Recalcitrant Daze – 3D Modelling/Printing – The beginning of the adventure...?

Due to a lack of material to go into a proper update (i’ve just not been in the mood, though I have done a little more on the Hell Blades) I thought I would put up something I have been working on which doesn’t use a knife or a brush.

Recently I did a post about a Gun Emplacement I built some time ago and it really planted a seed to do another one, but better. I also wanted to be able to cast it.

The original emplacement.

My thought was to break the gun emplacement up into sections which could be much more easily cast up. However making a small piece of a curved wall, and sections of a circular base accurately so that when the cast pieces are assembled they all fit together would be troublesome to say the least.

So I turned to what I do as my ‘real’ job. After seeing some time in the past an article on 3D printing I thought about seeing if I could use it to produce some masters to create a mould for casting the gun emplacement.

I started producing the 3D models, these are a wall piece, right & left wall ends, a base piece and a step. (NB: Forgot to get a render of the step...)

Treadplate...Bitch to do.

In the top plates I will add lifting eyes to the cast pieces.

When assembled they look like this:

The central hole would be able to accommodate a number of possibilities, such as an Earthshaker, Hydra turret, Manticore turret and so on.

The dimensions are not yet finalised as I need the Bassie I ordered off eBay to arrive first.

I did go ahead and price up how much it would cost to get all those pieces 3D printed and it wasn’t cheap. Now if I knew 100% that it would work it wouldn’t be so bad a price, but until I am confident I don’t want to fork out the initial outlay for the emplacement prints.

So, the plan is to get something else printed first.

The idea is some defensive wall pieces – a straight wall and a corner piece. Only two pieces so the cost of getting them printed is a lot less but they would prove if the process is doable or not.

That was mk. 1; I later changed the lower detail to something which looked better. I also made the corner piece slightly shorter, to both cut down on the cost slightly but mainly to as it would be better when assembling a wall (NB: I didn’t get a render of the revised corner piece).

Assembled up the straight and corner pieces allow you to make something like this:

At that point I was ready to order some prints.

...but then had another idea.

This idea was for something smaller and more detailed. My CRM need some Vets in carapace armour. My plan was to get some Kromlech torsos (THESE) and then add a rebreather unit to the back, combined with some heads Maelstrom (from The Rising Sign) did for me I could end up with a unique looking unit which still fits in with the rest of my force.

So, the end result is this...

Unfortunately at this point everything goes on hold. I am waiting for the Kromlech torsos to arrive so I can modify the 3D model to suit it better and due to Xmas I won’t be able to do this till the New Year...

So check back then to see what happens.