I tried rolling it under a #11 blade, but it kept being squirrley and getting away from me. The cuts weren't as clean as I'd like.
SB
SB
All of the tube cutters I see online (even the "micro" ones) only go down to 1/8". 3/32" is just smaller than that. Would those cutters not work for something this small?
I tried rolling it under a #11 blade, but it kept being squirrley and getting away from me. The cuts weren't as clean as I'd like.
Thank you for that suggestion! And yes, those prices are a bit insane! But this gave me an idea! I can model something similar and 3D print the jig. It's okay if it doesn't last very long, as it only has to last 10 cuts. I am waiting on a new hot-end for my printer right now, and hopefully that will be delivered this weekend, and then it's off to the races.What I use for cutting small to tiny diameter brass and steel tubing is a jig vise miter cutter...
No problem.Thank you for that suggestion! And yes, those prices are a bit insane! But this gave me an idea! I can model something similar and 3D print the jig. It's okay if it doesn't last very long, as it only has to last 10 cuts.
One of the biggest uses of my FDM printer is making jigs, templates and guides to help with building other stuff. It's so much easier to CAD things up accurately, especially when you are dealing with tricky angles or you need to repeat an action or operation.Thank you for that suggestion! And yes, those prices are a bit insane! But this gave me an idea! I can model something similar and 3D print the jig. It's okay if it doesn't last very long, as it only has to last 10 cuts.
Thank you! Yes, these paints are extremely thick. I actually posted on the Archive-X FB page asking for some advice over there, and they said that 50/50 is waaaay too thin. So I found some small cups and just dumped in a whole bunch of paint, and very slowly mixed in some of the AX thinner until it had the consistency of whole milk. I then spent last evening spraying the model with the base reefer white, and it looks okay. I kept getting paint drying in the tip of the airbrush, which caused some splatters in a few places. Today I am going to disassemble my airbrush and give it an ultrasonic bath, and then finish hitting the wings and fuselage with the base color. It didn't cover all that well, even for how thick the paint is, and I almost went through an entire bottle of reefer white. Is that normal? There's a lot of surface area on the X-Wing, yes, but it took over an hour of painting just to get somewhat good coverage on the base coat. I forgot to take photos of that thoughYour X-wing looks amazing! I've used some Archive -X enamel paints in the past, and yes they are extremely thick. You should think of them as a concentrate. You'll need more thinner than 50/50, though I don't remember what I used. If I need more thinner, I just dump more into the cup and remix it until it sprays the way I'm looking for.
That said, the bubbling looks weird to me, is the AX thinner an Archive X product? Almost 30 years ago I tried thinning my first ever bottle of Tamiya paint with water, and that's what it looked like.
Yes, I guess it just takes some getting used to. I definitely don't feel like I have much finesse over the spray pattern, density, etc... like how I do with other paints. I guess that just comes with more experience!That sucks your having such issues with the Archive X stuff
I have never used it, but I imagine it is similar to using Vallejo paints (not model air, but the regular acrylics and adding thinner) which can get kind of thick and also hard to get the right proportion of thinner/paint
I love all the very fine details, great job !Thanks guys! Jaitea I can't wait to see how it turns out as well!
As stated above, I wasn't in love with the idea of this being an all-resin build because of warping and how heavy the parts came out. Here is just the cockpit section in resin. You can see where it cracked and a few layers have separated.
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Plus, most of the droid strip would have been a separate part from this, which would support a lot of the weight of the wing mechanism, and I just wasn't convinced that some epoxy would be able to hold the parts together. So I went into MeshMixer and combined the cockpit part with the back of the fuselage where the droid strip would sit (this wouldn't have fit on the build plate of my Saturn, anyway).
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You can see here in the cockpit section that it had waves all over it. By doing two passes of filler primer and various passes of sanding, it completely obliterated all of the panel lines, etc... I kind of knew that I would need to re-scribe all of those anyway, but I was still only about 75% happy with the FDM parts.
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So I spent the better part of Christmas break calibrating my printer, trying to get rid of the waves, the over-extruding, etc... After I got it going again, I re-printed the cockpit and droid strip combo, making a few modifications to the part along the way. I added a slot under the strip where I can access the wing mechanism and the electronics, as well as making a spot for some magnets to keep the droid strip secured.
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The new part came out great, and I'm really happy with how the printer is working. Had to take a break during the holidays to watch ESB with the fam:
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After that brief distraction, it was on to the wings!
This is a weird/distorted closeup photo to check the striation lines. I'm printing the parts as .12mm layer height so that as much detail as possible is retained:
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And here's a shot after some filler primer and some wet sanding:
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Hopefully this week I can get all of the wings sanded and primed, and then start gluing the rest of the engine bits on! These parts have been printed in resin and they all came out great:
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And here's Biggs' R2 unit, just along for the ride (he doesn't know how this all ends up!)
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Stay tuned for more, and thanks for looking!
SB