Topic: Exercises in Unfutility
Hey there people,
Just thought I'd blob a bunch of Pix of my recent Star Trek print projects, some of which I'll be making into kits for sale.
Though my love for home printing is strong I couldn't really justify not spending the extra money on prints from Shapeways due to their(usually) better quality.
Odyssey class 1/2500 saucer separable: In the White strong and flexible material. It's quite an odd material, it eats any spray filler used as it's not really solid in all places, my guess is that the density is akin to an FDM printers infill setting though much more variable.
You'll note that a few of the parts have snapped off bits that were damaged during the post-production process before leaving the SW building, as a result SW are sending me another, hopefully less dead, version of this model. Though evidently the problems weren't difficult to fix with a little bit of bondo.
And for the Trek fans out there, just to give one an idea of the proximate scale.
Next up is the Avenger class 400m long pure warship... that would probably make Gene Roddenberry cry if he were still alive. It was printed in the Frosted Ultra Detail. I must say... I'm quite enamoured with this material. It makes me want to invest in a Form1 quite a lot. This is also in 1/2500 scale.
Gallery: http://imgur.com/a/0gqVC
And last on my current list is a Vesta class explorer that I've been working on thanks to the fact that I've finally learnt how to use NURBS as a modelling technique. This one I'll be printing at home on my OrdBot in 1/1000 scale so it ends up at 672mm long. A main display piece that'll sit in a display case that I'll salvaging from an old queen sized mattress frame.
I've taken Mark Rademakers recent, and amazing, refit work and used a bunch of references from both Star Trek Online and other 3D models available around the net to create a sort of hybrid of the various Vesta's around the place.
Might also light up the impulse drives(red) and the deflector dish(blue), easy enough to accomplish with some EL sheeting and transparent parts.
There is also some work happening on a version of the station designed to replace DS9 after it explodes in one of the post-TNG/DS9 novels in the Typhon Pact series. But that's a lot less evolved at this point. I believe the model was concepted by Trek veteran Doug Drexler.
