I originally planned for May to be spent tackling the various paint shop jobs that are outstanding, but with May 2021 in the UK being one of the wettest on record it wasn’t very viable to do much of that work. So most paint jobs were put on hold for the month. I don’t know about the rest of the country, but I think there were only two days of the whole month when it didn’t rain in Swindon.
Not being able to get outside much was a bit depressing, but I kept myself busy with working on my army of yellow space people.
Terminator Assault Squad:
Firstly, I noticed that some of those claw brandishing terminator guys from my previous blog had suspiciously big arms while others had surprisingly tiny ones. I went back to my 3D print software and did some measuring to create (in my mind) the perfect proportioned arms and shoulder pads. This took quite a few trial and error print prototyping sessions, but I finally got there and I stuck them together. I even managed to find some files with the insignia for my army included on their shoulder pads!
Resin Model Fail:
I had a pretty significant resin printing disaster while doing some cleaning and removing of supports from my resin prints. At the time my water heater in the house had broken down, so I tried to make do with some hot water from the kettle mixed with some cold water, and decided (like an idiot) to wash all my outstanding prints together. As it turns out the water was too hot and it cracked the majority of my prints leaving me with about 4 months of wasted material. I was surprisingly un-phased by this, I think because I was content to start again with some of these models (now having learnt a lot about how the printer can run more effectively).
Forgeborn Ancient from Laserforge Miniatures (Redemptor Dreadnought Proxy)
I also tackled a couple of new model prints. The first was a big robot that is a proxy model for a Dreadnought Redemptor from LaserForge Miniatures, which although it is a lovely model, it came pre-supported and the supports are far too weak to sustain the bulk of the prints on my Elegoo Mars Pro printer. I contacted the manufacturer about it, but they weren’t particularly helpful, but I might ask them again about a revised support system (because I hear there is a new file about).
After a day of running calibration tests (which I might cover in a future blog) I can’t say I learnt too much that I didn’t already know, but I decided to slow the printer lift speed down and increase the curing time for each layer. This improved the success of these prints, but it still has issues with certain parts, like the fingers and pipes, so it is worth considering this if you choose to print one.
I also put it on the wrong base to start with (I kind of hate Games Workshops myriad of base sizes), so I had to rebuilt it on a 80mm base.
After so many failed prints, this project almost put me off the 3D printer for a while, but in fairness, I haven’t had too many of those issues until working on this particular model. I would normally add my own supports, but with pre-supported models, you only have limited opportunities to do that.
I still wouldn’t dare try print this with only the supports included, but as I say, hopefully a revised support file will be available for this model soon.
Land-Raider Crusader
I’ve wanted one of these for a long, long time as it seemed very well-suited to my Imperial Fist army. I don’t think a plastic variant existed at the time I first wanted one, I think it was only available via some Forgeworld resin cast upgrades, but a plastic variant has appeared in my time away from the hobby.
The sprue seemed a little tired out with some thin areas and flash, so I assume this is probably coming towards the end of its viable production life, which makes me feel a bit old. That all being said, it was really fun to put together which I did while watching the Eurovision song contest.
The front siege doors on the land-raider have a quite clever mechanism to allow the two doors to open and close together, which is neatly fixed in place by the sides of the tank.
I spent quite a bit of time installing magnets in weapons slots and doorways so I could swap out all the guns and print different ones to field different Land-raider variants. It is a shame that Games Workshop don’t include those options as standard with the kit, but hopefully the 3D printer can compensate for that.
Vindicator Laser Destroyer
I noticed that one of the tanks with a particularly lethal output in 9th edition 40k was this tank with a ridiculous phallic gun. Having also found a relatively decent 3d print design I decided to print one.
The designer had weirdly cut the 3d model in two to help it print on smaller printers, but they have done so in quite an arbitrary way, so I had to try and make sure that the connecting sides were fairly clean and could be fused together. For this I painted on some uncured resin onto the join and cured it with a UV pen light. I then followed up with some green stuff filler to hide the seams and fix some areas that didn’t print so well. I wish I was better at filling things so you can’t see the seams, but I am happy with the final result at a cost of about £3.
Bunker and trench system:
This was my first major print on my FDM printer and is an amazing roughly 3ft length of trench system split into modular sections available from Battle Builder Tech. It took a couple of weeks to print, but mostly because of various issues with the 3D printer, which needed small fixes. Having replaced the bed surface and adapted the filament feeding tube, I have managed to get it to work consistently well.
I’m yet to paint or put this trench system together with all the final pieces, but it has had a couple of battlefield outings already and I’m really happy with the results.
Spartan Assault Tank:
Finally, I started to fall in love with an even bigger tank – the Spartan Assault Tank, so I printed one of these over a week. The first piece seemed a bit small compared to reference photos, so following some measurements on the printer, I increased the size by 1.1%, which seems to have given it a close match to the door size of the Land-raider.
I also printed the base of the model on the FDM Printer, thinking that this might be a better option to increase the tanks rigidity (and because the drop in detail will mostly be obscured behind the tank tracks). This seems to have been a good idea, as it did make glueing the model together much, much easier.
I did a similar job of magnetising all of the weapons sockets and doors on the Spartan, but I had to drill through the resin this time to make sure they fitted properly. Comparing my print against pictures of the Forgeworld Model, it seems that the finish on mine is much cleaner, but it lacks the interior detail that you would get if you bought the real deal.
It also doesn’t have an easy means of allowing the front siege doors to open and close, so I carefully hand-drilled through the resin doors with a pin vice and needle drills and inserted some brass rod into both doors to act as a hinge. I haven’t permanetly fixed the hinges into place, as they feel tight enough to cope with the occasional opening and closing they will have.
Joe has also traded me a collection of Forgeworld Imperial Fist insignia’s which included some Land-Raider doors. I annoyingly forgot to fit one to my Land-Raider Crusader, so I was keen to fit one to the Spartan, but the 3D print door was not quite to the same proportions for it to fit easily.
While building these models, I’ve tried hard not to get too hung up on perfectionism, but I did really want that insignia on my Spartan, so I decided to carefully (very carefully) cut the insignia off of the pre-moulded door it was grafted into and I sanded down the rear of the insignia until it was thin enough to fit onto my slightly smaller printed door. I could have made it a little thinner, but it ran the risk of breaking apart too much and, to be honest, these insignia’s are pretty bulky anyway.
Paintshop:
With June now here, the sun has returned, so I took the opportunity to get back out and paint up some of these miniatures. I am still experimenting with an approach to painting basecoats of yellow. My previous models were base-coasted in grey first and then two types of yellow from Halford’s spray cans. I was happy with this, but they do tend to require a lot of spraying of the undersides, because the grey easily shows through.
This time I started to experiment with a red primer base and some grey highlights on the assault terminators and laser destroyer, which gave the model a nice rusty shading effect in crevices. The more I have experimented with this, the more I have come to like the finished effect.
For the two tanks, I took this further and gave them a red base and white highlights followed by the two coats of different yellows. This time I only dusted the final, more golden yellow over the top and left more of the pale yellow on the sides. I think these tanks have the best finish. I painted the doors separately, so I had to do a quick respray with them in place to help the final base coat shading be consistent. My only criticism is that this took quite a long time to do (maybe a couple of hours), but both tanks are quite big compared to most models I make, and I was also separately painting tank tracks and weapons at the same time.
The Redemptor robot is still yet to arrive in paintshop, but I think that will probably be the last yellow model that will be going through paint shop this year, as I do need some time to actually finish painting them all up and the year does seem to be rushing by! Having said that, I may also respray the base coast on the laser destroyer to match the effect of the Land-raider and Spartan.
Grasslands out!
Grasslands Models 