1/6th Scale Fett and Cad Bane (plus non-brittle 3D prints and other tips/tricks..)

skahtul · Jul 4, 2022

Okay, it has been a while since I have worked on much since we have been traveling all summer, which is great! However, I have found myself with a bit of time on my hands the last few days so I wanted to dive into a new project. Of course, I could finish any number of my in-progress projects, but instead, I find myself in the mood to print some figures and I thought I would also share a bit of what I have learned over the last few weeks while tuning and testing with my 3D printer.

My first big change was to move the printers into the garage. My normal area is in a storage room where a bunch of ducting for my HVAC is at. During the winter this is perfect as it gets hot but in the summer the AC is on and it gets way too cold in there.

And that is the source of my first tip. I use Sraya Tech resins and they really love to be in a heated bed, my garage gets super hot during the summer so it actually ends up being a great place for the resin printers! You do not have to use pre-heated resin to get great results but I find it does help and it also speeds up the prints.

skahtul · Jul 4, 2022

My new favorite combination for general printing is 20% Tenacious added to a full bottle of Fast Grey. This gives you a very nice result along with a tiny amount of flexibility. The Tenacious is very expensive but when mixing it with Fast you get the best of both worlds, quicker prints, high detail, and parts that have just enough give to them to make the prints easier to work with.

How you ask? Well, the big improvement is no more chipping... When you drill or use an Exacto to shave down or modify parts they no longer chip like they are made of glass. The other thing you get is that can take more of a fall than with Fast alone. Now, this is nothing compared to printing with Sraya Tech Blu which I have used to make parts that are almost unbreakable, but that stuff is expensive, hard to clean up, and smells like crazy. I only use Blu when printing things that actually require that level of rigidity and need to really take some abuse.

If you are printing with resin I highly recommend spending some time dialing it in. Start with downloading both of these:

Calibrating 3D Resin Exposure

At 3DRS, we are passionate about resin printing. We developed the 3DRS Starship Calibration test and the 3DRS Chip Test as a fun way to dial in your resin settings on any given printer. The Chip is smaller and should print in under 30 minutes on Mono printers, the Starship is slightly larger...

3drs.com

Siraya Tech Test Model

Siraya Tech Test Model V5 Download here. Introduction:We developed the Siraya Tech test model V5 to be a quick and easy way for the user to determine exposure value for resolution, accuracy, and printability. It is built on previous works from Peopoly, Photonster’s XP2, and many inputs from our...

siraya.tech

These are great for tuning not only custom mixtures of resin but also to ensure you are curing for the right amount of time. These two links are great as they explain exactly why your print does or does not look 'right' under a bunch of different scenarios.

Below are the 3 test prints I used to dial in my printer with this particular mixture of resin. If you look closely you can see a few key items, one is the tiny little "crosses" and the small spikes on the starship, along with the lettering. You can see that as I get closer and closer to the right settings the detail gets much better and sharper.

skahtul · Jul 4, 2022

Okay, now it's time to print! Before the Book of Fett, I had never heard of Cad Bane but as soon as I saw him I knew I needed to snag a file for him as he is one of my new favorite characters in the Star Wars Universe. Both of these figures come from Galatic Armory, look him up as he has a lot of great files for printing.

Now Cad takes a dip in the ultrasonic cleaner

I find this is really the only way to get resin out of the hollow prints.

skahtul · Jul 4, 2022

Here they are, ready for putty and primer.

And... time to re-print Cad, he had a bad fall... I guess dropping him onto my wooden stairs and then onto the concrete was too much. Of course that had to happen after I finished with all the putty work and sanding! But as with all things, in the end, I learned a few things and made some improvements for the next round.

The first thing I learned is that super glue is not actually that great for these... It's very easy to tell which parts (arms and the torso) I used it on as they broke at the glue joint... For the other parts (legs) I used a 15-minute epoxy and it held up much better. Super glue is great for a lot of things but it is brittle and I won't be using it on my 3D prints anymore unless it's for small detail parts.

The second lesson I learned was just how important the tuning process is. If you look closely at the legs and hands you can see the wavy lines I had been getting from a bunch of my prints. After this broke was when I decided to dive in and really tune up the printer and it really made a huge difference:

Everything is printed and some of it's all primed up, nothing left to do but put down a very intimidating paint job! At the last minute I swapped out the pose I wanted to use for Cad:

StevenBills · Jul 4, 2022

Dang those prints came out nice! You've really got your settings dialed in. I made Galactic Armory's Rex, and I have Cad Bane in the queue! Might just go ahead and run him off right now...

SB

skahtul · Jul 4, 2022

StevenBills said:
Dang those prints came out nice! You've really got your settings dialed in. I made Galactic Armory's Rex, and I have Cad Bane in the queue! Might just go ahead and run him off right now...

SB

For sure, print it off, group build

skahtul · Jul 4, 2022

Bane lives

Analyzer · Jul 5, 2022

Thanks for the tips!

Excellent print quality

Just picked up the Anycubic 6K mono

skahtul · Jul 5, 2022

Analyzer said:
Thanks for the tips!

Excellent print quality

Just picked up the Anycubic 6K mono

Sweet, that will be an awesome printer!

skahtul · Jul 5, 2022

Since I will be obsessing a bit more on the Fett paint job I will be taking some liberties on the paint job for Bane. This particular sculpt seems to be based on the Bad Batch version so I will be mixing and matching a bit from the different shows and pretty much just going with whatever I think looks good

I won't bore you with all the step-by-step or deep dive into the colors, we will stick with the rough outline. He is being painted with a mix of Archive X and Tamiya.

First up is a bit of primer followed by some pre-shading with Alclad Black Primer. This is one of my favorite pre-shading colors along with Nato Black.

The boots received a dusting of Nato Black followed by Engine Black. The hat is a custom mix and I decided to gloss coat the boots:

This shot is just to show you how nice the Archive X paints are to use with a brush. The brown shirt is Tamiya and was airbrushed on, the dark grey vest was patined with a small brush. This paint hardly leaves any type of brush marks. Though I did stipple the paint a bit trying to get some texture into the vest.

Here is where I leave him for the night as this is about all my eyes can take in a day

skahtul · Jul 5, 2022

While the weathering and such will bring down the 'cartoon' look of him as it always does, if anyone has any tips or links to a good tutorial on painting clothes to make them more realistic, I am all ears. I have watched a few YouTube videos but so far I have not found anything that really stands out yet.

Thanks!

-Eric

Analyzer · Jul 6, 2022

This first method uses some two-brush blending as well as some tips on adding texture looking stuff at the end

this is a different approach to texture

I kind of use a combo of the two, leaning more towards the second (minus the speckling) for this Marvel Crisis Protocol 1/43 Luke Cage

skahtul · Jul 11, 2022

Dang, that looks good! Thanks for the links, watching them now.

skahtul · Jul 16, 2022

Thanks again for the videos, they really helped me get what I was after. Other than a bit more work on the base, Cad is done. Now it's onto Fett!

StevenBills · Jul 16, 2022

Very nice! Mine is still in primer!

modelerdave · Jul 17, 2022

Your painting skills are superlative!

skahtul · Jul 17, 2022

StevenBills said:
Very nice! Mine is still in primer!

Well, get to work

modelerdave said:
Your painting skills are superlative!

Thanks!!

skahtul · Jul 18, 2022

Finished up the base for Cad Bane. I just threw on some AK sand effect and then gave it a quick paint. I really like the textured look and it also saves me about a week of sanding from the PLA prints

You can see my next/current project which is one of the re-released MPC AT-AT kits, this will be a full diorama as it includes a few nice extras.

Now it's time to give Fett some attention:

Base coated with my favorite 'pre-shade' color Nato Black. I followed this up with a dusting of Engine Black and Boxcar Red:

I am not 100% sold on the green, though it is darker in person. It's a custom mix of a few different AX greens. Weathering will darken it up a bit more so I am going to stick with what I have and see how it goes.

Thanks for looking!

-eric

skahtul · Aug 26, 2022

Summer travels are over, kiddos are back in school so I am finally able to sit back down and work on some projects. Time to finish up this Fett! I thought at first this would be a pretty easy paint job, much easier than Cad but the more I dug in the more complex it became. Anyway, it's just about done.

There was a pretty good gap here so I attached the arms with Apoxie Sculpt to fill in the gaps. Then I cut down some tiny aluminum tubing to fill in the gap for the tubes or hoses on his arm: