Fine Molds 1/72 Millennium Falcon Build ... Jumping into the deep end!

[jwood314]

I have actually done some modeling tonight and last night! Wow, I know, crazy, doing modeling on a model. One issue I am worried about is a servo dying, or one of the push rods breaking or bending, or something, so a feature no longer works. So, the solution is to be able to get to that part in the future. Started that work on the upper gun well. I love rare earth magnets, they work quit well for this application. Also, got more of the electronics working, I am happy with my ability to use the LCD 20x4 display, and finally got the custom characters working, also, got the code I found on the internet working for the stepper motor. The stepper motor will control the gun well rotation. I also got 2 more parts designed in FreeCAD and off to Shapeways, although these were easy parts to make in comparison to the landing gear. I went ahead and printed these parts, I wanted them very accurate, much more accurate than I could scratch build. These parts house the stepper motor, so it needs to line up properly, or it won't work at all.

Pics 1 and 2 show some LCD display messaging. I plan on having menus when you are in a subcommand that allows you to do stuff with the model . I have so many sequences and things I want to do, I figured this would be helpful to me, and now that the code works, easy to implement.

Pic 3 Did a lot of work cleaning up the gun well, so it turns very easily in it cradle/housing in the model. The lower one will not rotate though, and will most likely cut most of it out of the model, need the space for other stuff and you won't be able to see inside it at all, or very little.

Pic 4 is of the Belly Turret parts I need to mount the stepper motor and clear some 'stuff'. It is longer than it needs to be, but that is ok, will sand it down. To short it doesn't work, too long, no problem.


Pic 5 and 6 are decent shots of the magnets that are holding the top down. The 6 magnets holding it together keep the part flush with the hull, it looks almost as good as if it did with glue. I can go in there now and do some work on the gun if needed. Also, the whole assembly will still come out of the model, as originally designed.

Pic 7 is of the servo that is going to go into the gun well to control the traversal of the gun itself. It will allow the gun to move in 1 axis, and the turret will rotate 180 degrees. I plan on making this manually controlled and as part of some animations. What I have not shown here, but will when it gets built, is some of the circuit that will be needed to have limits on the guns rotation traversal, basically will need some stop points, like how you set up your garage door opener. When the model boots, lol I like saying that, it will have to center the turret. I already know I want to do the Tie Fighter scene when the Falcon is escaping from the Death Star in A New Hope. The quad gun will also use 2 LEDs running 4 fibers offset as in the movie, and there will be some lighting in the well, to show off the interior. I found a nice design file someone did for the interior, just have to figure out how to shrink it to the correct scale.

Pic 8 is of the engine mounting the clear resin cast parts. I needed to start work on this so I can dimension out a light box, and start testing some LED combos. I am not sure if I am using 2 white LEDs and 1 RGB LED or 2 RGB LEDs and 1 white LED. I do know I want a LOT of light to pour out of the engine, with the ability to slightly alter the colors. I have seen purple, orange some red in there in the movies, so, want to have some fun developing the colors. Also, very good experience when I start work on the next Enterprise I plan on doing the deflector dish myself.

Got just a few hours of sleep last night, da*m my insomnia, which hits every now and then, so too tired to do any real delicate work tonight. Finish this up, and probably go to bed, very sleepy.

Merry Christmas,
Happy Holidays,
Mele Kalikimaka,
Cheers.

James

 

[jwood314]

So an update on the Falcon. I have started painting parts of the cockpit as I await the reorder of fiber. Also, I have tone a bunch of test fitting for the parts in the cockpit tube. I had to cut up the Shapeways part, the corridor behind the cockpit, in order to get it to fit. Also, in staying with the ability to tear the model down after construction, I think I know where I am going to put the magnets to make the tube easily come off and on, but with some sticking power.

Pics 1 and 2 show the tube on the hull, and the second pic shows where I am planning on installing the magnets. I circled the install areas in red, the really nice thing about these locations, there are already alignment plastic tubes installed, conveniently for my use!

Pics 3 and 4 show the test fitting of the aftermarket components that TonyRR puts out on Shapeways. They don't fit perfectly, but pretty darn close. Some hacking of parts is to be expected to get everything to fit properly. Pic 4 also shows the size of the tube to scale, with a quarter, this is a little part. I also had to do a lot of sanding and grinding on the Fine Molds parts to get the aftermarket parts to fit. Once I get all of the fiber installed will start working the finish on this. Will be nice to get this sub assembly completed, at least on the inside!

Pic 5 shows the bulkhead area painted. I tried to get it beat up and weathered to look like my screen caps of the cockpit entrance. I am ok with it, really not an option to go back and do it again. When I get the rest of the details painted and the lights on, I think it will work out pretty well. If not, oh well.

Pics 6,7, and 8 show the corridor itself. Some work needs to be completed for assembly, but I am satisfied that this looks good enough to go into the model. I don't want to spend 8 hours on this, when you will have to be a contortionist just to see it peeking out behind the cockpit door.

Cheers,
James

 

[C17ldmstr]

Wow... This looks like a photo of the real Falcon! Great work.

 

[Scratchy]

Nice job on the interior of the cockpit tunnel/tube.

 

[jwood314]

Thanks for the kind words!

An update, I got the Shapeways parts in yesterday, and worked on getting the landing working for quite a while last night. I love working problems, and this one seems to have won. I won't be adding moving landing gear to the model. The main issue is that of space. I gave it my best shot using about 95% of the space to make cheap landing gear work. I can't get a strong enough rotational servo in the space to make it work. The linear servo worked to open and close the doors, but there is not enough throw to completely open and completely close the doors. The next size up servo, won't fit in the front 3 landing gears bays of the Falcon. So it was really cool seeing the bay door open and close, but really uncool that I couldn't translate the throw range to make it work completely. I thought of another way to make the gear work, but it is getting cost prohibitive. I don't want to spend a lot of $s to make this one feature work, plus complexity would really go through the roof to make it fit, so negative on the landing gear. I am going to build the model with the gear down.

So out about $50 for the prototype parts, a lot of hours in the CAD program and working on the failed prototype. However, learned how to drive a free CAD program, learned how to use Shapeways and have a better idea of what their different process and quality levels mean. So, not a bad trade.

Here is a link to a video I made of the ordeal, cut it down to something not too long and a couple of pics of the parts.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q5hycPVORY0&feature=youtu.be

Cheers,
James

 

[jwood314]

Well, since the landing gear debacle I have gone back to work on the cockpit area. In case you were wondering, I counted the fiber as I installed them into the back bulkhead and the overhead portion. There are 148 fiber in the back bulk head and 131 in the overhead portion. The vast majority of them will be red, as they show up in the movie, but there will be some blues and other colors. There will also be a few blinking ones. I still have the control console area left to drill and run fiber into though. Plan on doing that tomorrow, to late at night to do real detail work, would just mess it up.

Pic 1 Shows a very nicely space row of FO, they are 1 mm apart and very straight, would have liked them to be better parallel to the line on the part, but still having a hard time getting everything square. Still working on getting better, I have been looking for some forums on this Proxxon machine, but no such luck.

Pic 2 shows the back bulk head all lit up. I had to pull all of the fiber out to paint the part. Lesson learned, will paint before fiber goes in. I will need to do some light blocking on the back of the bulkhead, once I figure out how I want to light the light bar areas.

Pic 3 is the same as Pic 2 with the fiber unlit. Can see the detail on the painting a little better.

Pic 4 is of the overhead portion with the FO going all crazy in every direction.

Pic 5 shows the wild and crazy fiber all bent over and lassoed up, the fiber lays flat enough, that I should be able to sand out part of the cockpit mating tube to allow for this part to go in, with minimal, if any offset. Should fit quite well, and not comprise the strength of the joint.

Pic 6 shows the overhead part lit up. Same colors as the rear bulkhead, mainly red, with some other stuff sprinkled in.

Pic 7 shows the cockpit main console area paint. Will get drilled out tomorrow and fibered.

I decided to keep the paint jobs pretty simple, the main attraction will be the crew, and all of the cool lights. Also, when looking at these really small details against a bunch of bright FO, I am not sure how much detail your eyeball could resolve. Guess I will find out!

Cheers,
James

 

[jwood314]

Got the last part of the cockpit FO upped today. Couldn't spend any long single period of time, but 10 minutes here, 30 there, got this part done. I am hoping to get all three parts together tomorrow and into the tube. I need to remove some material on the cockpit tube, so going to wait when I am not so tired. I would hate to mess it up. I am also trying to decide whether or not to paint the FO lines coming out of the main cockpit console, I kind of like the look, need to check it out when I dry fir everything together tomorrow.

Back panel - 148 fiber runs
Top panel - 131 fiber runs
Console - 75 fiber runs
354 total fiber in this little area!

Pic 1 Shows a dime for reference on the size of the part. I love the little mill table I have, I am getting better at getting straight lines, and parallel lines.

Pic 2 and 3 show the fiber lit up, the final product will be mainly red, with some other colors thrown in and a few blinking lights.

Pic 4 and 5 show some side views of the cockpit

Pic 6 shows all three parts all FO upped.

Cheers,
James

 

[jwood314]

Well, I finally got the fiber installed, the cockpit tube put together, and the LED driver board hooked up. Took way too many hours to get this step done, however, I am pretty happy that the 354 FO in there are lit. They are a little bright, but, the LEDs that drive all of the FO, are turned on by a transistor, so I can hook this up to a PWM and basically dial in the voltage to the LEDs, I will dim them down some. For now though, I am basking in their lit glory. I do have the board turned the wrong way, not sure how that happened, so I will have some issues when I start working on the boarding ramp, I will have to figure out how to get this turned back around.

It was very difficult to get everything to close up, and route the fiber. I am not sure how to make it better in the future. The FO are all twisted around to get them to fit into the various LED heat shrink used in tying the FO into the LED.

I would have liked to have spread the blinkies out more, but it was a crap shoot pulling fiber for the different LEDs, you don't know where exactly they are coming from, since everything was closed up.

Pics 1 - 3 show the fiber and hull parts getting closed up.

Pics 4 - 5 show the LED board on and off. I used 5mm LEDs, should have gone with 3mm LEDs for all but thered.

Pic 6 shows the LEDs on and a quarter for scale.

Check out the video of the cockpit lit.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OepnOBzNeoE&feature=youtu.be

Cheers,
James

 

[Keiko]

Fantastic work, your thread title is well-chosen; you're doing something I haven't yet worked up the courage to tackle.

Question for you: how are you affixing the fiber optics to the plastic model parts? I've heard it said that certain glues are incompatible and I'm not sure what to use. My first FO project will be a more modest Slave 1 to chase your Falcon.

Keep up the great work and inspirational posts!

 

[jwood314]

Keiko,

I use 5 minute epoxy, DON'T use CA/Super Glue, it destroys the fibers, makes them super brittle. I have also gotten acetone on the fiber and it attacked the plastic, causing it to basically disintegrate. Thanks for the compliment!

Cheers,
James

 

[Keiko]

Thanks James, that's what I'll use. I can't wait to see where you go with this. Your list that starts the thread is impressive, most impressive.

 

[jwood314]

Keiko,

Thanks again for the kind words. I have had to drop the landing gear, couldn't make it work cost effectively in the constrained space, but that opens up some other 'stuff'.

Doing more work on the Falcon cockpit area and on the engine LED light system. I used Apoxie sculpt for the first time, and really like it compared to Miloliput and Green Stuff, it is much more like clay to me than the other two, and I had much better success using it to some filling work on the cockpit area. With the aftermarket parts, there were large gaps that need to be fillled, and decided to try this stuff, so far, I like. I then used Squadron putty to do the final finish. I touched up many areas in the cockpit area, and when I get the floor sorted, I will do a final touch up, and await the flight crew. A friend of mine is painting them for me, I can paint, he is much better at it than I, so fingers crossed.

I also have been working on the engine LED section. I am really unhappy with the RGB LEDs I have. They have the clear resin surrounding the LED portion, and even through 2 diffusers, you can see the individual elements within the LED on the engine component. I don't plan on posting pics with this, but when I do, I will show you what I mean. I went ahead and ordered some RGB LEDs with a diffused lens. I have seen some videos with this tpye of LED, and they look much better for my needs. Buying this stuff straight from China via Ebay, also saves a ton of money, yeah electronic components from China. I have also come up with how I want to mount the LEDs, and that I will need 2 independent voltage sources to run them, that way, I won't need any resistors in series with these LEDs. However, there is hug risk I will hook the wrong thing up, so severe precaution will have to be taken, not to blow up 39 LEDs. That would make me really sad. Pics in a day or two, hope everyone is having a great New Year.

Cheers,
James

 

[jwood314]

Since I am a little stuck on my two modeling projects, was doing research on the base coat used to paint the Falcon. Found out that it is Floquil Reefer White and Grimy Black in a 50/50 mix. Well, they are gone, bought by Testors and discontinued. Micromark makes exact replicas of the white and black, so 50/50 mix here I come. So, I need to figure out the other colors.

So down to a dark red, yellow, medium gray, and a tanish gray for the main color blocks. I will need to do some pre-shading with black in some areas, I know I will do a black wash to help pick out all of the awesome paneling detail. I am not sure how I am going to do the pastels you see on the model along with the grime. Decisions, decisions, so exciting! Not so exciting though when you pick a method and then it sucks. So here is to not sucking!

Lots of odd ball work happening. I am still waiting on electronic parts from afar. So, working on odds and ends, and finishing up the cockpit area. I can at least get that all sealed up, put together and primed. Will get to test my painting methods on this little area first.

Pics 1 and two are of the built up floor. I built the base out of Apoxie Sculpt and then did the finish work with squadron putty. After figuring out how to get in there with some sanding paper, the floor is a lot nicer. I am pretty happy with it, not super happy, but pretty happy.

Pics 3 and 4 the all important flight crew is complete. I decided not to put 3PO in there, mainly because I forgot to run the extra pair of fiber. I guess, I wasn't going to put 356 FO lines in there The flight deck looks much better with the gang in there though, unfortunately, Alderan is about to get blown up. I know that this is the ESB Falcon, that is ok, I will go with it.

Pics 5 and 6 finally some decent scribed lines. Not great, not at least in comparison to what I saw in some amazing YouTube videos, but I am getting some decently straight scribed panel lines with my UMM SCR-01 multi scribe tool. Lots of videos and lots of practicing. To those who have mastered the art of panel lines, my hat is off to you!

Pic 7 started working on building the light box for the engine lighting. I needed to leave material for the clear cast parts to attached to, I think this will work well for my needs. Will find out!

I have also been filing on the main model, putting in the little gaps all around the perimeter of the model. I was having great difficulty it getting them square, turns out, my square needle file wasn't so square. So I ordered some more, still not perfect, but much more square. Not odne, but I do the filing while waiting on something to dry. Well, now I am typing this up while waiting, but usually it is filing.

Hope you are building something cool!

Cheers,
James

 

[jwood314]

I got the motor installed and wrote some quick code to verify the hardware. I need to get the rotation speed up some, which will require a new driver chip, which is easy to do. Pretty happy that I got some positive news this week. The motor didn't explode, I didn't break the model, etc etc.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8s241zW_8rk&feature=youtu.be

I won't glue in the mounting bar until just before I am ready to close up the model and the turret is all painted etc. I will also have to modify the lower gun well to remove most of the plastic to get the motor to fit. Knew this going in, the bottom will be fixed, the top will move. People will see the top one

On another note, the pic is of my $4 strobe board for an Enterprise, needs some external transistors, but will drive the 1 second and 0.5 second lights. I bought a sub $4 Arduino Nano and the few exterior parts, 10 lines of code, and voila! I am going to purchase many more of these Nano boards, exteremly cost effective way to do these types of circuits. Another bonus, the board can be controlled via a switch or another micro processor.

Cheers,
James

 

[Keiko]

This is blowing my mind. "I just wrote some quick code". Well done and humbling! Keep up the great work and updating too.

 

[jwood314]

Keiko,

Thanks! Take a look at all of the Arduino stuff out there. You can reuse a lot of work by other people. So I didn't have to write the code to drive the motor, just had to hook it up and call the code that does. I am an EE, with 10+ years of hardware design experience, but I know just about anyone on this forum can do it. If you can build a model like this, you have the mind set to write code, there are a ton of good books out there, and help. Check out the Arduino. That little board 2 posts earlier cost me $4, a board that does the same thing retail $40 or so. Up to you to decide on to proceed, my first big lighted build, I bought all prebuilt boards from Starling Tech, well worth it to me at the time, now, I will do all my own electronics.


Well, some stuff came in today, so I could move forward on the Falcon. I really enjoyed doing the research this weekend on the Reliant and Enterprise, but glad to get back to this. What came in today, well, the paints from Micro Mark. I have been reading that ILM used a 50/50 mix of Reefer White and Grimy Black, which I don't think is correct. Take a look at the last pic to see what I mean. I will do some ratio mixing to see where I need to be to get to a good shade of grey on the Falcon.

Pic 1 - first time I have done any pre-shading. I was a little thick with the paint. I recently purchased a 0.35mm Iwata Medea Airbrush, and WOW, it is soooo much better than the 3 Master G42(?) I own, the TCP Global off brand. These were great for getting started, but the Iwata has much better control, much better atomization, it is just a much better airbrush. I can't compare it to other air brushes in its price range, but I bet that they are all similar. I am now thinking about getting another one, with a smaller tip for smaller lines. This air brush will work great to paint the Reliant and Enterprise, but there are some places on the Falcon where a tighter line would work better. I need to check my budget

Pic 2 - Assembled the landing gear. I tried putting together the PE baffles, and was baffled by their difficulty it getting them to look correct. After over an hour on 1 of them, I vomited all over my modeling table in disgust at my in ability to f-ing bend crappy little pieces of PE. I got the straight part ok, I could never get the curves correct. I used all sorts of roundy objects, I should have invested in a curvy PE tool, but this would have been the only use, and couldn't justify the cost, maybe in the future when I use more PE, but not here. Plus the other models in my build schedule don't need roundy PE, so, they got vomited into the garbage and I went with the plastic pieces. Your mileage of course will vary on these PE parts. I have seen them done very well, I couldn't get there, a bridge too far.

Pic 3 - I had an absolute blast putting all of these little guys together and marveling at where all of the greebles (sp? correct word?) pieces came from. I especially like the transmission. This was the most model parts I have put together in a long time. There are mulitples of parts in here compared to the 1/350 Enterprise. I was getting excited about running wire in the future to replace some of the plastic lines.

Pic 4 - The paint and airbrush diluter I use. I love the Liquitex stuff, I think better than just about anything else out there.

Pic 5 - A much to dark belly gun turret cover, to be repainted much lighter.

What a good night, finally did some modeling!

Cheers,
James

 

[jwood314]

This is going to be a double post. First off, lots has happened, even if there wasn't a ton of progress on the model. I have had to do a lot of research on how to weather and finish the model, even though I am really far away from doing it. Need to make sure that I am setting myslef up for a great results. Unlike the Star Trek ships, which look fairly pristine, the Falcon is the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy, emphasis on junk. I have never been able to really weather any of my 40k minis very well, so needed to find some help. I think I found it, there is a series of YouTube videos by FichtenFoo on how to weather the Falcon, here is the name of one of those videos:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=k1v40OgPY6U

Over half a dozen videos he explains how to do it, and I really LIKE his final product, enough so to go invest in the following:

MIG Productions 502 Abteilung oils Colors to Get
Faded Navy Blue
Dark Mud
Dark Rust
Starship Filth
German Ochre
Faded UN White
Light Rust Brown

Some more pigments?
Rusts Light and Normal
Pigment Fixer

I ended up Ebaying them, I found a few places that had the paint 50 cents less per tube but would have had to order it from 3 places, which would have cost me more in shipping, so ebay it was, Dragon something or other. I also need to get some Odorless Turpenoid, I am hoping I can get this at Home Depot, or worst case Hobby Lobby, much cheaper there I think than the little bottles on line I see for $15 or so.

The reason I need to know all of the above is due to the work on the turret tops. I am not sure when I can glue in the support for the quad cannon, so I need to know finish work stuff to make that decision. When I get the oils in, first time to use oils, I will do my best to finish the tops of both turrets so I can mount the quad cannons in there. Well, that was a lot of typing for a little area on the ship, but, it is really important that I get this correct, otherwise, I could have a bad looking Falcon, which I still might get, no matter the amount of research.

So, what work have I accomplished? I have completed the interior of the quad cannon turret part. Pic 1 shows the graphic I found online, made some decals, I even remembered to seal them the first time and started installing them into the recess. Pic 2 shows all of the decals in and Pic 3 shows the seat and little control joystick. I could go crazy in here, but it is going to be really tough to see what is going on once the cannons are installed. I will light the interior with 2 SMD LEDs, pics forthcoming after I do the work


Pic 4 shows the landing gear work in progress. I have the base light and dark grey down. I have done the first wash. I think I will do a light orange wash in areas I am looking to put rust into. After that wash, I will go back and dry brush the light and dark grey back on. Then, I will go highlight some of the hoses and stuff in there. I want a few bright colors, a green hose or a red line, stuff like that. I will then add some grease stains, not sure how to do that. Then, lots of then, go back and add rust pigments and maybe some grease looking pigments. I will fix that with MIG fixer, which is a flat enamel fixer. Lastly, I want to hit some of the tubes with a chrome, I imagine that there are some hydraulics that are down there and the chrome can help me highlight that. I really didn't see any chrome when doing research in the movies, but dangit, these are hydraulic! I love getting to call watching a movie research! There is no hurry for me to get these guys completed. When there are done there are going up on the shelf, probably the second to last step is to install them before I seal the hull, so a few months away from that!

Pic 5,6,7 show the exhaust work I have done. Pics 5 and 6 are of the box. I have sprayed Alclad gloss black all around the part to help light block it, and then I shot chrome on the interior. I left all scoring and pitting from the sanding work I did to remove the plastic to allow for the LED to shine through. I really like that the exhaust is all beat up. Even though you couldn't see this detail in the move, cause it wasn't there, I really like the scoring and pitting, I think exhaust, especially on something old like this, would be beat up.

Pic 7 shows the exhaust exterior. OMG, this is the best success I have had so far with Alclad and I finally able to see why this stuff is so awesome. I showed my wife this part and she thought it was pre chromed, nope, that is paint. The pictures don't do this justice. I am soooo happy with my new Air Brush from Iwata and the finish I am getting with the Alclad. I can't wait to show the TOS Bridge parts I have been working on. Lots of prep work, but the finish is amazing. It does show any imperfections underneath though, which is a daunting idea. Unlike some of the primers I use, which have some depth to them, this stuff seems to lay perfectly flat on the surface with incredibly small amount of depth. I am really worried when it comes time to polish it up, that I will too easily burn through an edge or corner and have to start over. Not looking forward to that. I am going to hit all of the exhaust parts with hot metal blue and violet. I am hoping the effect stays awesome looking, first time to try this stuff.







- - - Updated - - -

Post 2

This post is about the quad cannon and a disaster.

Pic 1 shows the disaster. My canopy got stepped on. Small child knocked it off of table, daddy didn't know, daddy was going to go sit down, heard crunch, looked and found the canopy all crunched up. So, not sure what to do here, if anyone has this part for sale If I have to, I will do my best to scratch build it. It has always been my plan to magnetize the canopy cover though, so you could remove it to get a better look at the inside of the cockpit, so, something was going to have to be built at some point.

Next several pics show the work on the quad cannon. I really want to have some lighting effects when the laser cannons go off, but I was having a hard time finding a way to get the fiber in there. I couldn't drill a small enough hole to do it, due to the fact that the small drill bits are not long enough. The solution was right in front of me. I was walking through Hobby Lobby and found some 3/64 inch brass tubing. Looking at Pic 2, the diameter is pretty darn good approximation of what was there. So very happy about that.

Pic 3 shows the hole head on into the quad cannon body. One problem I had drilling these holes was plastic melting. I could not for the life of me keep the plastic from melting. The larger drill bits I am using are not nearly as good as the PCB sub MM drill bits. So they wobble ever so slightly. I think this slight wobble was causing the shaft of the drill bit to rub against the plastic, heating it up and then melting it. I cut the melting plastic off, which causes other problems to be fixed, more on that in a sec.

Pic 4 shows the tube all the way through the cannon body. I did this to eventually give that little brass tube a lot of strength. It is pretty much the only thing poking out of the top of the model, so wanted to make it really hard to break out of the cannon. This also gives me a perfect path to route the fiber optic, and there is no interference with the mounting mechanism. Hard to tell from the angle, but it all fits in there smoothly. The last thing I have to cram into here is the control rod that attaches to the servo and will move the cannon back and forth.

Pic 5 shows the largest diameter FO I can get into the tube. One drawback with this large diameter FO, it is really stiff. I might have to go down some on the diameter to up the flexibility. I don't think the little servo I will be using here can overcome the stiffness of the FO. I will need to do some work to see if I can get a smaller diameter FO to mushroom enough when heated to act like a stopped on the end of the cannon.

Pic 6 shows the Apocy Sculpt going down onto the little tubes. I plan on using my drill press as a vertical lathe! I can get the detail back using some sandpaper and some of my needle files. Well that is the plan.

Pic 7 shows the little tube installed into the drill press. I was able to shape the Apoxie down into a little cylinder and not have it come off of the brass. So a lot of work to get these 8 little brass tubes all sorted out, but will be worth it. After I get the main tube sort, I have to add some detail to the ends of the barrel, so there will be a second step to this.

I have the day pretty much to myself, under Super Bowl time, so thinking of doing some electronic work today on the gun assemblies. Need that down so I can finish up that portion of the code.

So good progress, still greatly enjoying the work.

Cheers,
James

 

[knievel]

Ooh, those canopies. That's hard.
Still haven't glued the canopy onto my Y-wing, so you can watch inside. But it dropped a couple of times allready and there's a kid and cat running here too. So maybe glue it on asap. Hope you'll find a solution for it soon.

Great build, looking forward to see the progress. I'm always in awe when I see builds with lighting. Want to do that on my Slave 1, but haven't found the courage yet to dive into electronics.

 

[jwood314]

Knievel,

Go buy a 3V battery and an LED, hook them together, you are almost there! Nothing magical about lighting, not a lot of artistry to it, just technical work. If you can build these models, I know you can add some lights and wires to it! Thank you for the compliment, I am in awe of the artistry display here.


Lot of hours invested in working on the model, but not a whole lot to show for it. The main thing that took a great too many hours was getting the three 0603 SMDs installed into the top gun well, I still have the bottom to go Many of the models I have seen out there, just install an LED in the bottom, I really didn't like that look, so I installed them as near to the top of the gun well as I could. First two pics show this. I didn't want to ruin any of the decal work I did, so I didn't use any Zip Kicker, so, had to wait for the super glue to dry every time I tacked a wire down, and the other bad part about this, it was almost impossible to set up for more than one glue joint at a time. So, lots of waiting around, but happy with the final product. Pic 3 shows some of the wire and resistors mounted to the external portion of the gun well. I still need to glue this in, and stuff a whole bunch more wires and LEDs in the gun well to have all of the control needed for the sound and light show.

Another area I am having to noodle out is the engine. I know I am going to put 39 LEDs in that area, 26 20K MCD white LEDs and 13 RGB LEDs. Pic 4 shows how after some sanding I can get them to stack up in a small enough area to make it work, the problem is in the wiring. I don't know where I am going to put the resistors, maybe an external board, still deciding. One way to help make the decision is to build the light box, that holds all of this, so working that part.

All of my oil paints should show up at the end of this week. I will do some weather on the top/bottom external gun well plate. See how it looks. Oh, I also got the gun barrels primed, need to paint more stuff grey.

Cheers,
James

 

[jwood314]

Been working this on and off, lots of work on the TOS Bridge, and doing work tomorrow on the E, need to fix the last 6 or 7 issues, before I can hopefully find a new home for her.

Did some work on the landing gear, first pic shows the progress. I like the little hoses I added, I used the 30 AWG wire I use to do general wiring, worked out well. I saw this on another build, so stole it.

Pic 2 is of the painted crew. I plan on having Han, Luke and Leia at the top of the boarding ramp, in the corridor, and the two Storm Troopers assaulting up the ramp. Cool little vignette that you see when the ramp drops.

Working with TonyRR, the guy who made a ton of the Falcon extras on Shapeways to get a corridor printed out and installed. Great guy to work with, if you are building one of these, or any Falcon, check out his accuratizing parts on Shapeways.

Cheers,
James