Limited Run 3D Scans of 150+ Star Wars Confirmed Donors

I also went in on a Tier 7.

My Einscan SE just arrived. Maybe I can help out once I get this dialed in.
I have a few kits.
 

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I suggest we move to a new phase of constructive movement. Cantina Dude is now the custodian of the scanner purchased by the run participants. Studio-KB, are you going to send the model kits to Cantina for scanning? Also, to clarify, regarding the phrase '150 donors', the video of the recent masterful build by a member (blanking on his handle, sorry!) stated that the falcon contains about 3000 parts from 150 donor kits. Are we to assume we are getting 3000 scans or about 20 parts from each of the 150 kits? What sort of master spreadsheet will be provided to Cantina Dude so he can scan each part (hopefully) and properly name and categorize each scan?

I've noticed that runs seem to go awry when a well-intentioned poster simply bites of more than he can chew. After the money is collected, and the pressure is on for performance, that's when the problems occur. It's usually when the poster believes he (or she) can master the skills or amass the resources who posses such skills to produce the product. Time and time again I see runs where the 'runner' indicates problems and delays with the machine shop, etc. When folks need to collect money prior to moving forward with the run, to me, is also a worrisome sign. The most successful initiators of runs are those that already have the skills and funds to make the project happen, and take on the endeavor because it is 'easy' to make it happen, they are generally enthusiastic and enjoy the challenge and praise when things go right, are true fans, and they can make a little money or get the run product as a 'freebie.' Fieldmarshall is so successful in his runs and with his shop because he has his own machine shop and the tools, skills, and cashflow to make it happen. And we can damn well be sure he has one of everything he offers in his own collection- just because he can lol.

Looking forward to a build plate full of greebie goodness.
Cantina Dude will have the scanner and several hundred Y-Wing greeblies within 6-10 days according to USPS.com. Once he gets through the learning curve of the Einscan, I believe you'll start seeing ready-to-print .stl files populating the folders. Yes, I have sent him hundreds of greeblies to scan, and will continue to do so. I don't actually know what the number of greeblies I have is, but it was several hundred on the Y-Wing and will be several thousand on the Falcon, and since the Venn diagram of these two props share about 125 of the same models, a lot of the scans for the Y-Wing can be used/repurposed for the Falcon, but with the others it will simply be piece-by-piece. And I'm not redoing anything that's already out there, such as the Sealab, which you can already download for free from the interwebs. I'm also, to be clear, not offering subassemblies, only original greeblies from original kits, so you'll have to do your own modifying of parts and assembling of subassemblies (which, to me, is actually both "what it means" and "all the fun" of studio scale building).

I did indeed, in retrospect, "bite off more than I could chew" by thinking that a high-quality scanner with 15 million points of information picked up per scan and 0.05mm accuracy, would allow me to simply press a button and voila, the .stl file would produce itself. The technology is pretty impressive, on the one hand, but it's pretty weirdly primitive in another, and with Einscan you're dealing with a Chinese product whose customer service center is run out of Germany, so there's all sorts of layers of fun to go through with reading/understanding/comprehending/applying the process to get things to work, as well as the time-zone difference to deal with in getting answers from customer service, sometimes adding a day of additional frustration in waiting for them to open, or to get your question in early before they closed, etc.

I am also of the opinion, as you state about Fieldmarshall, that to be able to offer a really successful run, you do basically need your own machine shop, something I don't have (yet), and need to produce the items first, photograph them, and then offer them for sale. I am still working out of an overstuffed basement with too much in it and hardly enough room to move. We are actually seeking a bigger house, but with Coronavirus lockdowns and housing prices spiking, even that may be put on hold for a bit longer.
 
I also went in on a Tier 7.

My Einscan SE just arrived. Maybe I can help out once I get this dialed in.
I have a few kits.
That would be awesome. Please offer your technical help to Cantina Dude because you both now have the exact same machine, and it takes a lot of patience, practice, and trial-and-error to get the hang of its light settings. I'm not a fan of having to spray paint a piece white before scanning, because the scan then picks up the paint overlaying the part, rather than the part itself, and tends to make it look "soft" or "mushy", but what the solution is, between adjusting light settings and using "clear" spray to enhance the scanner's pick-up mode, I was never confident of because the underlying color of the plastic original piece determines a whole lot of whether a piece will be visible or invisible to the scanner.
 
As someone who does a lot of scanning my advice would be this. Do one process at a time, get all the scans done first and post the raw data. Worry about the clean up later. Once you have everything scanned a system of clean up to stl can easily be managed.

The people who know how to clean up the scan data will be happy, and the people who don't will still see steady progress being made.
I like the idea, but am going to leave that decision to Cantina Dude, who has the CAD skills for the clean-ups.
 
set a personal goal of 1 scan a day. In 365 days you have 365 scans and if that's more than the parts needed you have it in less. I wouldn't worry about cad, that's only something to worry about after all scans have been done. If you go scan 1 piece then clean it up, then take it to cad, then test print. You will never finish, no one would be able to.
 
I wonder if using a super dark black paint for a background would help with definition between the part and what it's sitting on. Maybe Stuart Semple Black III, or Musuo black.
 
Studio KB-
If you are not offering sub-assemblies, that stands in contradistinction to what you originally promised (and charged $50 for) for access to Tier 7 and 8. Now there is no difference between Tier 6 and 7 so perhaps a refund of $50 to those in Tier 7 and 8 may be in order.
 
overstuffed basement
no room to move
need a bigger house
coronavirus
lockdowns
housing pricing spiking
laptop not adequate== Also, my old computer is now regularly giving me "Insufficient Memory"
not offering subassemblies
So I would say that I am "pretty narrowly focused."
Meanwhile, I am in Mexico without my laptop -- on sabbatical doing a "digital detox" and writing a book about it.
and every penny of the money received for this project went to a.) the Einscan SE scanner and b.) a few more model kits that were rare and had yet to be acquired
Just back from mexico on sabbatical
"bite off more than I could chew"
I am a tenured professor

One possibility I am looking into is simply taking a CAD course at the community college this summer, so that I can stop relying on outside vendors to be my help. But that also takes time.

================================================

All of the above is studio kitbbash's words... the professor!

================================================

Yeah take a cad course after robbing multiple members of thousands of dollars.

Lol

Good luck to you all with this character
 
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Meerkat67, are you in on this run?

If not it's kind or wearing thin.

What is the sense in this targeted attack and bashing Studiokitbash over this?

What do you have to gain by trying to rubish his name?

Everyone who has contributed can, and should be able to chime in.

Are you trying to solve the problem, or fuel another?

Aside from the trip to Mexico, I can sympathise with most of these problems myself. And so can probably a good majority of other members that have contributed to this forum, especially given where the world is at the moment.

You have failed to list the following from what I can see:

- He has provided countless folk here with castings of expensive kit parts over the years. Some of these were freely gifted to builders (evidence in various member build threads).

- Freely offered assistance with identifying donor parts and information to help others with their build.

- Come through with a very difficult run for parts for plastic hemispheres for the 5 foot falcon, not attempted by anyone else here, and funded much of the R&D himself.

- And surely more good deeds which have gone unnoticed or I am not aware of.

Timing aside, he has been honest about his failings with regard from this run and he hasn't walked away like many here probably have in the past. It would have been easy to do if he was that type of person.

Cantina_Dude is going to try and get this up and going.
Few realise how much work is involved in what he has proposed.
Like Cantina_Dude, I have experience with scanning and working in CAD and it is a massive, massive, massive task to try to accomplish this.

If this project comes off it could be one of the most important things to happen to Studio Scale, given the age and rarity of these kits. Most here realise this.


Seriously, come on.
 
Studio KB-
If you are not offering sub-assemblies, that stands in contradistinction to what you originally promised (and charged $50 for) for access to Tier 7 and 8. Now there is no difference between Tier 6 and 7 so perhaps a refund of $50 to those in Tier 7 and 8 may be in order.
Ventuoguy,

The subassemblies complicates the folder/access issue, so you are correct that there needs to be an adjustment. Thank you for calling that to my attention:
For Tier 7 subscribers, PM me if you want a $50 refund.
For Tier 8 subscribers, you will be privately e-mailed the subassembly files that get made.
Tier 7 subscribers who don't want a partial refund, you will also be e-mailed the subassembly files, which will not be posted to the folder.

Meerkat67, you have no skin in this game and yet your continued need to whinge is quite impressive. Thank you for the added entertainment value.

Meanwhile, the lower inner rings and upper engine-vent rings for the ANH 5-footer studio scale Millennium Falcon are now posted to the subscriber folder and are "perfect" -- and here is what I currently mean by "perfect": the 4" OD at base was confirmed by an ILMer, who said they were made from cut sections of 4-inch acrylic tube which were then turned on a lathe. The ID upper ring measurement is derived from the count-the-louvers-of-vintage-Koolshade method. The height is the one area where it is eyeballed and subject to interpretation and/or further "proof" or improvement. The inner and upper rings have a 1.2mm gap in between for perfectly sandwiching the vintage Koolshade in between. If you have a design critique, or a method for deriving the exact height of the engines, please share it. My advice is to print one off, place it next to the surrounding 5-footer greeblies (most notably 1/35 Panther deck) and see if it looks right to you. Am hoping for one further/final set of eyeballs to nail the height and inner concentric rings sections before having final critical mass agreement. So there will either be a.) no improvements, b.) one final improvement, or c.) possibly "two" sets of vent rings to choose from (with slightly different design aesthetics), but I can't say which way it will go at this point. Right now, what's posted is the best I can figure after multiple revisions.

On a cost-benefit analysis, a Tier 8 membership cost LESS than what these will print for on Shapeways, and Tier 8 is all gone. Tier 7 is all gone. I hope you can see what a wise investment this would have been had you gotten in on it with the sense of optimism, patience and fortitude that the hobby actually requires. For the few of you who did subscribe, you're about to become very happy campers.
 
That LOOKS great. What part needs work? The two little yellow splotch areas?

I've always presumed/assumed that the proof is not in the pudding, but in the tasting. In other words, how does it look once it's printed out? If you can print it and take a picture of that, it would seem to offer a much clearer picture of "what you get" at the end of the process.
 
There's a few things you have to keep in mind about the printed pieces and using that as a metric for quality.
What type of printer? sla, dlp, fdm... resin prints differ in quality heavily based on what type of resin used and what print setting were used.
What type of material was used?
What scale was it printed at? some people may print at original scale some smaller or larger
SUPPORTS - major part of printing is how it is supported which can effect the final outcome. Results in quality of the print depend heavily on how the object is supported.
Post processing - how well was it cleaned up, did they over sand it?

Hope that gives you some things to think about. For me I would say printing is on the user, and all I would worry about is the quality of the scans. Everything trickles down starting from that. Give your mind some ease.
 
Ha, what a cracker of a first test Whiskey!

The result looks nice and clean.

And what a great area to try and square away. Well done!
 
This is the other section of the sidewalls for the 5'

Need to take a break. I cant quite get the edges sharp enough.
Soft compared to the actual piece.

Might need to increase the light and snapshots per revolution. Right now I'm at 65.
 

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overstuffed basement
no room to move
need a bigger house
coronavirus
lockdowns
housing pricing spiking
laptop not adequate== Also, my old computer is now regularly giving me "Insufficient Memory"
not offering subassemblies
So I would say that I am "pretty narrowly focused."
Meanwhile, I am in Mexico without my laptop -- on sabbatical doing a "digital detox" and writing a book about it.
and every penny of the money received for this project went to a.) the Einscan SE scanner and b.) a few more model kits that were rare and had yet to be acquired
Just back from mexico on sabbatical
"bite off more than I could chew"
I am a tenured professor

One possibility I am looking into is simply taking a CAD course at the community college this summer, so that I can stop relying on outside vendors to be my help. But that also takes time.

================================================

All of the above is studio kitbbash's words... the professor!

================================================

Yeah take a cad course after robbing multiple members of thousands of dollars.

Lol

Good luck to you all with this character
Look this is not in a good place- I think we can all see that - continued piling on does nobody any good. Lets at least try to keep the conversation constructive.

I do want to second what was previously stated about sub assemblies and such... But lets try to get things moving before we try to improve.

Jedi Dade
 
This is the other section of the sidewalls for the 5'

Need to take a break. I cant quite get the edges sharp enough.
Soft compared to the actual piece.

Might need to increase the light and snapshots per revolution. Right now I'm at 65.
have you tried using scan spray at all before? or a dulling spray even may help
 
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