make more pictures, I just tried to do, but my camera is out of batteries, and the pics made with my mobile kind of suck.

That is why I split this post in two parts, in the next days the second part will follow with some pictures, to show how I will attach the tracks and the turret to the new hull.

But let me finish this first part with the gained knowledge from this "campaign", maybe I should have gone for a 1:48 kit of the T34 since the Mariya Oktyabrskaya looks a little oversized on a 1:56 tank.

Rügen'46: Механизированная пехота обезьян (and some 3D printed stuff)

Since the Rügen Incident, things went bad in Europe. Findings from various artefacts did not solve the question what happened on the island and it is still unclear what hides beneath the ruins of Sassnitz.

But what was found pushed scientific progress beyond known borders....

Mechanised Ape Infantry (M.A.I.) which is one of the results from cruel experiments in the bunkers of Stalingrad, also known as "Ape-X" from Reaper Miniatures' Bones range.

Reaper offers with it's Bones sortiment a big range of miniatures for a low prices. The reason for this is, that the miniatures are made from some kind of PVC. The material is pretty soft and the details are soft.

On both minis I modified one arm. I cut and reposed the arm, then the resulting gap was filled with Greenstuff, in which I sculpted a fur pattern with my hobbyknife (called cuttermesser only by professionals). If I would not know, I could not say which arms were changed.

Also both miniatures got a new 3D printed 50mm roundbase, since I did not like the look of the bases attached to them. The bases were printed with the same setting than the stuff below, and took 50 minutes to print for each of them.

I finished the miniatures with a simple but effective paintjob. When these creatures will be used for future games they will count as light tanks.

While I painted the miniatures, the 3D printer printed some movement trays from Thingiverse. They will be a nice addition for games or maybe even figure storage.

By the way, I think I never mentioned that we are using PLA as printing material.

The movement trays were printed with 100% infill at 195 degree celsius, with a print and movement speed of 50mm/sec. Printing one of these things took about an hour, after that I added some sand and my standard base colorset to make them match with the bases of the minis on it.

And as you can see, the new movement trays look decent and match perfect with the bases.

Part Plastic Soldier Company Part 3Dprinted 15mm Sd.Kfz 139

In the picture above you see a Panzer 38(t) hull fresh printed with the Anet A8. Today I managed to print it to build a Sd.Kfz. 139, using the bits leftover from this post.

I took a small video with my mobile to give you a small look at the printing process. The selfprinted fan mount made the printer way more silent.

After some cleaning it looked like this:

I used new printer settings, the two 38(t) hulls I did before were printed with a different setup. Which means, there are differences in the printquality of the three hulls I made. Maybe more on this in a future post.

The overall details of the hull are ok, while the roadwheels were printed incorrect. Even the machine gun and the exhaust were printed in acceptable quality.

All in all,this time the hull was printed better as the roadwheels were not.

The hull roughly drybrushed, viewed from different angles. The top, front and back were printed properly. The roadwheels had some holes and gaps, that I had to use some Vallejo acrylic putty to give them a rought filling.

Both parts were prepared to fit and glued. I had to add a piece of plasticcard to close a gap in the back of the structure.

With minor efford another tank was built today. It looks a little crude on close sight, but it will make a decent gamepiece when it is painted.

Plastic Soldier Company 15mm Marder III And Bitsrecycling With The 3D Printer

Yesterday I built another Marder III kit from the Plastic Soldier Company. It is a nice little tank and it's built went without any problems. There were neither sinkholes nor flash on the sprue. It will get the same paintjob than the one I already painted.

From this kit you can build three different tanks: the Panzerkampfwagen 38(t), the Sd.Kfz. 139 and the Marder III, which I built. When I was finished with the constuction of the left tank on the first picture some months ago, there was a massive amount of bits left in the sprue just as today.

Take a look at the picture below:

Not only that there are 8 crewmen included, there was a full 38(t) turret and a complete Sd.Kfz. 139 upper structure left in the sprue.

This would be a lot of plastic that would vanish in the bitsbox, maybe I could use the 38(t) turret to build a bunker, they were used to guard borders and other structures. But this means there is still the complete upper half of a tank, which may be used.

Days later I had an idea. I turned on the 3D printer and printed a Panzer 38(t) hull from this great collection. Then I tried to build a Sd.Kfz.139 from the structure of the PSC kit and the selfprinted hull. With some sanding, some putty and a lot of superglue I made it. I had to replace the mg barrel but the only things I had to build from scratch were the exhaust and the storage box on the back.

While we are running low on filament, today I did not print a hull for the actual structure I have left, but I did this two times before. When I will do the modification to a third tank, I will make a post about the built.

Both lower parts of these tanks were printed. While it looks a little crude on close sight, these tanks will be decent gaming pieces. They will be used as custom units for TANKS, I made first tries on creating new units for the game from this template.

But before this will be done there are a lot of things to finish before.

3Dprinted 15mm U.S. WW2 Vehicles

This is the next batch of selfmade vehicles. All of them were printed with our Anet A8 3D printer. For gaming pieces the quality is pretty good, compared to my Battlefront and Plastic Soldier Company tanks and halftracks their quality is not so good anymore.

But to be honest, I like them very much, because this 3D printing stuff offers almost endless possibillities even with a very low cost printer like ours.
With some stuff from the bitsbox and some paint they look alright to be used on the battlefield.

Two M8 Greyhound wheeled recon tanks, take from this pack. As you can see, the wheels are not printed properly. But when they are on the table, they look nice. We use it for our custom TANKS scenarios which sometimes need some NPCs.

Not only the German forces used halftracked AA vehicles, this two are in U.S. service.

On the left side is a M15 halftrack (find it here), equipped with a 40mm bofors in the center flanked by a 0.5 cal browning on each side. The stl file was created for 28mm but I tried my best to rescale it to 15mm.

On the right side is a M17 halftrack, from this excellent collection. when I printed the quad Browning 0.5 cal. gun, I cut the machine guns apart from the tower and glued them back in a new angle.

For both vehicles the front bumper, the crew, some bits and the tracks (only the M15's) were taken from the PSC M3 kit, the front wheels are copies of the wheels from the same kit, made with instant mould and milliput.

The guns in detail. I did not much to them after printing, but I had to replace the barrels with plastic rods for a better look.

Thes two AA units will be used for some simple additional rules for TANKS, which we are writing at the moment. But this may take some time since the summer is coming.

This M7 Priest artillery tank came from the same source as the Greyhound tanks. The crew and some bits were taken from the PSC M3 kit. The (too) big barrel of the main gun was made from a tube of a Q-tip.

In the next few weeks I will have more time for posting, I finished a lot of stuff in the last time which I would like to show.

3Dprinted 15mm Scenery for TANKS, Flames of War and other games

This "kit" came fresh from the printer when I made the picture, the brim element is applied. I downloaded the .stl file for this house from Thingiverse.

It was made in 28mm scale but I scaled it down 60 percent to make it roughly fit into 15mm scale.

After removing the brim elemant and separating the parts I was positively surprised about the quality of this print, even the wooden structure of the doors very good to see.

After a little sanding I used cyanacrylate glue (I hate this sticky shit) to build the pieces  to one whole piece. The roof came from a old H0 model house kit. I am not too satisfied with the door, I think it will be replaced by another door, but the rest of the house is fine. The mini and the tank are made by Battlefront Miniatures in 15mm scale.

I will add a base with some interior before  this model will get painted.

A small update on the printed T-34 hulls, I applied the basecolor. The next step will be a layer of drybrushing before I will add a black wash. Maybe I will do some highlights after it, but I have to see the results of the next steps.

3Dprinted T-34 Hulls

Finally, our secret project started successfull.

My mate Olli and I bought a cheap 3D printer kit from the bay, an Anet A8, because we want to print or own scenery and models. We had to build this thing together but that was not too complicated, even when we made 2 or 3 dumb mistakes.

But now we are making our own stuff, what is very nice. Sure, the prints do not have the quality of an hi-end 3D printer, but for 250 Euros, 150 for the printer and 100 for extra parts/filament, this machine gives good results.

One of the first models that I printed were four T-34 hulls. The quality could be better but I am totally new into 3D printing and I think the printer can do better when it is fully finished. I am planning to use the sparetracks of my Plastic Soldier Company T-34, some other bits/scratchbuilt things and the turrets I already painted for my Soviet TANKS!! squad.

I will also do this for for my US tank squadron, where 4 lonely Sherman turrets are waiting for their counterparts, but then I will have to print the tracks too.

The model is in 15mm/1:100 scale and needed about 60 to 70 minutes to print.

 This is the T-34 fresh from the printer. The support material is still there.

The T-34 hull without the support material. I tried to sand a little piece, but I personally think that sanding is absolutely necessary. The print is ok but I think I can get better results by recallibrating the machine and change some settings in the slicer software.

The printed hull with tracks and a turret compared to a Plastic soldier company T-34. They are almost the same size. Except for the printing lines there will be no big difference if these two tanks stand side by side on the battlefield.

Tomorrows project: Reinforcing my Soviet troops.