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Churchill

At last it is finished!

Some pillock evidently had it on super fine or something, but this took just under 5 hours to print. It is understandable as the MKIII took just under two hours at its resolution 0.15 I think, the Churchill was 0.1.

The one difference between this and all of the other tanks is that the turret on this one was printed horizontally. All the rest have been printed vertically with the rear on the base plate.

I reckon I will print another one (and only one) of these, but will do it at a lower resolution to speed things up a bit.

Tomorrow I carry on printing, but will also begin painting – I must remember to print the Char B turret first!

I wish I could remember what version of the Churchill this is VII or VIII is ringing a bell.

Anyway so much for an early night! With the power issued on the printer then I didn’t want to leave it running overnight.

More Tanks tomorrow… Char B turret followed by a MKII and then one or two MKIII’s depending on the time.

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Axis Tank Update

By Axis please read German, Although it is the desert war, I haven’t got round to printing any Italian tanks yet.

So here we have two MkIII with long barrelled 50’s

Two 38T’s, a MKII and a 222

Two early Stug with short guns and a later Stug with the long barrel.

Already printed are two MkIII, two 38T’s and a MkIV, not to mention a Tiger and a panther. I am hopeful going to manage to do at least another couple of MKIII’s and another MKII. I will try and get some Italian armour for completeness and possibly a couple if Early Marder for open topped tank destroyers.

As you can see, the allied armour has had another spray, this time in white. I decided to redo them as I found a bottle of Iraqi sand paint. This is (in my mind) closer to the allied tank colours from the desert. Once the spray has cured I will get the airbrush out and blast them with the appropriate base colours.

A Churchill is being printed at the moment. Sadly I couldn’t find an early version. Compared to the other things printed this is huge.

Once the Games day is out of the way I will have a blast at Azazel’s Orctober with these.

It is a bit of a mix of metal and plastic LOTR stuff I have lying around.

I also want to buy the 15mm Samurai from Tin Soldier, but all of a sudden I got an email about these:

https://www.alternative-armies.com/collections/kitton

I am so going to have to get some!

Right off to check on the printer then time for more Cold and Flu plus!

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 6 Comments

Tanks… Off He Goes Again… Maybe

Well the nice people from Creality came back to me again, asking for more photos and advice on what to do next. I unscrewed the power unit from frame and then the plastic cover from the power unit.laid it down and switched on the socket to check the voltage and voila… power to the whole machine.

Hurrah!

Checked all connections and they seemed fine.

Put everything back together again and the power went off again…

Booh!

Fiddled with the wires…power came back on again….

Hurrah….

Started printing something and all of a sudden loss of power again…

Boooh! (I said something like that)

Fiddled with a connector and the power came back on again…

I restarted the print and watched the connector… as soon as it moved, power went off. I therefore got a glass jar and blue tacked the connector to it.

It worked well, right up to the point the tension of the wires popped the blue tack off.

More blue tack later I managed to print a 38T. You can see the extra blue tack in the background.

This one took 2 hours 3 minutes to print…

I am printing another one now to see how it goes. I have contacted Creality again to let them know where things lie now. It looks like either a loose connection or a fractured wire, so I am keeping a close eye on things.

The other thing I managed to do was to spray the Allied tanks… apologies for the purists amongst you, I grabbed my Army Painter Desert Yellow and blasted them with it.

Originally I had only done the French tanks as I reckoned they had ‘interesting’ camouflage patterns and I could get away with it, then I thought bollocks, I only have a couple of weeks to paint them all and I don’t have a British paint colour, so they got a blast too.

I must remember to print off a new turret for the Char B now that things are limping along.

I am going to get the short barrelled Stug III sliced tonight ready for printing tomorrow… not to mention any other Axis tanks I can think of.

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Statues…Standing Silently

Well, as I can’t print anything, more on that later, I decided to paint something. The nearest thing to hand were the statues.

I bet you can’t tell which one was done with the lowest resolution 😉. To be honest I could have binned it but decided against it as it is a weathered stone statue. The photo was taken quite closely, but at a metre away the lines don’t really show that much. I will get a green wash around the bottom to show damp. I did consider covering some in creepers etc, but I am not so sure. In the past I have used string, died a shitty brown and soaked in PVA. This is draped over things and left to dry. Once dry ‘leaves’ are added. The problem is it can look either: ok, good or totally crap. Probably why I am not going to bother.

These statues came from Thingiverse for free, but as I have printed a fair bit from Terrain4Print, I decided to help him out through Patreon.

Still coughing my guts up, but thankfully not as much as yesterday.

Regarding the printer, as I said yesterday, I contacted the manufacturer through Amazon, they came back this morning asking for further information through photos or videos. I have sent these back to their technicians and we will have to see what they come back with.

Tomorrow I will probably spray the desert houses and make a start on them this weekend.

in a total change of direction (and doing my bit for Shetland Tourism) the Northern lights are out…

https://www.shetlandwebcams.com/cliff-cam-3/

Picking them up on the Sumburgh cliff cameras

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Cough, Cough, Cough!!

I feel the need to shout Unclean loudly and paint a cross on the door, the Nasty cough has come back big time – so instead of trying to paint intricate details on something 15mm tall I decided to shove some paint on something nearer 100mm tall instead.

I threw a lighter grey dry brush on these. It’s a bit heavy to be honest, but I am going up a few lighter shades and then add some colour to the eyes, tongue and associated metalwork.

Car is in the garage, which according to my wife was a hoot. She phoned them up to ask if they could get it in, they said they could most certainly pick it up from where it was parked … then hung up before asking for a name, the registration number or where it was parked. Luckily when the keys were dropped off, they were accompanied by a note giving the necessary info.

Regarding the printer, it is probably the motherboard or something like the cables to the motherboard. I have contacted the manufacturer through Amazon and we shall see where that leads.

It has done really well up to yesterday and I have printed lots of things. I only wish I had done more German tanks earlier on. But as I said yesterday I have got just about enough German stuff to make for a game, or indeed, I could use some of the French tanks as captured equipment. I have got enough buildings to see me into the game and to be honest I can scratch build rooftops with card if necessary to add in any more.

Hills are easy peasy so all systems are go. Just got to paint everything next.

Out of interest, I have just staggered into the lounge and my family are looking like this…

Should I be worried?

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Tanks…Absolutely No Progress

Well technically there was some progress the Panzer 38T got about 6 millimetres high before the bloody printer went and died on me.

It is, to coin a German phrase, Kerfucktenbuggered! What makes it worse is that I had just found a source of short barrelled Early Stug III not to mention armoured cars, M3’s trucks and the like… to put it mildly I am a bit miffed.

Thankfully I have got enough stuff to run a game, but not enough to have a second set to give away.

To compound my misery further my voice keeps cracking I now sound like a child whose voice is cracking and then my Wife’s car broke down in Lerwick so I had to go and pick her up, popped into the shop to get some things and good old Dale the assistant had to chat, so Captain Helium had to explain what he had been up to today.

On the up side, the garage phoned me up today to say the part they evidently ordered errr before I went to Orkney (round about the start of August) has now turned up! It is booked in next Tuesday.

I now have to decide whether to investigate to see what went kaput on the printer or get it sent back to Amazon as luckily it is less than a year old.

I will let you know how I get on.

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More Tanks… or Technically ‘More Tank’

The printer has been chugging away for three hours and four minutes this evening producing the first of the Stug III.

I am not sure what happened, but the barrel has had a bit of a wobble and has a melted lump near the middle. It seems solid enough though.

As can be seen from the photo above, I decided to give the statues a coat of dark grey. Once this layer is dry I will dry brush up through lighter shades of grey.

I didn’t get much more done as I have caught a lurgey from the kids in school. My voice has gone and I am alternating between coughing my guts up and sneezing. All in all feeling sorry for myself.

So to cheer me up please direct me to a picture of the back end of a Stug as I am not sure what is support that needs removing and what is AFV that needs to stay.

Tomorrow I will print off more AFV’s

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More Tanks…Update

Hurrah, the laptop is back and tonight has been spent slicing tanks.

Somewhere I have a set of pre sliced tanks but I cannot find them…

Sliced up and ready for printing are the following:

MkIII with a long 50mm

38T

MKII

Early Stug with and without schurtzen

I still need to slice a MkIV

I also sliced a Churchill… sadly it is a MKIII, I couldn’t find a MK1… well I could, but it was 1/72 instead of 1/100. I decided against the A10 etc as who in their right mind would want to play with one.

Just for fun, I also sliced a kubelwagen, an Austin 10 staff car and an Austin 7 Tilly. The latter is printing now.

So the allied force looks like this…

This will be split into two equal sets, one for me and one for the prize. I will print either two or four Churchill’s (I haven’t decided yet – they take over three hours each to print).

As for the Axis so far:

Yeah the Tiger would splat the allied tanks on its own, but it is for me. I might do a me against all comers with a Tiger, which might be fun…

The Panther is obviously in the wrong timeframe, but so far two MkIII’s a MkIV and two 38T’s (the MKII is a bit confused as I have a track from a C and a D on it… at least you can’t see both sides at the same time.

The buildings are mostly glued together too.

I have another half dozen that need roofs. I will have to get them printed off too. The scale is off with them, the seem more 1/72 than 1/100. In hindsight I should have reduced the size a bit more, but too late now.

The Tilly has just finished printing and here she is…

I will see what other non tracked vehicles are available, I really want a 222 as they are my all time favourite AFV.

Right I can go to bed now that the print has finished. It took a total of 1 hour 24 minutes to complete.

Posted on by maenoferren22 · 13 Comments

More Tanks… Again….

So today involved some more tanks and giving them a spray of white undercoat so that I can use the airbrush to get some colour on. So I now have six Matilda, three Char B and four Somua (technically I have four and a bit Char B, but I need to print another turret before it is finished).

Things took slightly longer as the Somua in the middle had a bit of an accident. As I was stripping away the support I managed to pull both tracks off as well as the back off the turret. This is probably due to damp getting into the PLA causing it not to stick as well. I just need to find out what colours I have and what colours I need before I can get these painted.

I also ended up listening to this…

I remember doing a lot of Vietnam wargaming, primarily with Esci 20mm plastics and using Bodycount rules.

I then bought some 1/200 scale kit at a convention then kind of went off it again until, funnily enough, joining the Shetland club. I ran an RPG based on an Alpha team in the highlands of Vietnam. We had a hoot. Five players… a four man Alpha team and a Kit Carson scout. As all of my stuff had gone, I went for cardboard troops and flats for vehicles.

I still have the card figures…

Hopefully my good lady will bring the laptop back with her soon so that I can start on some more Germans. The other thing I will need to print are some more roofs for the buildings. Hopefully I have some suitable desert colours for the allies.