Aston Martin Vanquish (Updated 3/27)

Now you got my attention. This is my favorite car. I must have one I told my wife. Beautiful piece of V12 Power. I have a pic on my desktop iblook at every day thinking.... Oh yes.... One day she will be mine. Nice work.... I want one.

jedimaster said:

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Now you got my attention. This is my favorite car. I must have one I told my wife. Beautiful piece of V12 Power. I have a pic on my desktop iblook at every day thinking.... Oh yes.... One day she will be mine. Nice work.... I want one.

Thanks. There's still a lot of work to do and not that much time so I hope I can get it done the way I want it. We are having a few fit issues but we are waiting on a few parts to be 3-D printed before we can fully mock assemble the car and address those issues.

Just to let you know, we are looking to sell it when we are done. It's quite the expensive project.

One of my favorite cars as well... looking good!

Let me know when you sell it. Probably as close as I'm gonna get. Seeing as I don't have $130 grand to spare.

Here are a few more up to date pictures. We have machined out vaform molds and molded most of them already. The windows are back painted acrylic to hide the no existant interior.

We did another mock assembly to prepare for fitting the windows in the next week or two. Starting to come together

Man... Where were these types of classes when I was in school!?

Looking really good

Kevin Gossett said:

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Man... Where were these types of classes when I was in school!?

Looking really good

Thanks.

You gotta understand though I go to a tech college for prototyping and model making. Our whole program is all about making this kind of stuff

Off to a good start.

OTOH, you could just get an empty display case and say that it's the one used in "Die Another Day."

Looks great, your shop reminds me of when i was in school. i did a clay model of a vette concept.

SmilingOtter said:

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Off to a good start.

OTOH, you could just get an empty display case and say that it's the one used in "Die Another Day."

Yeah... I don't think the teacher would like that to much
Would save me a lot of money though, we are looking at around $500 in materials when all is said and done. The material it's made out of is $15 a board ft.

IEDBOUNTYHUNTER said:

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Looks great, your shop reminds me of when i was in school. i did a clay model of a vette concept.

I wish I was more skilled in that area. I'm pretty good with hand skills but me and carving/sculpting don't get along to well. Not to mention I'm a perfectionist, so if I have the CNC do it for me, and even then I have to touch up parts to what I think they should be like.

Canadianghandi said:

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You gotta understand though I go to a tech college for prototyping and model making. Our whole program is all about making this kind of stuff

TBH I was kinda hoping you *weren't* going to say that. It'd be damn impressive for high school. Er, if it's a modelmaking course aren't you supposed to be able to produce things from scratch? Do you actually get credit for CNC parts taken from a downloaded file? This is NOT a slam by the way, sorry if it reads that way; I'm just curious. Whatever gets the job done, as they say.

Canadianghandi said:

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The material it's made out of is $15 a board ft.

Renshape or some other tooling board, yeah? Best thing ever to happen to patternmaking.

even then I have to touch up parts to what I think they should be like.

Good for you!!

Nwerke said:

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TBH I was kinda hoping you *weren't* going to say that. It'd be damn impressive for high school. Er, if it's a modelmaking course aren't you supposed to be able to produce things from scratch? Do you actually get credit for CNC parts taken from a downloaded file? This is NOT a slam by the way, sorry if it reads that way; I'm just curious. Whatever gets the job done, as they say.



Renshape or some other tooling board, yeah? Best thing ever to happen to patternmaking.

Tech college but same thing.

As much as I like doing things by hand on my model cars and rockets, not many professionals choose to build things from scratch, prop making is the exception. There are tons of things we have to do by hand at school, but you gotta understand companies don't pay people to make a kinda close model, or one that's not true to scale (not knocking volpin but his portal gun). If someone is spending money, they expect it to be exactly what they want.

I do get credit for CNC parts from a downloaded file. I have to write all the programs, figure out what tools can reach, how am I going to fixture it, how much time do I have to machine it, how many sides to machine it. Everyone gets the idea that the CNC just cuts things out for you but if they honestly believe that then they have no understanding of how things work.

There are so many aspects of model making, 3-D CAD models, hand formed models, molding, CNC machining, painting, the list goes on and on. This forum focus's mainly on the hobbyist prop making so what I focus on is much different.

If I took the time to draw the Aston martin there would not be any time to make a physical model. By no means am I an engineer who went to school purely to draw in Solidworks all day, I do not have the skill set to draw that car, and few people do. I have other classes to show I can draw in Solidworks but I don't intend to do that as a career, engineers and designers do the drawing most of the time.

Does that help explain a bit?

Canadianghandi said:

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I do get credit for CNC parts from a downloaded file. I have to write all the programs, figure out what tools can reach, how am I going to fixture it, how much time do I have to machine it, how many sides to machine it. Everyone gets the idea that the CNC just cuts things out for you but if they honestly believe that then they have no understanding of how things work.

I agree about people thinking you can just import a file and let the CNC do its thing. This just isnt the case!.. I have worked with 3 and 4 axis machines, and deciding on the right tooling and paths can take days or even weeks. And dont get me started on dealing with smallerbits breaking and ruining runs..or not homing the tool before starting:P


..oh btw fantastic project!... I just wish it was a jag XJ220... I would have bought that model in a heartbeat

Very cool stuff guys.

jaybible said:

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I agree about people thinking you can just import a file and let the CNC do its thing. This just isnt the case!.. I have worked with 3 and 4 axis machines, and deciding on the right tooling and paths can take days or even weeks. And dont get me started on dealing with smallerbits breaking and ruining runs..or not homing the tool before starting:P

I've gotten quite good at machining the MB2001 for the car. Most parts can be done with the same toolpaths with a different configuration. I have my speeds and feeds dialed in to give me a really great finish without taking to long (time is of the essence because of 3 hour class times and teachers not letting me run machines over night). The hardest part for me is fixturing the part. Most parts are machined on 2 sides so it's hard to fixture them.

Wish we had a 4 or 5 axis lol

Makes sense to me. As I say, it wasn't a slam, honestly - I'd just have guessed that the creation of the CG model might have been a requirement in these courses, if asked. I'm certainly aware of the fact that there's plenty of setup and a full skillset required for CNC. I wouldn't have a clue where to start! Anyway, thanks for the rundown.

Tut tut Martyn:P

Man i've been there with short classes and not enough time. I was lucky I worked part time for a machine shop.

Fixturing can take just as long to set-up/ machine as the part. We used to make negative fixtures just to hold the parts. Although a lot of the time we had the luxury of holding down parts with bolts, not something you want to do with body panels.

What tool are you running for your final smooth pass??

jaybible said:

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What tool are you running for your final smooth pass??

We are using a 1/4" 2 flute carbide ball endmill. I know we could go bigger on some of our less curved parts but I know that that tool is sharp, and I have the exact feeds and speeds down to give me the desired finish. With some of the parts costing $30-$40 a piece (each rear fender) I don't have the money or time to have to machine another one.


Today we got a little more done on the Aston. We have added a few new parts to the mock assembly of the car. We added the license plate holder, trunk lid, and our tail lights that we vacformed.

I'm sure you guys can see there is a gap between the license plate holder and the trunk lid. The trim that should fit, should being the key word here, between the two parts has been SLA 3-D printed at MSOE today so we should be getting it by the end of this week. We are also waiting of the pillars so we can test fit the side windows. When we get those parts in the real challenge begins, although everything SHOULD fit together, that is where we will find out if it does, and how well. Until we get the 3-D printed parts it will be a lot more sanding and prepping for paint to make sure everything is perfect.

Tyler, my partner, is working on drawing up a rim to match our car. We knew our car was drawn using surfacing so it is not perfect, but we found out the drawer didn't use much common sense when drawing the car. Instead of the 19" rims the real car has ours has 23" rims... So we are going to have some monster truck tires on it :P. Although this annoys the hell out of me, we are going to have to do it to make it look right, otherwise the wheels will look to small for the car because of the wheel well size.

First and second pictures are of the rear mock assembly. The last picture is of the side window vacform molds.

As always lemme know what you think.
-Brandon

Looks great Brandon... Keep the progress comming.

jedimaster said:

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Let me know when you sell it. Probably as close as I'm gonna get. Seeing as I don't have $130 grand to spare.

Wait 5-10 years more then likely find one used for 30$-40k with low miles. Wont be the latest an greatest but still be a vanquish.

But be will be cool when finished they make great looking cars. Ive luckily had the luxury in being/driving a few

Aurora said:

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But be will be cool when finished they make great looking cars. Ive luckily had the luxury in being/driving a few

All Astons are just stunningly beautiful cars, you're lucky to have been able to drive one, something I wish to do.

I'm still trying to think of a way to display the car when it's done. To have such a beautiful car on an ugly base would make the whole thing look terrible. I was thinking a carbon fiber base like some of the scale model ferrari's you can buy (the 1/8th scale $6000 ones on their website lol) but I don't feel that look matches the car. Leather might look right but.. yeah idk how to do that.

Any suggestions?

I'd use plain black gloss accrylic. Smart but doesn't take away from the model. It also allows the subtle reflection of the car. If not acrylic then maybe black marble/granite. I would also put the Aston Martin Badge on the base somewhere.

jedimaster said:

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I'd use plain black gloss accrylic. Smart but doesn't take away from the model. It also allows the subtle reflection of the car. If not acrylic then maybe black marble/granite. I would also put the Aston Martin Badge on the base somewhere.

I was thinking of water jetting out the Aston logo and using that of the base, the problem is I don't think you would be able to see all of it since the car would cover most of it up, wouldn't look that good.

I'm also thinking about doing a base with a backboard, and having the backboard have the Aston logo. So many choices.

The SLA parts came in today from MSOE, much sooner than I was expecting. We got the door handles (2nd picture), mirrors (3rd pircture), pillars (4th picture, and rear trim. Some of the parts came out pretty nice, like the pillars, and some not so much like the door handles.

We only had a little bit of time in class to work on the car today so we mainly worked on the pillars. There are still quite a few marks from the priting process but I will get those done in the morning with some spray gun primer to fill and a lot of sanding. Tyler worked on the door handles today but got his hand a little to close to the wheel and dropped the part. So we lost 1 door handle, not to big of a deal since we want them reprinted anyways because they look like crap.

Hopefully we can have the roof and some windows in by friday next week but we aren't holding our breath. Coming along nicely though