CRM Veterans 2

Had a chance to look at the Backpack I had printed.

Now I think the basic design looks pretty decent, however the print resolution is just not good enough for these. While I could probably improve it with some fine wet and dry sandpaper there are some areas which I just will not be able to get to (the ends of the lower canister are recessed) and I will probably end up losing some details.

As the print is hard to see due to the material I gave it a quick coat of spray. I manipulate the pictures slightly to show the surface texture better - keep in mind though that some of the roughness in the pic looks worse because of this.

I glued it to the back of a Cadian torso to see how it looked in position. Size wise it looks fine and the fit seems decent. I may change the mounting plate which is in contact with the torso so it is a bit taller and has mnore contact with the torso.

KEEP IN MIND that the torso is not finished and I am not going to use the pipe shown. The pipe just looks too thick and it is impossible to position so it looks right. Much better than guitar wire but still not user friendly. Going to have to use something else instead.

Above is a comparison shot with a FW militia torso who form the bulk of my infantry force.

There is an opportunity of me being able to get the backpack printed at a higher resolution, I am going to do a couple of refinements to the backpack and then cross my fingers that I can get a better print done.

In the meantime I will use this print as a prototype to play around with different pipe options.

CRM Veterans 1

The Kromlech torsos arrived last week so I have started to have a look at how they will go with Cadian legs and arms.

As a reminder the torsos look like this...NB: the backpacks are seperate.

I had to remove the bottom plate at the front for them to fit on the Cadian legs.

I'm not completely sold on them at the moment. Something about them just don't look right to me. Here is what they look like:

And with some pouches and arms in place.

I can't put my finger on why i'm not 100% happy with them. The plan is to try out some more arm combinations before deciding if I use them or not.

As a reminder the backpacks I hope to use will be these...

Any thoughts? Do the torsos work and if not why not?

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.

Hades Drill 1

'Catch Up Monday' or should I call it 'From the Vaults Monday'? Whichever it means the same in the end.

As stated last Friday, each Friday and Monday I intend on posting up an existing 'pre-blog' model with the aim of eventually getting everything on here.

Tonight it is the time of my CRM Hades Drill.

I painted this for the Poisoned Chalice Games Day 2010 board, but it will also be used with my Chaos Renegade Militia, once I get some veterans built at least. No converting on this, a simple straight out of the box Forge World model.

The mean Multi Melta, which you can barely see once the
drill head is attached to the vehicle.

I used the hairspray technique to get it a rough, well used look with most of the yellow paint rubbed and scraped off while working in 'the pits'. Lots of dirt, grease etc. Mig dust was added.

The plan will be to do all of the Militia Engineering vehicles in the same yellow scheme.

The story for the gaming board was that the drill had done its digging and was now parked out of the way, due to this I didn't add much in the way of pulverised rock as this would of been dumped after it came out of the hole for the last time. I may go back and add some, along with a pilot so it fits in with the Militia.