Booster: Day 3

I was able to make a little leeway on the Atmospheric Booster this afternoon. The Main Booster is not finished yet, the lower section needs to be adjusted so you can mate a Robotech Tactics VF to it. Since that process is going to be the most time consuming  I am going to leave it till last. Now with that in mind, I also need to make sure I have the Launch Arm done as well. Because this also connects to the underside of the Booster. There is no point in adjusting this lower Booster section once, then have to go back and readjust all that work for the Launching Arm.

So I am going to divert my focus on the Crawler. I got the basic shape meshed out this afternoon and part of its track section done. I'll tackle the suspension / drive train later on. The next major area I need to tackle is the crew compartment. By getting this in place it will give me something to recheck my over all dimensions of the crawler. Every major new piece that gets added onto this mesh, helps me to readjust the mesh. When your working with 3/4 view drawings it can be difficult locked down the right proportions. What I found that works well is to mesh it out and then render the mesh out in the same 3/4 view. The over all lines and proportions should match up when you do this.

Mech Bay: Work in Progress

What we have here is a single Mech Bay great for any Destroid with exception to the MAC 2.
The doors are 55mm High and 42mm Wide, the doors are large enough to fit any 40mm based UEF unit into it. When this Model becomes available the doors will not be printed in place. You will have to insert them into the door way tracks. Then slide the door back before inserting the next the door. The doors are .15mm thinner than the door way track so it is going to be a snug fit.

I am thinking about adding in some internal details so when the doors are open that is not just a blank wall. This should go nicely with the Barracks once it is done.

Booster: Work in Progress

Well we reached Day Two on the Booster. Ignore the bright  white VF that is used as a placement model to make sure my parts are all lining up correctly. This shot is a test fit of the upper Rocket Booster's. Those two upper portions still need to be hit with some smoothing. I will wait on doing that until I know all the parts are fitting correctly. The hard part is going to get Tactics Model portion of the VF to fit correctly in this Mesh. From the looks of it, since the VF's legs slump down a bit, like they do with the Super VF's Fast Packs. I might have to Mesh in those legs up to the air intakes to make this a smooth fit.

Next phase will be the low Rocket Boosters. The back half should be fairly painless, it is the front that is going to suck up a lot of time. If it gets to frustrating I will switch my efforts into Meshing out the Crawler for this Atmospheric Booster.

Arament: Defender Print Failure Up-date

I just received a notification that this model pack failed to print this morning. From what they are showing me the inner Vulcan Cannon barrels are .91mm thick. So they are off by .09mm since Shapeways requires a wall thickness of 1mm. Shapeways has a built in wall thickness scanner that checks your work every time you up-load a mesh. Some how this model passed with out issue but when it came time to print the Error was caught. I am not certain if this was before or after it was printed out.

Thankfully, this all happened on my day off when I was sitting in front of my computer working on another mesh. I quickly went in and thickened all of the inner barrels and realigned them again to keep their original look. I also added a center barrel to this Vulcan Cannon so that the six barrels have more inner structural support. Two of the round disks that hold these barrels in place looked a little shy of 1mm thickness. I went back and also increased these to meet the requirements. Hopefully this corrects the issue and also prevents any future ones on this model design.

Sorry for the delay and inconvenience.

Hopefully this fixes everything.


PS: This up-dated mesh passed the Shapeways wall thickness scanner with out issues. Granted so did the last mesh, for the time being I have placed this model in Beta until I know it prints correctly.

Work in Progress: Teaser

I had a little time to squeeze in my latest request. It is a long way from being done. You start out with the basic shape and start tweaking it about to get the look that you are aiming for. Once you believe you have the desired shape, then you start adding in more details and smoothing it all out. I am going to try to give this as much detail as possible that Shapeways will still allow to print. Once I know the mesh is good, I will go back and add in more details.

Hospital: Modular

Finally!! I built this Mesh a few weeks ago. 1st one had an RDF logo in the circular area of this model. I was nicely reminded to remove that (tm) logo out of the mesh. Then once I up loaded it to shapeways I was hit with sticker shock $250 plus dollars for this one model. Ummmm, no!
The only way I thought I could get around the high cost was to break this model up into three sections and make it modular. Sounds easy right? lol. Yeah, not so much the case. This is why it is important to design the mesh according to your needs. It took some time to cut this model up, fix all the edges and line the modular parts up so they fit right. Then on top of all that, Shapeways wall thickness errors. Yeah, I have spent over seven hours fixing wall thickness errors. Now remember I must have a wall thickness of .7mm or it generates these Errors. I am trying to shave off as much as I can to keep the build cost down. So I am extremely happy to report, that I was NOT shot down while riding a magic bicycle and the Mesh passed its quality checks.

So by making this Hospital Modular it gives you more building options. You have more choices to design the Hospital that you want. Like pictured above in the left corner, is just the Left and Center section. Pictured on the right is all three of the Hospital pieces. Each part is available on its own and then there is the option to have the whole building set printed out. Now in making it modular it actually cut some of the cost down but all increased it a bit because of new wall sections that were needed. I also have this aavailable in Sandstone. Not sure how much abuse it can take but by far it is more reasonably priced. This will give it a sandy texture thou,

I am just happy to get this Mesh out of the way. I have another project that I have been requested to do. the VF Space Booster and Launch Pad Vehicle. So count on seeing teasers of that project soon.

A Big Thank You For All the Support!

Today marks the most traffic this blog has seen in a day, 34 visits, in a little over a year since its inception. This is a big mild stone for me, considering 34 visits can be a weeks worth of traffic.

Plus on top of all that, there is my Shapeways store. I know I have been adding items like crazy the past few days and making corrections as quickly as possible. I still find it hard to believe that people are purchasing these items, who would have thought right? Every time I see a picture of one of my buildings or miniatures sitting on some ones table top , it catches me off guard. To see that people are enjoying them truly amazes me and leaves me kind of speechless.

So thank you guys / gals for all the support, it does not go unnoticed around here.

If you are wondering about the picture above. I originally did this for the Robotech MMO Project some 10 odd years ago. Enjoy the pic and Once again. Thank You!