DL-44 FDM c96 & MGC replicas…

[chubsANDdoggers]

Thanks OdiWan72!

It’s an SLS printer made by HP called Multi Jet Fusion. This isn’t printed through shapeways though. MJF prints are really nice (extremely detailed and extremely strong as well) but I’m not sure the exact reason why it looks as rough as it does? Shapeways MJF prints do come out much smoother but they also cost a lot more as well. I think this company recycles the nylon more often I’m guessing to save money? So in turn it will sometimes look more coarse? I should mention though that in person it’s honestly not that rough at all. And with a coat or two of primer it will smooth out even more. Here you can see how it looks after painting just as a before and after reference.

 

[Vanitas]

That mount looks so beautiful, urgh

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

Thanks V! That’s actually an old pic but the graphite powder really makes it. Gives the silver paint a really nice shine.

 

[OdiWan72]

Thanks OdiWan72!

It’s an SLS printer made by HP called Multi Jet Fusion. This isn’t printed through shapeways though. MJF prints are really nice (extremely detailed and extremely strong as well) but I’m not sure the exact reason why it looks as rough as it does? Shapeways MJF prints do come out much smoother but they also cost a lot more as well. I think this company recycles the nylon more often I’m guessing to save money? So in turn it will sometimes look more coarse? I should mention though that in person it’s honestly not that rough at all. And with a coat or two of primer it will smooth out even more. Here you can see how it looks after painting just as a before and after reference.View attachment 1551412

I´ve already seen the magic you´re doing to these prints with your awesome paintjobs!
Was just curious about the material, since I´ve never seen something like this before and at least ME would worry about loosing details during the cleanup/ paint

Awesome work!
Wish I´d be skilled with 3D modelling :/

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

I´ve already seen the magic you´re doing to these prints with your awesome paintjobs!
Was just curious about the material, since I´ve never seen something like this before and at least ME would worry about loosing details during the cleanup/ paint

Awesome work!
Wish I´d be skilled with 3D modelling :/

First off thank you much! Truly appreciate the kind words considering your own attention to detail when it comes to these blasters. 2nd.. 3D modeling isn’t that hard in all honesty. I’m sure you could get it down in a very short time as all it takes is patients, an attention to detail (which you have) and understanding surface plains. Once you get that under ur belt you can do so much (for what it’s worth).

Lastly with regards to detail lost during clean up. The only concern is small parts like numbers and such. Otherwise this material MJF is very strong, extremely precise and already very smooth that you won’t lose much of anything. I’m not doing an kind of magic and I dont consider myself that skilled at painting either in all honesty. I appreciate the complement but anyone can do it. These prints are just that strong and retain that much detail.

But again for specific details (small numbers/letters) I won’t use MJF but always industrial resin prints..

Sorry if it sounds like I’m repeating myself. This technology is truly game changing. It allows everyone to play. Without it I would never have started any of this..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

This is a great example of how precise and detailed these specific prints can be. This is modeled the old fashioned way (not simply scanned or copied just an fyi) so it may not be 1000% but I think it shows what can be accomplished. Once painted it will look identical and being a MJF print you won’t have to worry about anything breaking. It’s stronger than the Reades part itself..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

This was a fun project.

I was never that big of a Merr-Sonn fan originally so it was never in the forefront of DL-44 variants to create.

Yes it’s technically not a DL-44 but it does use a lot of the same components.
This is a naked build (not painted) using a telephone cable instead of a CB cable but it works for the time being.

I do have a cable that is more inline to what was used on the actual prop so I’ll sub that in soon enough. Just waiting on one more additional design that hopefully will make things a little easier when attaching said cable. But even without it it still turned out pretty nice..

 

[Vanitas]

At this rate I'm almost expecting you to print out the entire blaster!

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

Can’t say I haven’t thought about it.

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

This was fun as I was always a little curious as to what this HFC m712 would have looked like in TFA if they used parts more inline to the Hero from ANH. This will be TFA build and I already punched the holes (uses different sized screw) so I had to design up 4 new files for this to work.

The bull barrel had to be fully reworked so its 1:1 slip fit, my ANH Reads heatsink grille had to be enlarged and reworked, the rail I had to resize the two outside holes and lastly the two outside thumb screw’s themselves. Since it (TFA) uses a different size screw than the ANH I made the inside to work with a 10/32 screw while keeping a faux 1/4-20 on the outside.

The BB now that I see it in person needs some touching up but this was mostly for fun so I’m not overly concerned..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

This actually came out (and works) really quite nice. I originally designed it up as a part of a CB cord to be printed all together but the print was too strong to bend correctly.

Besides it’s probably cheaper to simply buy the cord off Amazon anyhow. But still I wanted to try and incorporate it. Not film accurate but it works really well I think.

It also allows me to use a more accurately sized CB cord to boot..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

This one I’ve been patiently waiting to revisit for some time now. TFA blaster is one of my favorites even though I’m fully in the camp of Disney missing an amazing opportunity at recreating the OG Hero.

There is so many little details I wanted to duplicate that are noticeable on the film prop itself once you start the deep dive. But it is a hard one to pin down because there is many variances of this blaster to derail you.

There is the “wired” magazine (I believe it was wired mag anyways) version which is the one you see floating around anytime you Google this blaster.

There is the Disney parks version that was (or still is?) on display at Disneyland.

And of course the film prop itself. Which you need to piece together from promotional photos and screen grabs mostly.

Weeding your way through which is which can be tricky but I think I got everything I wanted to add in there..

There is a little liberty taken with the spinning scope wheel but that’s apart of the fun..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

Creating the Merr-Sonn:

In these next few posts I'll shed some light on some of the techniques that I use to go about doing this.

First and probably the most important is how to “accurately scale” parts from pictures. I'm sure there are many other techniques and methods to go about it but for me, ultimately all one needs is a good picture, an IPad, some calipers and a base real life item (in this case a c96 casting) that ties it all together.

Learning CAD is great obviously but if you can't scale you’ll have nothing to draw. For example this “bent” Compac Scope and these weavers (which don't commonly exist anymore) were all created from pictures using these exact same steps that follow..

For many the process of creating something from nothing.. is most definitely where the fun beings!

The Merr-Sonn blaster wasn’t to high on my personal to do list so I never gave it much attention before. But recently some new hi res pictures came to light and I figured it would be a great opportunity to stretch my own CAD knowledge and growth.

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

What follows is the exact steps I took to originally recreate this Merr-Sonn blaster (pictured below)..

First you need pictures of the actual film prop itself..

Next "The parts of Star Wars" breaks down into great detail all the parts one needs to build this blaster..

The first thing you will have to do is find something that you physically have that is inline to what you are trying to scale. Myself, I have on hand an MGC replica Mauser, a c96 casting of a real Mauser and a Denix replica Mauser. All of which could easily work but I used the c96 casting as its the most inline..

Since the picture of the actual film prop is from the side I used the side of the mag plate as my guide to get everything in order. Here simply scale out each of the mag plates from each mausers. Try to find the shadows and use them as your guide..

The denix here is a little over scaled compared to the two other mausers but only by about .0185 of an inch..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

Next I’ll use my iPad and calipers to find that same scaling on the picture of the prop itself. Then proceed to take screen grabs so I don’t have to worry about rescaling along the way..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

From here you can simply go to town. Start scaling as best you can. Let’s start with the DIN plug..

Now that you have that number, you can simply jump over to the “Parts of SW” picture and figure out the rest of the numbers for this plug. But first you need to upscale this "P of SW" picture accurately using this same method..

From there you can get the the diameter and whatever else you may need..

Hey now don’t expect me to do all the work for you. You can play along yourself and double check the numbers along the way.

Here you can see here how these numbers turned out..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

Before I get to the push buttons let’s simply do the same for the other side of this blaster. Remember to screen grab the picture once you have it accurately scaled..

From there you can again pull all the numbers you need..

For the back disk and the pulley I actually scale from this part of the Mauser as it’s even more inline. But that’s mostly my OCD poking it’s head out to double check..

For the height (or how far each will stick out) it’s mostly an educated guess..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

Now for the controversial RS push buttons. Using this same scaling method as above you can easily pull your base numbers..

If you keep an eye out here on TheRPF you can find even more of these detailed images below which obviously helps in its recreation..

But in order to pull numbers off this picture accurately I have to make it much smaller. This app for the iPad is priceless and I use it every single day for all sorts of stuff..

Now I can resize this image and scale it up to the number I pulled off the film prop itself. I also started a dialogue with this person who originally posted this pic. I shared with him what I came up with and he in turn did the same.

His CAD work by the way is very impressive. Mine is already pretty detailed in its own right but with his, he re-engineered it to the smallest of details. Even included the removable lid with the checkered detail underneath. “Impressive, most impressive”..

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

So here is another measuring technique you can use that will help you even more with your accuracy. I use to measure everything this way but now I use it more so to simply double check numbers along the way. BUT it is a great way to get your numbers really, really accurate if you have any insecurities about your measurements.

It does involve some basic math though. I know for some the word math itself brings on an instant headache. Myself, I actually enjoy math and numbers.

What you do here is after you get your base measurement that you used for your pictures (in this case it’s “1.400”)..

You next want to make that picture on your tablet as BIG as humanly possible or as big as your calipers can measure. My calipers only go as big as “6.0445” but that’s definitely big enough for what I’m trying to accomplish..

Once you get this picture enlarged up to whatever number you can (in this case again it’s “6.0445”) make sure to move the image around and take as many screen grabs as you need. Otherwise you will be doing a lot of enlarging and a lot of back and forth..

Now let the math do its work. What you are looking for is a % that represent the difference between this number “1.400” and the upscaled number which is again “6.0445”.

The way you do this is you simply divide the smaller number by the bigger number to get that magical percentage % number.

So in this specific case it’s 1.400 ÷ 6.0445 which equals = 0.23161552

It’s up to you how many decimal place over you want to go. For me I go 5 usually but again that’s up to.

That makes this magical % number in this specific case is “0.23162”

Now go back to all the screen grabs that you have enlarged, using that original enlarged number of 6.0445 and start pulling your new numbers. By making the pictures super big it’s not only easier to find the exact placement for your calipers but it also removes the margin of error ten fold..

From there, once you have these new enlarged numbers I highly suggest making notes and drawing pictures to help keep everything in order. Your going to fill up with a lot of information and your going to need to stay ahead the curve for sure..

Now simply multiply each and every enlarged number by 0.23162.

This is a legit way to get very accurate scaling. It may be a bit tedious for some who want to get to that finish line as fast as possible. But for me this is the fun! This is the work.

 

[chubsANDdoggers]

Now for the flash hider and bull barrel. This was pretty easy to create simply because I already did most of the work when designing my take on the ANH Hero..

But you can still pull the needed numbers using the exact same way as previously shown..

One thing I did have to do though was figure out just how long the Bull Barrel itself should be as it’s a little longer here than it is on the Hero. I accomplished this in two ways. One was again in the same manner as discussed..

The other was if you notice the Bull Barrel is almost the exact same length as the antenna greeblie itself. Now I do have all these authentic parts from Reades Models that where used on the production of the original Star Wars so of course this makes life a little easier..

So by using the antenna greeblies itself, it basically determine the bull barrels length..

Not to jump to far ahead but you can see how that came out here..

Once I had that length figured out next was to assemble it in CAD, rotated the Flash Hider 90 degrees, filled in the back, front and all the holes so it looks more like it does on the film prop itself. Remember the film prop was a resin casting so that’s the look to duplicate IMHO anyhow.

For this MS bullbarrel design I wanted it work as simply as possible. To do that I borrowed a technique that was originally created by the people who created this thread. It’s name “sleeve barrel” was also coined there I just learned as well.

So in order to accomplish that (very simplistically explained obviously) you basically extrude cut the shape of the denix into the solid barrel body itself to create the sleeve. Then you simply added a hole to the front as you can see here with another extrude cut..

And this is what it ended up looking like in the end..