Update for the day.
I got the piece printed that's called the "collar." It's the piece that goes on the back of the sphere and kind of tapers that piece back into the overall shape of the rest of the ship.
The collar printed really well, and it showed me that my sphere actually had a VERY tiny bit of warping on one of it's sides...not really noticeable and I was able to sand it out so it seemed to fit just fine.
One thing I'm noticing about this section of the ship, from this model and from the reference pictures I've been using online is that the command section of the ship almost looks as if it was designed to detach from the rest of the ship at some point in time...like the sphere could be jettisoned from the entire thing. I've not watched the movie in YEARS, so I guess it's possible that this is actually mentioned, or possibly mentioned in some publication about the film, but it just looks as if that's the case.
When I'm assembling it, I'm not going to use a ton of epoxy around the edges of the collar/sphere because of the fact that it appears to me like it's designed to come apart if it were an actual ship...the fit will be tight enough that it won't be noticeable, yet it will leave it "separated" enough that you'll be able to tell they are two distinct pieces. I feel that if I use epoxy around the sides of it, that some of the epoxy could seep out to the very edges and give it the appearance that it's one solid piece, which seems to go against the reference photos. It doesn't help that reference photos of this section of the ship seem to be primarily from OTHER models, though...as most of the angles of scenes from the film I've found show the Discovery from a 3/4 angle from the front, so the area where the sphere actually makes connection to the "rest" of the ship is hidden by the shape of the sphere itself.
I also tonight was able to get a good print from the three cargo modules, and actually assembled one to make sure it will go together well. I think it's going to work out just fine.
I'm currently printing the final two parts of the front command module, and then I'll be down to the point where I only have cargo modules and couplings to print, other than the dish assembly. As I've mentioned, the dish assembly is supposed to be a pretty difficult print...I'm going to give it a few shots, and then if need be I'll just have Shapeways print it for me and ship it to me...I'm not going to let one difficult piece that doesn't work end up ruining the entire model for me. I'd rather have it printed somewhere else than try to skip it or adjust it to the point where it just doesn't look good.
In my true style, this project that I was planning on having last me for a VERY long time will probably end up being done other than paint before I even know it. I do this with RC stuff, too...buy a nice kit planning on putting a section together every night for a month, and get it done in two sittings. :lol
The good thing, though, is that since I don't really have much else going on with my printer, when I get all of the parts done I'm going to give it another go on the command module at .1mm resolution to see how the detail looks, and I'll do it over a raft so that the tiny bit of warpage probably negates itself. If that one comes out, it's possible I may experiment a little with brushing on the epoxy to see how the pieces end up looking. I'm actually a bit disappointed...I threw away the parts that weren't working out for whatever reason with the trash this past week...what I should have done was saved those side pieces of the drive section and tried the epoxy that I have now on them to see how it cured and if it maintained it's detail. I'm using some of the Gorilla epoxy that comes in the dual syringe so it's basically impossible to get the mixture ratio incorrect...it's more expensive to do it this way than it is to buy the larger bottles of BSI epoxy, but at least this way I know I'm not managing to mix it incorrectly. Push comes to shove I'll just print another part of the drive unit JUST to see how it works...I wouldn't even need to print the whole thing, I could print half of it then cancel the print and just epoxy the detail that has already printed.
Oh, I also finally glued the actual engine portions into that rear drive unit...they'd just been press fit in there, but seeing as I'm pretty much done with that section I figured it was time to get them permanently attached.
