Urashiman

@wm cheng Oooooh! Awesome Weyland-Yutani M41A pulse rifle to the rescue! Btw: I like the masking tape strips on your cutting mat. That is exactly how my workbench tends to look like as well. Masking tape sticking everywhere hahaha.

The calibration thing is, because after printing, I take apart the lift base and clean out the resin from every piece. So I have to level the lift base again. I do this to save isopropanol, an manually clean that thing. I carefully clean every piece after every print. Maybe I am crazy. Well, not maybe. I am definately crazy. Everything else is factory settings.

Basically what @arbit says. PLUS: 3D Printing is a super manual task and you have to look at so many different things. It feels like operating my 80s 24 needle printer. You print one page, it goes bad and you have to calibrate and clean out the printing heads and and and and and ... The technology for the large audience isn't too fool proof, as it is with general laser or ink jet printers nowadays. A lot of tweaking is needed to get proper results. It also depends on what kind of printer you have. Using an FDM printer properly is the easiest way of 3D printing and has a better success rate in the beginning than SLA printers. When it comes to useability and maintenance, an FDM printer is super easy to use. There is no smelly resin that you'll get hyper allergetic to (or even worse get cancer), but PLA or ABS filament which is heated up. An 1KG roll is 12-20€ each and will last depending on how much you print. The fun part about FDM is, that you have less waste and you need less other tools. The SLA printers on the other hand are rather complex to handle. Use gloves all the time, setup an UV light to cure your print. Cleaning your print from left over resin. Cleaning out the resin bay, calibrating the printer all the time. You need much more stuff to operate it. e.g.: - Gloves - Resin filters - Isopropanol Alcohol - Lot's of kitchenroll/paper towels - Face masks While the resin price is relatively stable and cheap, you have to invest in the above disposables as well, making it less cheap to print one model.

An Anycubic Photon Mono 4K for a whopping 169€ There was a sale prior to the black friday deals, which was actually cheaper than the black friday deals.

That is valuable information. I will try that on my next print

Did some testprints on the VF-9 and VF-1P. Except for two parts on the VF-9 (the front gear box part and the front gear) everything else failed. It is getting twisted and warped and seems that it detached from the supporting struts. The panel lines turned out well, so they have a good size. I think I have two main issues: 1. Wall thickness. I need do make the walls a bit thicker. 2. Not enough 3D printing experience. I might need more supporting struts and better strut placement. What I found really interesting is, how small the VF-9 parts are. The VF-9 is really a small plane. The canopy and cockpit space are almost as big as on the VF-1P, but the rest is just super small. I like how the VF-1P nose looks. Even if the print failed, it still looks nice. I will use these fails to test color on them and which primer to use.

Got something new to produce stuff for my workbench.

Hmm .... release date moved from November 2022 to December 2022 on HLJ ...

Check the video posted by @no3Ljm a bit earlier. It'll give you a good impression. The Roy Fokker version is just a decal swap variant. The Hikaru version has the A and S head, so maybe the fokker version just comes sans the A head. @pengbuzz We need to setup a pengbuzz charity paypal account, so people can get you money for hobby kits

This is an interesting watch. And man ... look at those gaps!

Putting some color on that Gundam.

That is the 1/48 Hasegawa VF-1 in the bottom. The 1/72 Hasegawa VF-1 looks a bit different. Less bulky etc.

Hahaha - that would have been great! There is no way you ever have enough clamps! So, I was priming that RX-78 yesterday evening with a rattle spray can primer from Citadel. Corax White! I will start to brush paint it with acrylics today evening. I am way too lazy to sand all those seams. I tried to sand them, but they are super big. One probably can make a good model from that kit, but I don't care. hahahaha. It is not a MG RX-78, and I want to use my "motivation" to continue on that F-5B I still have unfinished on my bench. Edit: Some F-14 preshading happened today, and I love my new airbrush. No more "burping" and uncontrolled splattering. It was a good idea to get new ones.

I was a bit bored today, so I grabbed a kit, which a friend brought me, during a Japan visit. A re-issue of the original bandai 1980 RX-78 kit. Gonna be a quick in between build. The kit is okay, for a 1980s kit, but by today’s standards, it is super bad. I had to use clamps all the time to make sure stuff isn’t taking itself apart. here are some progress pictures. It‘ll be primed tomorrow and then be painted with acrylics.

Box contents on 1999.co.jo https://www.1999.co.jp/eng/m/image/10884508

Okay, so the Plamax VF-1 will be in my hands soon. And I already have an idea what to do with it

just got my charge mail from HLJ. The VF-1 will now be shippable. I will wait till the WAVE VF-171 is charged and ready as well and then have it shipped. My fingers are tingling to get my hands on it

No worries - and man, that is awesome!

@Thom Thanks a lot! Paint masks ... I haven't seen them around here in Germany. Would have to order them and ship them across the world. @MechTech Thanks! I have the humbrol latex stuff, and used it on my VF-22. Ripped a bit of the paintjob with it. Next time I will peel more carefully. Hahaha! @wm cheng I actually had that with any primer and any color, no way how and with what I mask it. It always rips if not peeled slowly and with care. I actually saw the Alclad primer in one of your old build threads and wanted to give it a try. For testing I sprayed some left over sprues and then used thinned revell email color over it. It worked so far. I know that the tamiya primer is really bad with the revell email colors. So tamiya spray can primer and acrylics works super good. The revell primer is super bad, but once you get it to stick to your model, it works good with any lacquer color. I had some humbrol primer for lacquer colors year ago. That was good stuff. I used mr. color lacquers on my SV-51 nora and totally wrecked that model. The color started to get britle and fall off, and as I lost a wing during a move, I just canned it and purchased a new kit (which still is in queue). If you want to mix lacquer and acrylics, always follow the rules: 1. Give it time to cure. 2. Never lacquer over acrylics, the lacquer thinner easily melts away acrylics even when cured. 3. Acrylic colors over lacquer colors work, but not acrylic colors over lacquer primer. It'll just fall off, or will brush off easily. 4. Lacquer colors can work over acrylic primer if you apply the first two coats super careful and thin. At least this is my experience. As for pre-thinned lacquer colors, the revell airbrush ones are really crazy. I got the blue for my old YF-21 (build around 2003-2004ish). That color sticks like crazy. You don't even need to prime or seal.

@wm cheng yeah, the gwh f-14 is super awesome so far. I like it. The detail is awesome and it fits together nicely. The Finemolds F-14 has more open panel options though and I found the finemolds one to have better panel accuracy in general. I am going to use Hasegawa Macross Zero F-14 decals (purchased them as a reproduction from some Chinese company). I got the clips off of eBay. They are like 8-10€ish. Now on to my favourite task (not). Canopy masking! And after that, it was prime time! This is my first time using Alclad II lacquer primer. This stuff is really rising the game compared to any other lacquer primer I used before. 100% recommended for anyone still using lacquer paint.

Nice F-14 man

I did not throw it away, but it is way beyond it's operation time. I got a cheap BD130 now and the revell pro.

Some progress on my GWH F-14. I‘d recommend those clamps to everyone. Really great helper. 2 hours later: canopy sits without glue, still need to add seats and the pilots. i also stared to prime my vf-19, but my 20+ years old airbrush is leaking air on almost every seal, causing ugly drops to splash all over my kit. Had to sand down the primer again. Ordered two new airbrushes and will wait for them to arrive before doing any further paintjobs.

Aww man, I didn’t mean to disencourage you. Feel free to post as much as you like. I started off with a 0.3MP cam and a super old photoshop version as well. I just wanted to give some advice. I apologise

Looks nice