chris262 hobby: Epic - New Templars - pt4 - Air Support

Not a finished product this time around, just a progress and build report.

Air Support - Part 1
2x complete Thunderhawks printed this weekend.

Had the 3D models all 'finalised' by Friday and managed to get these printed off.
The 3D model is a reworking of some existing models off thingiverse, combined with some original modelling too (took a couple of weeks from go to whoa).

Model here.

The weather was super-cold (not Canada cold... but still cold... for here).

My print technique leaves much to be desired (blurb below) and the prints are just barely usable.
Some areas will need to be bogged up with green stuff and other areas sanded a bit, but i'm confident that these'll be table-presentable.

The problem i'm getting is underside warping (drooping). Some misshaping can be seen under the cockpit and (not visible) the wide planes (especially winglets and under the cannon) are drooping.

The problem is slightly catch-22.

Normally a(n easy - i.e. imagine a regular cube) print will let the bottom couple of layers set harder with a longer exposure time. This theoretically creates a stronger bond with the build plate and also, consequently stops the warping.

However if you have indents and details on the bottom surface this can screw your plans up. If you have a cube that has a little bump in the middle of the bottom surface then only the little bump connects the entire model to the build plate. This is not good as the model is likely to detach from that single stress point.

So i printed all of these with supports (which raises the entire model off the build plate, and off the bottom level). The supports also provide a raft which creates an excellent connection to the build plate (so less misprinting due to failure to attach).

However, as the raft is now the bottom layer (getting the strong exposure) and the underside of the model gets 'regular' exposure time. which is fine for the inner and top layers (which print fine), however the bottom layers get the droops.

Need to work out how to able to put the model 'directly' on the build plate, and attach rafts without or with bare minimum supports. Alternately i could use longer exposure for more layers until the bottom is definitely done...

[later] I have since found a video of someone doing what i think i'm trying to achieve (bit thin on the ground with the how-tos). Will have to play around with the software a bit more there don't seem to be many other software options available (unlike the filament sphere).

Chemicals
The new, clear state of the recently filtered 'dirty iso' didn't last long. After the first clean up it had returned to murky (no 'custard' though... yet).

The 'clean iso' doesn't suffer from this at all. That's the point of 2 washes of course but you'd think that some of the murk would migrate from tank to tank. Perhaps it's there, just not observable.

My working theory is that the raw (uncured) resin causes the effect and perhaps the dilution in the dirty tank stops the effect passing to the clean tank [shrug]

[UPDATE 20190729]
spoiler: landing craft.

finally managed to get some green stuff (both varieties) and patch up the thunderhawks 'enough'. they're ugly but it works.

they've had first coats of matt spray and i'll start of the washes presently.

over all, pretty happy with the results. don't look too close and they're perfectly acceptable.

In other air support news, 2 landers underway - but also not moving past this stage in the immediate future.

this is precisely where they're at. 1/2 of 1 lander and 3/4 of another. i possibly have just enough resin to print the wings out and finish one but i'm not going to.

had to order more resin and the sobs have doubled the price. unsure how this will affect my enthusiasm for churning out army after army now. maybe it's just a temporary bump due to more printers sold and thence higher demand. i'm sure demand will decrease again before too long.

additionally: i don't want to complete a single lander. i want them both batch completed at the same time. coming back to jobs is boring. *

additionally: i want my garage bench space back to work on other projects and while the print was sitting front and centre that wasn't happening.

* landers. printing the landers i experimented with print times and got some better results, and also worked out some raft and support stuff. far from perfect, but better.
generally the underside (attached to the build plate) was warped to some extent. however the way i chopped these models up these surfaces will be sitting 'inside' the model and can be sanded or bogged up without having to see it. the connections/edges will need some filling and cleaning work (hence wanting to batch it).

these things are big. i'm not sure if they're going to be too big. even for out-of-scale epic even though they actually make sense (compared to the the thawks and my print infantry).
a lander is supposed to be able to carry: 12 infantry units + 6 armoured vehices... so my usual posse of crusaders, neophytes plus a squad of landspeeders makes sense in this.
by comparison the thunderhawk carries 8 infantry sticks, and my new ones make it look like that might vaguely be possible.
the size comparison works.
however compared to i.e. the old, old gw warhounds (which are undersize imo) these things are the size of an apartment building.
see how they turn out i guess.

[Later: 20190801]
The Thunderhawks crawl toward completion...