Whats Lying on your Workbench MK IV

[Urashiman]

Got something new in the mail box today

[MechTech]

@pengbuzz Cool mechanism for the elevator. What did you use for power?

@007-vf1 The monster dozer blade looks great with paint and so do your Zentraedi!

@electric indigo I saw a similar kit on Newtype. I think your is different with better details. Its looking great! - MT

[Gabe Q]

@Urashiman Nice VT-1! Keep us updated on the build!

@electric indigo Nice job on that Siren kit. She looks just about finished. 

@007-vf1 wow, didn't know you could sculpt! The Breetai and Exedol will make for a nice diorama.

@pengbuzz elevator engineering is impressive. I don't know how you guys do all this electronic stuff. 

@MechTech I agree with you on the over-weathering. Sometimes I see builds with every square millimeter covered with some sort of rust, chipping, or weathering and it just doesn't look convincing. Those manipulators look great. Your project is coming along nicely. 

I just finished this big girl. Started over well over a decade ago but, hey, at least she's done! 

[pengbuzz]

11 hours ago, MechTech said:

@pengbuzz Cool mechanism for the elevator. What did you use for power?

I used a phone charger with a USB plug in; the USB multi-port was just too weak and I didn't have a "Y" connector.

9 hours ago, Gabe Q said:

@pengbuzz elevator engineering is impressive. I don't know how you guys do all this electronic stuff.

Thanks! Actually, it's just an old electric motor culled from a broken printer, a couple of gears and metal rods, heavy wire for elevator cable and a switch. Hardly "electronic" :lol:

BTW Gabe: nice job on the VF-0!

[MechTech]

@Gabe Q Better late than never! Your valk looks great! Nice and clean finish! I think you panel lined it just right too.

@pengbuzz That's great the USB adapter worked. I usually use batteries, but will have to try that. I've only used USB for LEDs. - MT

[Thom]

@Urashiman Nice, have fun building that.

@Gabe Q Great looking VF-0 Battroid! I like the non-hero paint scheme on it.

@pengbuzz Very cool work with the elevator.

[Urashiman]

3 hours ago, Thom said:

@Urashiman Nice, have fun building that.

@Gabe Q Great looking VF-0 Battroid! I like the non-hero paint scheme on it.

@pengbuzz Very cool work with the elevator.

Thanks - will take some year until I get to it. First, it'll move to the basement to my large model kit collection.

Edited September 2, 2021 by Urashiman

[Thom]

4 hours ago, Urashiman said:

Thanks - will take some year until I get to it. First, it'll move to the basement to my large model kit collection.

Love looking at other people's collection. I get all greedy!

[pengbuzz]

8 hours ago, MechTech said:

@pengbuzz That's great the USB adapter worked. I usually use batteries, but will have to try that. I've only used USB for LEDs. - MT

 

7 hours ago, Thom said:

@pengbuzz Very cool work with the elevator.

 

Thanks guys! But wait 'til ya see my next one:

[Rock]

Hope for in paint this weekend.

[electric indigo]

@Rock Regular scheme or any special ideas?

_

You could say I got my work cut out for me:

[Thom]

5 hours ago, electric indigo said:

@Rock Regular scheme or any special ideas?

_

You could say I got my work cut out for me:

Wow, some real intricate masking! Good luck when the paint flies.

[Rock]

On 9/3/2021 at 2:24 PM, electric indigo said:

@Rock Regular scheme or any special ideas?

Not unless the decals become a disaster, (it's an old kit that has been sitting.) I wouldn't mind trying to airbrush some candy orange over the top of them to give it some variation opposed to flat yellow. I haven't had much luck lately trying to mask over decals that have been sandwiched in between clear coat. Even pre-tacking the tape, I've manage to pull them off on the last few builds.

So far she's primed. The hurricane blowout from the east has given me nothing but rain today to work in... 😕

Edited September 4, 2021 by Rock

[MechTech]

@pengbuzz Cool! Does it get sports and movies?

@electric indigo That shield is cool! Gonna be fun masking that and keeping the edges clean.

 

A bit of a review and build. Last month someone in our club brought in a glass file and showed me what a glass-like finish it can give to styrene. I looked all over and found them at Newtype. The brand I found is Infini Model. They have two sets (still in stock); small and large sized files. I got the "Large" set. https://newtype.us/t/tool/file  The set of three is $24.95. That's about average since individual glass files are about $8.00 each.

My camera did not want to focus on it very well, but here is a 3mm shiny sprue tip with only the medium grit used, not the Fine and Superfine as well. The whole thing is SHINY like glass. Standard sandpaper will never do what these do, and in a few seconds.

The glass is cool because it is transparent too. You can actually see what you're doing. A little less with the finer files because they are more populated with cutting area.

So what are the files made of? I don't know for sure. My educated guess, they are heavily bonded stainless steel photo etch to the glass substrate. The files are VERY sharp! They recommend cleaning them with water. You can also wipe them lightly with a rag.

The files are glass, so I wanted to keep them in something safe. So what did I build? I built an old school box. Kickin' it in the 1890's old school box! I milled-out a small piece of oak.

And then made a slide cover out of that scrap thin piece I knew I'd need some day...

And all three files together.

Hopefully this review helps someone here out! I thought the files were that cool, so I took the time to post the review.

Back to the "twins" this weekend with shading and landscaping the diorama they'll go with. Thanks for checking in! - MT

 

[pengbuzz]

2 hours ago, MechTech said:

@pengbuzz Cool! Does it get sports and movies?

@electric indigo That shield is cool! Gonna be fun masking that and keeping the edges clean.

 

A bit of a review and build. Last month someone in our club brought in a glass file and showed me what a glass-like finish it can give to styrene. I looked all over and found them at Newtype. The brand I found is Infini Model. They have two sets (still in stock); small and large sized files. I got the "Large" set. https://newtype.us/t/tool/file  The set of three is $24.95. That's about average since individual glass files are about $8.00 each.

My camera did not want to focus on it very well, but here is a 3mm shiny sprue tip with only the medium grit used, not the Fine and Superfine as well. The whole thing is SHINY like glass. Standard sandpaper will never do what these do, and in a few seconds.

The glass is cool because it is transparent too. You can actually see what you're doing. A little less with the finer files because they are more populated with cutting area.

So what are the files made of? I don't know for sure. My educated guess, they are heavily bonded stainless steel photo etch to the glass substrate. The files are VERY sharp! They recommend cleaning them with water. You can also wipe them lightly with a rag.

The files are glass, so I wanted to keep them in something safe. So what did I build? I built an old school box. Kickin' it in the 1890's old school box! I milled-out a small piece of oak.

And then made a slide cover out of that scrap thin piece I knew I'd need some day...

And all three files together.

Hopefully this review helps someone here out! I thought the files were that cool, so I took the time to post the review.

Back to the "twins" this weekend with shading and landscaping the diorama they'll go with. Thanks for checking in! - MT

 

Neat files! I'll have to look into those sometime!

And yeah: I can get sports and movies, but I have to change phones. The old one I'm using has no service or movie player, although for display, i could probably record a Transformers episode and play that!

Next mod coming up: I'm going to find a cheap battery operated toy train with tracks and turn that into something automated for the base defenses. Stay tuned...

[Salamander]

@MechTechThat box looks like the baby brother of a wooden microscope slide box😄

[Rock]

 zzinto

[arbit]

This if for you Delta connoisseurs. Don't want anyone to feel left out.

I tried to cut corners and just get her done. But she was still a PITA to finish.

This is an example of how they look primed with an airbrush.  Lets see how the print lines look after a few coats of hand paint. Keep in mind these are very small figures and I'm taking very close up shots. You wouldn't believe how much lighting is needed to photograph these things. You cannot see the print lines at even 3x magnification.

[Salamander]

@arbit I think you'll still see the lines after handpainting. I speak from experience, I'm nearing completion on a 1/72 airplane resin kit that used 3D printed masters, and although the lines are very hard to see by naked eye and almost impossible to feel, they are more obvious with paint on top...

[Rock]

Cannonball run last night into the morning.  Gotta love the ability to work fast with lacquer paints!

Gray 1500 Surfacer+Mr. Color Black
Shaded with Alclad II Gloss Black Base
Preshaded with an AK Paint mix of my color + white
Dropcoated with my AK Interactive Paint mix color. (Red06+Blue11+RotRed66+White04)
Topcoated with Alclad II Aqua Gloss
Dirty Washed with Tamiya Panel Line Accents + Black Artist Oils.
Topcoated with Alcadd Aqua Gloss
Decals!
 

[derex3592]

UPDATES! 

Mrs. Q-Rau is being sanded and re-primed for final seam getting rid of sessions, so nothing much to show there, getting very close to time to lay down some paint though! 

Cat's Eye - Haven't touched it in 8 weeks at least, to DAMN hot and humid to strip paint off if the garage. Uhhggg. 

Titanic - Light blocked 4 sections of underside of main deck, test fitted, they all SUCK.  Mind you not as much as the two large upper deck parts I'll have to deal with eventually, they are warped AF...FML.  I did however get to paint the upper side of the main deck, Tamiya Wooden Deck Tan and then figured out that my good unused set of colored pencils works great for coloring in slightly different colors to simulate the planks of wood on the decks! HA! Just gonna take a while....LOL. Also got the main LED strip hot glued in the bottom of the ship.  Stay tuned!  

[derex3592]

New Tool Show And Tell Day! 😁. Birthday $50 gift card and a Lighting Sale yesterday on Amazon along with another Amazon coupon, and I walked away with this new 1/5 HP VivoHome compressor /tank AND a free airbrush for $25 out of pocket!  Yeh, it's a junky airbrush but hey, whatever! Primer and clears maybe. I'll have to try it out. My 10 year old Paasche compressor still works, but it gets very hot.  I've wanted a tank for a while now. Couldn't pass it up! The compressor got really good reviews. 

[arbit]

On 9/6/2021 at 10:34 PM, Rock said:

Cannonball run last night into the morning.  Gotta love the ability to work fast with lacquer paints!

Fantastic preshading and lining. Nice work! 

[arbit]

I find that eye decals are very helpful for finishing figures. But they don't seem to sell them in all scales, and certainly not in the small sizes I want.

So I designed some eyes in MS Paint.

But after printing them, I realized that this software is not high definition enough for decals. 

Can anyone recommend a good software for designing decals? Preferably free.

I've attached the file as well, in case someone can do something with it.

Edited September 9, 2021 by arbit

[mechaninac]

16 hours ago, arbit said:

Can anyone recommend a good software for designing decals? Preferably free.

Have you given GIMP 2.1 a shot?  It's near professional-grade open sourced image manipulation and creation software, and it's free.

 

Spoiler

https://www.gimp.org/

 

[Grayson72]

15 minutes ago, mechaninac said:

Have you given GIMP 2.1 a shot?  It's near professional-grade open sourced image manipulation and creation software, and it's free.

 

  Hide contents

https://www.gimp.org/

 

Or Inkscape. Totally free pretty advanced drawing program that will create vector graphics. 

[Chronocidal]

I think the issue is less about the paint program, and more the resolution settings on your printer.  I haven't used it for a while, but I would think Paint should still be able to make nice images, if you set the DPI settings high enough in the print options.

Edit:  Checked Paint, and it doesn't give DPI settings, so that would mean you just need to draw the eyes bigger, so they're a higher pixel resolution on your screen, before letting the program shrink them to fit on a printed page.

Edited September 10, 2021 by Chronocidal

[sketchley]

1 hour ago, Chronocidal said:

Edit:  Checked Paint, and it doesn't give DPI settings, so that would mean you just need to draw the eyes bigger, so they're a higher pixel resolution on your screen, before letting the program shrink them to fit on a printed page.

This.

One solution to shrinking the finished image is to export it as-is into .gif (or some other lossless format) that Firefox can handle.  Then use Firefox's print scaling option (goes from 10% to 200% of screen size).

[arbit]

8 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I think the issue is less about the paint program, and more the resolution settings on your printer.  I haven't used it for a while, but I would think Paint should still be able to make nice images, if you set the DPI settings high enough in the print options.

Edit:  Checked Paint, and it doesn't give DPI settings, so that would mean you just need to draw the eyes bigger, so they're a higher pixel resolution on your screen, before letting the program shrink them to fit on a printed page.

Thanks all for your feedback. I appreciate it. I will try your recommendations, although I am a bit confused.

My process was I drew the largest eye, then I scaled down 10% each additional eye, but always using the original drawing as the basis to scale down.

@Chronocidal I am not sure my printer has anything to do with it. You can see the pixelation even on the original file before printing. Unless I am using Paint wrong. 

 

[arbit]

So here is my first painted 3D printed figure.

Freyja gets to be the guinea pig, as I try to figure out the best way to do these. 

I hand painted her eyes, so you can see why I am trying to print eye decals.

But for my decals to be the right scale, I would need my smallest eyes from the previous file reduced by 50% - 75%. I don't even know if that is possible to print decals so small.

Edited September 10, 2021 by arbit

[Chronocidal]

15 hours ago, arbit said:

Thanks all for your feedback. I appreciate it. I will try your recommendations, although I am a bit confused.

My process was I drew the largest eye, then I scaled down 10% each additional eye, but always using the original drawing as the basis to scale down.

@Chronocidal I am not sure my printer has anything to do with it. You can see the pixelation even on the original file before printing. Unless I am using Paint wrong. 

 

So, shrinking the original eye image on the canvas is your problem, because shrinking a bitmap will gradually degrade the image as pixels get averaged.

There are better ways to do this using vector drawings (which Paint cannot do), but what I would do is make your image in reverse.  Start with the largest eye as your base, and then scale that one up to create all of your variations.  That will result in a much larger pixel size for your base canvas, which will have to be scaled down to fit on the printed page, making the smallest eye at the same pixel density as your base image.

Bottom line is you need your base image to have more pixels.  If you stick with Paint, take the bottom right corner of the canvas, and drag it down to the right (scrolling when necessary) until the image no longer fits on your screen, and then zoom out, then just fill it with scaled up copies of your original eye.  You can see the pixel dimensions of your image on the lower edge of the screen, and I would probably start at around 3000 x 2000 pixels.

This is where your printer does come in.  I think a typical printer's default setting is about 300 dpi?  That's 300 pixels per inch, so for an 8.5 x 11 inch page, that's 2450 x 3300 pixels to start.  That's probably the base size canvas you want to work on as a starting point if you don't want to see the pixels after printing.

 

[arbit]

@Chronocidal Wow, awesome feedback. I will get on it and see how it goes. Thanks.

[pengbuzz]

12 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

So, shrinking the original eye image on the canvas is your problem, because shrinking a bitmap will gradually degrade the image as pixels get averaged.

There are better ways to do this using vector drawings (which Paint cannot do), but what I would do is make your image in reverse.  Start with the largest eye as your base, and then scale that one up to create all of your variations.  That will result in a much larger pixel size for your base canvas, which will have to be scaled down to fit on the printed page, making the smallest eye at the same pixel density as your base image.

Bottom line is you need your base image to have more pixels.  If you stick with Paint, take the bottom right corner of the canvas, and drag it down to the right (scrolling when necessary) until the image no longer fits on your screen, and then zoom out, then just fill it with scaled up copies of your original eye.  You can see the pixel dimensions of your image on the lower edge of the screen, and I would probably start at around 3000 x 2000 pixels.

This is where your printer does come in.  I think a typical printer's default setting is about 300 dpi?  That's 300 pixels per inch, so for an 8.5 x 11 inch page, that's 2450 x 3300 pixels to start.  That's probably the base size canvas you want to work on as a starting point if you don't want to see the pixels after printing.

 

I agree with you 100 percent: this is why raster-based artwork doesn't work too well scaled-down.  As i think you recommend  earlier, Inkscape would probably work better for Arbit, as vector scales down and up without those issues.

[arbit]

@Chronocidal  I tried your method and got much higher resolution results.  Although I used a much larger canvas by mistake. Do yo think that will have a bad effect?

Here is the file if anyone wants to print some eyes!

Edited September 11, 2021 by arbit

[vsim]

Slow but steady progress on the VF-0B that I've been working on for an embarrassingly long period of time (lol, don't ask). Almost done painting, I'm down to cleaning up a few small details and touching up. Then on to a gloss coat, decals and a final coat of either gloss or matte, I haven't decided yet.

The magnetically attached FAST pack works great, snaps perfectly into place and is easy to remove.

I've learned a lot on this kit since this is the most experience I have gotten with an airbrush in a LONG time..mostly through mistakes. The biggest thing I learned is that you can really thin Mr Color down quit a lot and use lower air pressure to have less issues with paint sneaking underneath the masking tape.