cylonchaney

Thanks for the positivity guys. It's always appreciated. It will probably be summer by the time I finish it enough to print. Still a lot of detail to go and I'm less motivated now. But I do want to own the finished thing so I'll get there eventually. I mentioned in an earlier post, there's an art to cutting up your design for 3d printing. For my stuff, I want the layer lines to all be on the same plane and the cleanest finish possible. I add things like slots and tabs so wings will be symmetrical. I try to also consider where seams will be. Ideally, where there's already a line. To answer your question, yes it will be printed in separate parts and assembled. At a minimum, everything functional or hinged has to be a separate piece. Canopies, doors, wheels, that kind of thing. The tail will most certainly be split off for printing. Once I've done all the cuts that make sense, if the rest of the main body is too big for my printer, I will cut it into smaller pieces. Or if I think I can end up with a nicer surface by cutting it further I will do that. This will be the first project where the ship body may be too big for my print bed which is 220 mm or 8" square approximately. My previous designs are each up in the neighbourhood of 20 separate parts to print. This one has 44 missiles alone. So it will be lots of printing. And lots of printing time. I can count up in my head about 30 separate printed parts requried. Probably closer to 40. Still working on Trek ships. I think I'm going to do a Reliant. Possibly a ship for every captain. There's a "choppa" I really need to get to. LOL And recently I've been thinking about a car base and a Charger body for it as another project. And I really need to get around to taking some photos of some of my more secretive projects. I've got stuff that's been on my shelf for years but I just haven't got around to taking a pic.

HappyBirthday Luke!

Progress continues slowly these days but it continues. This is going to be my most detailed work yet, including actual seats in the cockpit. Still working on all the hinged parts currently. I think this sucker is going to measure about 18" long when built.

All of the fun part of the dropship is out of the way and I'm slowing down. I'm happy with the resemblance. Now it's all the less fun detail stuff. The weapons pods need hinges. I need to carve out the canopy and create hinge. Hinge for the ramp. Cockpit seats. I may have it open into the cargo area. Headlights. For once, I will make the landing gear more detailed. None of this is as fun as the early design stages when every step seems to bring you much closer. And then there's still chopping it up for 3d printing. Anyway, I'll get there eventually. Meanwhile, I've been working on my TOS Trek stuff as well. I incorporated a new technique to get more organic shapes into my models. Basically I traced over part of the secondary hull in Inkscape and output a SVG file. I can pull that into openSCAD and rotate it 360 degrees to make a solid shape. I'm going to try the same technique to get a better looking saucer / primary hull.

I'd love MOTU mates.

One thing about ending up so big is it may end up fitting two pilots after all.

Just the cockpit and a bit more work at the front and I'll have the main shape done. Still have to carve out the cockpit and canopy and add a bunch of hinges in various places and more detail. I think it's going to end up at about 16" (roughly 400 mm I think for metric types). Hopefully I can shrink it down some. For anyone thinking of picking up new skill, there's no way I would have thought I could do this a year ago.

Nice work!

To get a better idea of scale. Haven't carved out the cockpit yet so just sat him on top. If I don't find a way to shrink it some, that's going to take some serious print time.

This thing is going to be freaking huge! The Klingon ship is about the length of the DST Minimate Enterprise. The dropship is about twice as long. Once complete, I'll see if I can squish it a litte. But it's got to have room for the APC. The whole point of building it, is that it has to be able to deliver the mini-APC.

I really like how this one is coming together. Still more work to go than you might think but I can tell it's going to be a good representation. Lots more detail plus 6 hinges and a fastener to design. For the cargo ramp, I'm planning to put a couple of hinges at the back. The front will be a simple twist lock disguised as some kind of detail on the bottom hopefully. Like a turnable cam. In closed position it blocks the ramp from coming down. Turn it 90 degrees and the ramp can open. Perhaps I can come up with something like slide switch or something more sophisticated. Any armchair engineers out there reading. Do you know a good method to close and lock the front of the ramp that will be easy to design and look good? All 4 weapon pods will be hinged and deployable. The canopy will open to hold a pilot (probably just one ). The cargo ramp will come down. Since the landing gear is visible when retracted, I'll probably just do deployed and flight versions. I'm hoping to do individual removable missiles. The rear pod ones may have to be just a molded block. We'll see. Anyone got any brilliant ideas for added play features that I haven't incorporated?

Very impressive guess! Well played sir.

That's an impressive guess!

D

Is there a clue?

Youtube channel Toy Polloi has a video making a space helmet for a Smurf astronaut. He uses a clear Xmas decoration you can buy online for a number of toy repairs. Might be something on his channel to create a suitable helmet.

Just to give you an idea of scale, that Klingon ship is about the same length as the Minimate Enterprise. The dropship will probably gain a bit more length at the front as well. It's going to be pretty big to carry my mini APC. I mentioned this way early in the thread when it was theoretical but to carry the DST APC, the dropship would have to be absolutely huge. I'm not sure yet how I'm going to implement the hinges. But those weapon pods have to extend. That's an absolute must!

A few irons in the fire these days.

Great stuff! I really like the first character, the black ninja guy.