Major's thermoptic pistol from Ghost In The Shell (movie)

[wayouteast]

I've always loved the look of the pistol that Major uses in the movie, in the scenes where she's in her thermoptic 'invisibility' suit. Now I have a 3D resin printer (an Elegoo Mars) I was able to print the gun from STL files I purchased on Pinshape. I printed the parts in Elegoo white resin and Anycubic clear resin.

Although the white parts looked pretty good out of the printer, I did prime them and paint them with Rustoleum Satin White. The clear parts were cured in water to reduce any yellowing, then wet sanded with finer and finer grit paper (up to 3000 grit), polished and finally given a couple of good wet coats of Rustoleum Crystal Clear gloss. The chrome/silver accents are Molotov chrome ink.

I only made a couple of very small changes to the printed parts, and I'm very happy with the way it turned out.

. .

 

[Supe]

Came out great. Did you modify the magazine for individual rounds, or is that the Pinshape model as-is, just painted? I've been wanting to do this print, but I cannot get the clarity needed with PETG. I may try acetone smooth clear ABS and see where I get, or farming out the center section to someone with a resin printer.

 

[wayouteast]

Came out great. Did you modify the magazine for individual rounds, or is that the Pinshape model as-is, just painted? I've been wanting to do this print, but I cannot get the clarity needed with PETG. I may try acetone smooth clear ABS and see where I get, or farming out the center section to someone with a resin printer.

Thank you so much! The model comes with a modelled solid 'stack' of (I think) 8 rounds and also an individual round. They are all 'sloped' at their back ends to fit into the magaizine insert that slides up into the butt. To get the effect I wanted I printed several individual rounds and added 2 of them to the top of the printed 'stack' to extend the rounds upwards into the main body of the pistol. I also had to extend the back of the top round with styrne tubing as the sloping cut-off would have shown otherwise. I also trimmed the top of the magazine holder so that it's top corners didn't show above the white handle, which it does as printed and doesn't in the actual prop as far as I can tell. I added a spacer strip (of glued together coffee stirrers!) into the back of the insert to move the rounds further forward and make them more visible - again, this seemed to match the actual prop better.

The rounds were painted with AK Interactive Xtreme Metal paints through the airbrush, black base to start and then bronze for the bullets and brass for the casings.

 

[moom1881]

Always liked this prop and you've done a great job of it. The clear resin has come out really well

 

[wayouteast]

Always liked this prop and you've done a great job of it. The clear resin has come out really well

Thank you!

 

[el toro]

Very nice!

 

[Supe]

Thank you so much! The model comes with a modelled solid 'stack' of (I think) 8 rounds and also an individual round. They are all 'sloped' at their back ends to fit into the magaizine insert that slides up into the butt. To get the effect I wanted I printed several individual rounds and added 2 of them to the top of the printed 'stack' to extend the rounds upwards into the main body of the pistol. I also had to extend the back of the top round with styrne tubing as the sloping cut-off would have shown otherwise. I also trimmed the top of the magazine holder so that it's top corners didn't show above the white handle, which it does as printed and doesn't in the actual prop as far as I can tell. I added a spacer strip (of glued together coffee stirrers!) into the back of the insert to move the rounds further forward and make them more visible - again, this seemed to match the actual prop better.

The rounds were painted with AK Interactive Xtreme Metal paints through the airbrush, black base to start and then bronze for the bullets and brass for the casings.

Thanks! I never would have caught the extended top round had you not said something. At least now I know what I'm up against if I try printing one. All the mods definitely appear to be an improvement.

 

[moom1881]

Just bought the model myself - found it on etsy as Pinshape won't let me buy anything. The artist's name is "3dprintoys" over there in case anyone else is curious.

Did you print it at the default dimensions or scale it up to full size?

 

[wayouteast]

Very nice!

Thanks!

 

[wayouteast]

Just bought the model myself - found it on etsy as Pinshape won't let me buy anything. The artist's name is "3dprintoys" over there in case anyone else is curious.

Did you print it at the default dimensions or scale it up to full size?

I printed it at the default dimensions, as the largest element (the main clear body piece) just barely fitted on my printer. To be honest I'd assumed those dimensions were full size. Are they not? It seems quite chunky in the hand.

 

[moom1881]

It does look about right with a hand for size yeah. TBH I was just going by the modeller's description of total size being 159mm. According to IMFD the pistol is based on a Glock 19 - which a quick Google told me are 174mm along the slide. Looking at the .stl files maybe that's just the maximum size of the clear part and the opaque parts extend it that extra distance?

Meh, still looks cool.

 

[wayouteast]

It does look about right with a hand for size yeah. TBH I was just going by the modeller's description of total size being 159mm. According to IMFD the pistol is based on a Glock 19 - which a quick Google told me are 174mm along the slide. Looking at the .stl files maybe that's just the maximum size of the clear part and the opaque parts extend it that extra distance?

Meh, still looks cool.

Interesting. Thanks. I've just measured it, and it's 178mm front to back! So allowing for 4mm's worth of innaccuracy when I was putting the bits together that's pretty much spot on to actual size! I suspect you're right about the 159mm being the size of the largest separate element.

EDIT: In fact, having checked your kind link to the IMFD I can see where the extra 4mm comes from. In the actual prop the rear of the slide and the back of the handle don't line up. I noticed that when I was putting the parts together, and for some reason that offset just didn't look right to my eye... so I remember I did pull the back cover of the slide back very slightly when I was gluing it to line up with the curve of the handle! Voila... an extra 4mm added to the overall length of the slide!

 

[moom1881]

I started printing before I saw this or I might have saved myself a bit of resin

I've started printing at 117% as that gave a ~9mm ID for the barrel. I've printed all the opaque parts so far and it is looking a bit chunky...

Had a look at the bullet and it is a bit fugly. Jumped on Thingiverse, found a somewhat pointier 9mm round and edited it to the same profile as the kit one.

Looks much nicer IMO: