3D is for Other Blogs, Really!

Or why I stopped worrying and learned to love tolerate the polymer printer!

 

Donation!

Many Thanks to Tom Clague

('Tomholio' around the Internet) 

 

Many years ago, although it seems like yesterday, I just don't know where it goes? And, it goes there quicker every year, but many years ago, 2007/2008, on the HäT forum, which was a very different beast then, it has since been heavily bot-edited by 'H' for perfectly understandable reasons, no criticism, and moved home/platform a couple of times, and is now a more corporate or pro-brand site, but many years ago we used to have a lot of fun on there, sometimes it would degenerate into silliness, other times the less humorous' would take offence, often about something which wasn't actually aimed at them, but there you go, all humour requires a certain level of grey-cells, some more than others, but many years ago, the Brit's, Antipodeans and some of the Canucks/Yanks would have some real fun . . . but we also had some more serious discussions, and many years ago, we had a thread on 3D Printing!

 

Straight out of the printer. 

 

At that time, the first commercial machines were just becoming something a semi-affluent Western hobbyist, within the 10%, globally, could look at affording, and a lot of potential was held by the nascent technology, or series of technologies, as there are various methods employed in Deposition-Modelling, or Rapid Prototyping (which includes CAD/CAM and CNC)*, as 3D printing is known to those at the cutting-edge of the Industry.

 

*Computer-aided design, computer-aided manufacture, computer numerical control['ed machining].

 

When cats'll fly!

I was quite hopeful at the time, but also pointed out that it might end the toy soldier industry as we then knew it, however, and thankfully, time has shown I was wrong on that one, and despite many friends, acquaintances and fellow-Blogger's having 3D machines of their own, or using the bespoke print-on-demand sellers around the place, most of the then new names in the hobby are still going, including HäT Indusrie!

 

This one's got no name!

 

The other criticism I had, or shared with others in that conversation (long since deleted by the forum-police 'bots), was that it would cheapen the concept of figure collecting, by making anything and everything available to anybody (who could afford it) in any scale, at any time, and that has come true!

 

Is there a doctor in the house?

 

Anyone, with the necessary skills, software, or scanner, or a useful mate so equipped, can scan any figure ever made, or design any figure you can dream of, in your wildest imagination, manipulate the file in an infinite number of ways, and print the results in increments of any scale from a couple of millimetres to whatever size you floor, drive or yard can sustain, without damage!

 

Airfix knock-off, and with naked girlfriend!

 

And that printing can be via simple filament feed, liquid or powder sintering, or deposition of layers, or that was the situation when we were having that conversation, with the new, affordable 'home PC' machines mostly being the filament type, now known as Fused Deposition Modelling (FDM), it's probably still the commonest form of home printing. And is also the technology in the rather very disappointing pen I looked at, here.

He used to drive the Millennium Falcon, you know?

But not in these threads!

HO/OO (left), 25mm (right)

 

Increasingly sintering is becoming affordable for the home printing enthusiast, and you can 'sinter' powder or liquid polymer, and metal (now called fusion), they alll have their own jargon! Vat Polymerisation (VP, for liquids) or Powder Bed Fusion (PBF, for powders!), with VP broken down into Stereolithography (SLA, usually using lasers) and Digital Light Processing (DLP), with fusion further divided into

 

Selective Laser Sintering (SLS - for plastics), and Selective Laser Melting (SLM) or Electron Beam Melting (EBM) for metals, these can be called Directed Energy Deposition too, althogh technically that's a sub-type with at least six systems!

 

HO/OO Turkey - incredible levels of detail.

 

Other systems are Material Jetting (deposited droplets of photo-polymer material, are then cured by UV light, we looked at a simple version of it, here), Binder Jetting (A print head deposits a liquid binding agent onto a bed of powder material, layer-by-layer, to hold the powder together, developed many years ago by the movie industry for scenic backgrounds, I believe?), and Sheet Lamination, where, thin sheets of material are bonded together and cut to form layers/shapes.

 

 ♪♪♫ She wants to break free!

She wants to break free from your lies
You're so self-satisfied
She don't neehee'eed you

She's got to break freehee'ee!

God knows!

God knows She wants to break free! ♫♪♫

 

And all the above, is only simplified, for modellers and wargamers! There are more than ten forms of Vat Polymerisation, eight types of Powder Bed Fusion . . . µSLA anyone?That's Microscopic Stereolithography, to you, Sir!

 

Anatomically correct nudes above,

Brazilian Turkish surgeon's 'skills' on display below!

 

And if you can afford a metal fusion printer, you can make yourself an indestructible copy of the Hong Kong/Laramie jungle superhero The Phantom, in a material designed to withstand the strains of motor-racing engines, aerospace components, or satellite thrusters! While meat (pork, beef and fish), replacement skin (also meat!) and concrete are all being successfully 3D printed.

 

The names are Bond, Roger and Shaun!

 

But, another criticism, at the hobby end, a lot of the stuff is manufactured from low-grade polymers, deliberately biodegradable polymers, or polymers with unknown long-term properties! And, a secondary aim of this post, is to explain why I don't really post 3D printing, won't often, and chose not too, back at the start of the blog, really.

 

Aping around, monkeying about!!

 

It's not snobbery or superciliousness, but that the infinite parameters, of scale, pose and subject, along with the possibility that your downloaded figure, posted from South Korea might disintegrate in six months, along with my lack of knowledge of the subject despite following it pretty closely, and - while I was doing 3D CAD - with some interest, just means I'd rather concentrate on existing vintage, and modern new production.

 

"Sonta-haa! Sonta-haa!"

There are two people who do post a fair bit now, Shaun, over at Fantasy Toy Soldiers, has posted some exquisite figurines in the larger scales, which would be a joy to paint, and Russ over at Plastic Toy Soldiers has started posting the odd 'Combat' 3D prints. It's not that I won't post 3D printed figures, I will, from time to time, I have one or two, I think, but I'm not going to collect them, there aren't enough hours left in the universe to get them all!

 

♫♫♪ "We're only passenger, we wanna' get off" ♫♪♪♫

 

And, just in case you didn't get my attempts at humorous captions, here's what Tom said about this lovely little parcel from Down Under, with grateful thanks to him for this donation, and thanks to Adrian for receiving the parcel, while I'm stuck in Limbo! Tom posts some of his 3D prints on his blog;

 

https://tomertonvillage.blogspot.com/

". . . a bit of background: Often the 3D printers i've bought from will include a number of duplicates - ostensibly just to make use of the resin pool they load the printer with . . . in this bag, we have an assortment designed and printed from various places around the world.

Sontarans Designer Wayne Peters has a number of excellent free Doctor Who files on cults3d.com. I downloaded these boys, and had an Australian printer make me a 1/76 set - she kindly included these larger prints. 

 

Movie stars in pink Ebay is awash with sellers from China who have a cornucopia of 1/64 scale figures - to go with Hot Wheels type cars. Along I came, and asked if they could print in 1/76 scale. This caused enormous confusion, and led to them sending figures of all shapes and sizes.

 

Doctor Who piracies Warning: the Tom Baker and Sylvester McCoy in your possession are wanted men, on the run from the law! These are indeed piracies of larger scale game pieces. I won't incriminate my source - instead, I'll quickly distract you with... 

 

Curvy ladies from Turkey, surprise surprise, what do middle-aged men want? Curvy ladies! Designer Phnix3d from Turkey obliges, with thousands of sculpts. His novelty is that he provides both a dressed and nude version of each pose. Model rail companies have done nudies before [I know, I have several of the 'naughty' Noch sets! Ed.] , but never to this quality (or ballooning imagination). The flipside is, he does a handful of male figures, who, dwarfed by their lady friends, frankly look a bit lost and embarrassed. The prints themselves have come all the way from the USA, where printer 'DoubleG Diecast' has these, and hundreds of other figures listed.

 

Planet of the apes, 2001; DoubleG also has these movie characters. As with the pink Chinese prints, I suspect the designs are scale downs from larger multi-part designs (copyright & intellectual property are not well respected concepts in the 3D printing world).

 

'Man who wants to break free', from Vietnam My model village could do with a good hoovering,Ii'll be setting Freddie loose once I've painted him.

 

. . . I've found it fascinating to keep an eye on 3d printing, asit'ss evolved from fairly naff filament types to incredible high-resolution resin machines now. Absent from this bag, I shared you the link to Smart Models UK previously; his are perhaps my favourite 3d printed model rail range, which he sells in neat little sets (alas with no duplicates), recommend . . .

 

. . . One to check out - I like both the style and the subject matter of his various figure sets: https://www.smartmodels.org/" 

 

2001 - The future was many years ago!

 

As a post scriptum, and given what I said about plastics, these came halfway-round the world in a jiffy bag, are all less than 30mm, and the only damage was a couple of bits of Sontaran, which will need glueing, along with Doctor the 7th's umbrella, Freddie's hoover and the wings of the flying Cat'sect. But Clint's cheroot and Connery's gun, survived whatever the international post can throw at a small parcel!

W is for We Do This Shit . . .

. . . so you don't have to!

You may remember when Peter Evans sent the home-making moulds by Irwin RX to the blog? Four years ago, where does it go! Anyway, having not bought a couple of the 'ovens' in charity shops because they were too expensive (I'm not paying 20-quid for a second hand novelty-toy in a broken box!), I did find a cheap one, so we can now look at them properly!

 

 

A reminder of the set Peter sent to the blog, although the 'oven' is prominent all over the box, you actually get a few plastic moulds with reminders to buy a "3D Magic Maker available separately"! Which I had previously shelfie-shot, in TKMaxx I think?

The 3D Magic Maker, it looks like an oven and while there is nothing in the instructions (or online, then (2018/19) or now), I am 100% sure it is nothing more than a couple of small ultraviolet (UV) 'tanning' lamps!

 

The gel is quite soft, think mayonnaise, and here you can see an empty cavity on the left, new 'squeeze' in the middle and smoothing the gel into the cavity on the right, I used a cocktail stick, but something like a credit-card would be better, a Plasticard offcut, something like that?

 

Once you are satisfied that the moulds are prepped as good as you can get a semitransparent gloop, into the 'oven' it goes, and after a few minutes, out come the slightly warm, soft rubber figures, as halves!

After trimming ('fettling' the 'flash') you glue the two halves together with a slip of the gel, and give them a couple more minutes under the lamps, a single base needs to be manufactured twice more, and if you're still persevering with the project, similarly glued. I think we can assume I won't be making any more.

I can see this being fun for kids between about seven and maybe eleven years of age, but the fun will be in the doing and the mess, not the finished product! The gel however, in combination with the 'oven', may have further uses for hobbyists, for scratch-building, by producing specific parts, bits or scenic items?

 

There are other ranges of UV-setting resins out there, so A) there must be other similar products and B) you could extend your available pallet and even mix shades before 'cooking'? So I may well have a go at something more 'free hand', at some later date!

 

Most of the data online pertains to 2016, so they were probably already in clearance by the time I found the one in TKMaxx, and while there are a few other moulds out there (sea life etc...), Irwin RX seem to have had a better launch/presence in the US than Europe (distributed by Boti), although Russia seems to have got them as well.

As always; many thanks to Peter for the donation of the moulds.

B is for Blobby Blobby!

No, not the dying-pig screeching, pink, polka-dotted product of early-evening televisual entertainment for the Morlocks and Yahoos, but a pet project of mine which was five years in the gestation/completion and has sat in a folder doing nothing since (another eight years!), so this could also be S is for Selfindulgence!

It started with a sketch, I had thought that you could have a chess set where the pieces were simply letters identifying the role of the piece, P for Pawn being the starting point, I then extruded the King to denote his seniority - despite the original idea being small flat magnetic 'travel chess' pieces -  before I knew where I was going I had abstracted the Bishop (B), gone back to the Pawn, had another go at the King (top, and top-right), designed all their plan profiles (bottom-left) and got a Mk1 Pawn - bottom right.

New sheet of paper; and designs I was happy with were quickly thrown-up, they aren't all the final designs, but the base was pretty-much decided upon and the idea of fluid lines and abstract designs were established, I was aiming for something between sand-blasted wood, and those turd-towers you make on the beach by dribbling very wet sand through your fingers. Well, some of us did!

Some of you will already have spotted an obvious mistake, but like walking away from a crossword puzzle and returning to it to get the clue you're stuck on, or after the 'Can't see the wood for the trees' aphorism, it took me (and the various tutors/fellow students involved in the below images) until preparing this article to spot it, so I'll save admitting it to the end!

I then modeled working prototypes in air-drying clay; the king's a bit droopy! I only have this low-res' crop out of a larger image of the old 'Cabinet of Curious Things', but a few years later I would be off on the CAD course, and these became a step on the way!

Pretty-much as the clay ones but the Castle now wears a simplified version of the King's crown, and the Knight has lost his bulgy-eyes for little pin-pricks which only hint at a face, the bishop gets a deeper valley between finer sides to his mitre-hat. This is still a 2D flat space drawing, coloured with a gradation tool in the lower image to give a false appearance of 3D.

Chees Set! Heay; they're working drawings in cyberspace! It's an idea though, with that plastic American cheese - you could injection-mould them and once the game was finished (pawns/queens) you could eat them with crackers and a nice wine!

When manufacturing a Staunton set for competition, the factories spend longer hand-carving the Knights (4 pieces) than they spend producing the rest of the set (28 pieces), and you can't begin to make Knights until you have been at the factory for several years and have mastered all the other pieces.

It was a bit like that with my Knight in the end, instead of lathe, saw and blade, I had the Boolean commands of extrusion, union, and subtraction, but it's a messy business while it's happening! I won't bore you with a detailed explanation of the steps but the main one is to pull out the whole profile (a), and the width of the head (b), subtract them from each other to get (c), which you then tweak with a standard base!

In the end I added a mane (of sorts) and the final piece works I think? I know some abstract, graphical or 'space-age' chess sets have Knights which don't look like 'knights', but in the end I felt a little homage to Jacques was in order!

I don't seem to have replicated him four times and coloured him properly for these screen-shots but you can see how he'll slot-in and I think the overall works, the idea is to get it on one of the 3D printing sites, it'll be free, I can't see demand making it commercially viable and if it's free you can forget it once you've uploaded it!

But he is here in this outline screen capcha'. The 'deliberate' mistake . . . I've got the King and Queen the wrong way round, the nipple should be the King and taller, while the rubber-glove full of air should be the Queen, and shorter! It's an easy job to switch them, but fancy not noticing for what's been 13 years since the first sketch! Anyway, I think it works and it'll give the haters something else to hate!

Copyright Hugh Walter ©2009-2022

News, Views Etc . . . 3D Scans

And, you see; once thay have been succesfully scanned, they can be turned into a '3D Solid' and sent to a printer!

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3243073

Takes a while to load each image (big file sizes these scans!).

The link he refers to;

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:106504

While these are linked to/channelling at least three makes!

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3054701

This doesn't say what scale it is, but scaleing is easy in 3D software;

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3242507

M is for Mokkie's Military-Men Moulding Machine

Shelfies today, after yesterday's freebootin' figure-fest!

It's one of the rules of the hobby, as applied to shows particularly, but also a useful general rule, that if you see something and you like it and you can afford it, you should get it, as it won't be there if you come back for it later.

It's one of those self-prophesying rules that play on our tendency to doom and gloom, because actually if you return, you often get the thing you left on the previous pass, but it's the occasions when you don't that seem to reinforce the rule and build to this empirical 'mountain' of missed opportunities in your head!

I should have bought this, as I've been back three times and they haven't got another one in!

Branded to '3DMagic' with an accompanying website and licensed from Irwin RX of Toronto, Canada, this Fortress Battle Set is imported by Mookie Toys a newish name, but one we've seen here before recently; the Italian Buzzbee clearance in PoundworldPlus just before it's demise.

I left it because I thought 'Eight-quid for three figures? Nah, not worth it', but when I thought about it, with three coloured-gel bottles, it's nine figures if you only make one of each, which is less than a pound-a-figure, or around the average for figures at a show, so I should have got when I saw it and happened to have a tenner on me . . . Hey Ho!

They don't look terribly militaristic; grenade throwing (?), head-scratching and waving at a passing bus! But with a spare's tub of old Airfix ' Multipose', Italeri or Tamiya weapons, they could soon be knocked into shape for deep-penetration missions behind the sofa!

Set with a UV-light 'oven', I'm not sure how long they would last, or how robust they would prove to be, that 3D pen (a rather disheartening experiment in barely-controlled squirt-extrusion) I bought about a year ago in Lidl had bio-degradable filament, if this is a similar polymer . . . ?

T is for Toy Fair '18 Reports - Oxford Diecast - Military Trains

Under their Oxford Rail sub-brand, Oxford Diecast had some interesting things on show and/or in their Catalogue, so they will get two Show Reports! This is the 'rail-report' and it's the Military stuff I'm concentrating on here.

A Class 2533 locomotive (0-6-0 Saddle Tank Loco - I think!) in World War One War Department scheme, this is the better-looking equivalent of the old Tri-Ang/Hornby 'Battle Space' loco we looked at ages ago and is a prerequisite for hauling your 'trooper', or getting your Flanders-bound defence-stores or supplies down to the South Coast!

Or

A Class 2533 locomotive (0-6-0 Saddle Tank Loco - I think!) in World War Two War Department scheme, this is the better-looking equivalent of the old Tri-Ang/Hornby 'Battle Space' loco we looked at ages ago and is a prerequisite for hauling your 'trooper', or getting your D-Day build-up supplies down to the South Coast!

It's not clear and - to be honest - the wars were close enough together for it to not matter much?

It has a choice of W↑D and civilian Warwell Wagons to tow.Which shows how out of touch with model railways I am, I used to call them 'Well Wagons'? Anyway, two of the military ones (with and without a mid-war, cast-turret, welded-hull, Sherman tank - short 76mm barrel), come with different rolling-stock numbers which is a nice touch.

A third military one has a steam engine road-roller with another set of wagon-markings and there's a three-pack of separately numbered W↑D Warwell's to boot! So a troop of three tanks on un-matching flats (wells?) is attainable for the modeller, or a full train with six wagons. Detail is far better than the old Triang ones I've been collecting over the years.

And then there are theses two behemoths to be towed-about the place!

I didn't ask the kind lady about the difference between the two examples (one having a six-sided barrel, the other - apparently - 12-facets), but I think the difference in barrels may be down to which type of 3D-printer you happen to have, as they were planned for the ready-to-run range, both the likely price pushed them to a download option mid-project - still ongoing!

A close-up reveals the tell-tale lines of 3D-Printing; but they can be mostly hidden with 'crack-filler' auto-primer, or careful applications of modelling-filler with scraps of plasticard, and then a decent paint-job.

I'm guessing the railings and ducted wiring-loom have to be 'provided by the modeller'? But most of the other small pieces should be part of the print?

The now dated catalogue entry, for more information on this Rail Gun thereis a site with few details. but it's supposed to be becoming a download , whether the train packs will still go ahead without the gun or not I don't know, but from the blurb, I'm guessing one would set the gun's scene in WWI the other; bring it forward to the WWII era?

Calibre seems to be pretty unique for an artillery-piece, being '24 Tommies'!

3D is for Pen

Ten years ago I was chatting with a German toy collector as we walked into town for a meal one evening, turning from toys, to talk of non-toy stuff - as you do - we got to discussing the then newsworthiness of the Too Much Stuff hypothesis, which had recently been proposed by some talking-head at the UN, EU, Times or somewhere equally worthy.

During which discussion we both agreed that we too; had too much stuff, and mishearing his pronunciation of a well known German discount store, I was eager to agree with him about the cheap but efficient (usually German) power tools I had been buying, we then enthusiastically regaled each-other with our tales of mini-drill purchase, big-drills, drill-stands, powered-drivers, garden tools, paint-strippers and etcetera, only to realise we were both talking of our identical trips to collect either the Lidl 'forthcoming items' catalogue, or stuff from it!

Being a faithless whore, I also patronise Aldi, but I prefer Lidl! And it was to Lidl I repaired a week ago to grab this little gadget . . .

. . . advertised in the previous week's flyer, I wonder if my German colleague also trotted-down to his 'local' for a 'fix'? And - yes; I also got four packs of stollen-bites!

Having seen similar things in News, Views Etc . . . the other day, only slightly cheaper and aimed at kids, you may understand why I chose to invest in something a couple of quid more expensive but aimed at adults . . . I needn't have bothered, and if you are thinking of a 3D pen, my advice is try the cheapest kid's one you can find - as a sort of 'tech-primer'.

This is the object of my attention, and there were only five left by 3pm on issue-day, you have to be quick with Lidl's offers, or stay at home! But you usually only have to wait about six-months for it to reappear and it's often less-subscribed on the subsequent releases.

Although sold by Lidl it is in fact a Karsten product and the support sites are Karsten's not Lidl's. The first thing I can tell you is that so far I have been unable to reproduce anything remotely resembling the blue pyramid on the cover.

"Ergonomically designed" it definitely is, a 3D printer it definitely 'aint! What this is; is exactly what it looks like - a reduced-scale hot glue-gun! The fact that you load it with a rigid, continuous, polymer filament rather than soft, rubbery, synthetic wax-based sticks is the only difference and that's one of detail, not technology.

There is a second difference which is technological, the feed is automatic rather than trigger- or thumb-based, but you still have to operate a button to activate the feed - so for all practicable purposes is it a glue-gun . . . with a fine nozzle.

You get three 10m x 0.6mm filaments (an 'industry standard' size - there's a few of these pen-designs around now) of Poly-lactic acid polymer (PLA); a relatively new plastic which is certified 100% bio-degradable and even compostable - so don't make anything with it you might be planning on leaving to your children! You can however get ABS (Acrylonitrile-butadiene-styrene) filaments which will last in the environment for thousands of years, so an ethical choice there?!

I found the filament feed to be problematic from the off; the instructions are adamant that you mustn't force it (manually push it in or pull it out), but leave the auto-feed to do it . . . from brand-new it failed to successfully achieve both, several times within a half hour or so (and needed manual 'help'). It's also important to cut the filament flat (at 90° to the cable length) in order for it to feed correctly.

Also like a glue-gun the nozzle cools with use and the thing stops occasionally to get a mental grip on itself, and if it gets too hot (cooks-off) it starts spitting and leaving bubbles in the substrate. To alleviate the later, it switches-off automatically if you don't use it for two minutes, and like a glue-gun you will need a bit of scrap for over-dribble, for cleaning the nozzle, for colour-changes, flushing &etc..

Once it has stopped it takes up to 80 second to reheat before you are green-lighted to go again, while stopping the feed doesn't stop stuff oozing out, ruining your work if you're not careful. The fact that the 'off-button' and the reverse-feed button are one and the same is also bloody annoying.

The pen is described as a '3D' (for three-dimensional) pen with a 'print-head', but as you can see from my introductory efforts; it is neither a pen nor a printer; what this is, is a deposition modeller, or material-deposition device and nothing else. A glorified, hot, icing-piper - splodging stuff roughly where you want it - indeed; a practised pastry-chef might well get better results than the average user and would certainly get better results than me!

It oozes, briefly molten plastic under relatively low pressure (in comparison with injection-moulding pressures), with little accurate control, in order to make novelties - which you will see from the Faceplant page and linked Youtube videos - are variations of the things previous generations have made from raffia, matchsticks, beads, empty lavatory-rolls, tooth-picks, straws, cotton-reels, tissue paper, scissors & glue et al.

The reason I am being so negative about this pen is that I don't want people being too disappointed by it; or one of the similar animals out there prowling for a bite of your 'hard earned' shekels.

I thought it might be useful for converting figures or filling gaps in models, but the plastic is pretty unworkable once set - having the properties of nylon or polypropylene, or indeed its stable-mate filament; ABS, the polymer of choice for electric kettle manufacture, vehicle interiors and engine-bay-furniture type stuff!

It cools too quickly to join cut-n-shut figures, and while it would fill gaps, trimming would be laborious and it may not take or hold model paints (older spirit enamels or newer aqueous and PVA types) well? I haven't tried painting my efforts yet, but I suspect paint would easily scrape of small pieces, or flake from larger constructions.

In the upper image you can see my attempt at the lower image; my initials/moniker! And when I tried to remove the diagonal between the two uprights of the 'H' [using the new, sharp enough for bone, blade I had replaced in my Swan Morton No.3 handle, after the 'proper' glue-gun glue removal exercise and steel-fracture, suffered working on the lip-balm bear project the other day (keep up!)] it all fell to pieces, because if you don’t stab the joints into each other, they don't actually stick together as one bead of substrate has cooled too much and the other is cooling as soon as it leaves the pen.

This means that even if you use one of the templates provided to make, say; the butterfly, it will be shedding bits about the house for ever after, especially as it's bio-degradable and will only ever become less stable!

It will be useful for building up scenery (but that will prove costly in filament), likewise it may have applications working with wire-armatures, or using its own crude armatures* and I'm sure if I get a brown and green filament I will produce passable trees, but it's all a bit of a faff for a simple thing dressed-up as future-tech-today. And the trees would be passable with Lego, not as war-games terrain, they would still need paint and flocking.

* There are more expensive, more pen-like models out there (like the original TV-advertised one a few years ago) and they may be better suited to producing uprights or horizontals, but I tried, at all three feed-speeds and various human-arm speeds, and couldn't produce a measured upright of constant thickness to the point I wished it to finish, thin filaments of 'stretched-sprue' being the result of attempting a sudden, pull-away finish, with lumpy, collapsing stumps being the result of attempting to halt at the desired point.

While all horizontals sag unless they are held-up until they cool, something which requires a third hand while the nozzle dribbles, forgotten, out of the corner of the mind's eye!

Where it may have some use, is in restoration/mending of old hollow-casts? He adds after reading Scott's article on Mexicans the other day, getting heads back on, or fixing arms, the ooze being more easily cut, filed-away and/or sanded from a metal substrate . . . worth a try! But I don't think you could use it to say - rebuild horses legs?

Links

The above-shown YouTube video

Their Faceplant page

There are other videos you can navigate too from the above and in one of them someone builds a box (with a different brand of pen) but you can detect the editor's film-cuts at the end of each stroke, so you are never shown the full process.

I will persevere with practising and report back again and if anyone else has experience of these types of 'tools', I know lots of people are interested in the practicalities, and applications. It may be useful for hidden mends in restoration for instance; pink filament might have an application in the restorative surgery of Action Man or Barbie joints?

Get the dark-green filament and you could have a decent stab at making The Creature from the Black-Lagoon, brown - a Bigfoot, white - a Yeti! Or orange for a REAL swamp-monster, but there's no way you can accurately model that hairpiece with this pen!

But - seriously; it's a lot of faff for something you may get out once in a blue moon? Like a lot of the tools I've bought from Lidl over the years! Digital micrometer, soldering iron, wheeled car jack, jack stands, watchmaker's screwdrivers . . . all useful stuff . . . occasionally!

News, Views Etc . . . More Stuff!

MPC Mini Ships

Donald D. Hood got in touch from the US of A with loads of fascinating minutiae on the MPC mini-ships, he has real life stuff going-on at the moment, but I'm hopeful that at some point he will flesh out his revelations for the Blog.

In the meantime; it appears many of the MPC vessels are in fact copies of models from other manufacturers, for instance - the Varicella was previously issued as a die-cast by Tri-Ang Minic (along with one of the tugs), several of the battleships seem to be copies of earlier Renwal mini's and the tramp steamer may be from a Lindberg (Pyro) set, along with both ACW 'Ironclad' vessels?

Anyway - hopefully more to come on this one. He also confirmed that there was a retail issue, but of smaller-quantity sets than the comic offers.

Other Ships . . . and cats!

While we're on ships, I found these decorating pedestrian underpasses in Basingrad the other day.

 I don't know the connection (I'll Google it)** between square-rigged, three-decked warships and landlocked Basingstoke, but I'm guessing that if the floods allow either of these to hove into view, you'll be beyond the help of the flooding-helpline!

**Nothing on Google, but it seems one of them is looking like HMS Victory?

The cat is a running gag in Basingrad between one or more graffiti artists and the local authority; which seems to tolerate the understated and artistic stencils! I photographed the other three in a separate set of underpasses some distance from the mosaic ship murals, a couple of years ago for my - then more-active - Faceplant page.

Bible Stories

This chap has been sat in Brain Berke's Folder for too long, he sent it soon after I Blogged the others, shelfie of David (of Goliath fame) from Beverly Hills Teddy Bear (via Greenbriar/DTSC)

Maxxi Toys

Peter Evans has sent another Apache Clan Collection set to the Blog, this one with the 'trotting' cowboy horse, and two new figures, there was the same bag of candy drops, along with another two pieces of fence (so I can now make a four-sided mini-corral) and palm.

While the figures are a bit semi-flat or demi-ronde both would look very acceptable with a re-paint and the cowboy has a plug-in bag of swag, which would make a useful piece of Stagecoach luggage!

I should also point out the cowboy has suffered the same pants-failure as Mr. I. Wraite's Indian and further; that Stuart Asquith had found the same figures in Funtastic branded packaging in Poundland stores; as reported in Plastic Warrior magazine No. 159 a few years ago (20 months odd?), a full report in that issue's letters (back issues available) shows four different foot figures and six foot Indians not seen here - yet!

The pirate set Brian B found

Artwork's apparently stolen for DVD's or Game packaging!

29-05-2018 - Now known to be being carried by Aliki on the continent and Liberty Imports in the 'States.

Smyths Christmas Stock

I was over in Farnborough checking out the almost empty aircraft-hanger that is Smyths new superstore, looking for Halloween stuff (they had none!) the other day, and picked up a catalogue, I also took the above shelfie of the only thing on their half-mile+ of shelves which caught my eye. It's the same Street machine stuff we saw back in Rack Toy Month (and a recent News, Views . . . it's the bottom-row which really interests), but without the Pioneer branding, nor the Pro Engine Series stuff.

Of more interest are these four sets in the Christmas catalogue; I'm sure there's more around if you Google them, but while some 3D printing stuff is taking a while to get fully off the ground, it is interesting to see really quite cheap aids to modelling (as these are) in the kids stores. I might try 6 or 7? And if you've got kids, you've got an excuse for buying!

They seem to be UV light-activation systems with a reactive polymer-gel or paste, rather than liquid-deposition or powder-based laser-sintering systems, but I can see applications there for war gamers and modellers?

Building armatures, or building onto wire-armatures for instance, scenic efforts, trees, barb-wire entanglements maybe? And with the moulds on the magic maker looking to be flimsy styrene vac-forms, you could develop your own moulds for repeat items, small bunkers, sand-bag emplacements, conversion turrets, wheel/tyre halves etc...

Blog

Several records/near-records have been broken in the last few days, with most posts in a year, 2nd best month ever and definitely still on track for the 3-millionth hit inside 11 months - ten to go! And I will post the 2,000th (visible) post here, any day now, if indeed this isn't it, I've been busy away from the Blog this last week and got behind with 'housekeeping'!

News

Not much since the last News, Views . . . ; all the quarterly results (which generate the toy-related headlines) have been posted and caught by the previous few posts. I think there was another Lego plug in the 'i' and there was more on the Toysaurus (US-side) but I haven't done the cuttings this week yet.

One story which did grab me, although not really affecting the hobby directly was the one about evilBay, Amazon and Co. profiteering from overseas sellers not charging VAT, this is not about second-hand toys or cack like that, but rather new goods, electronics and higher-end consumer-stuff, which are offered at below high street prices by sellers over the Channel or Irish Sea, and which should include VAT, to be taken by the platform and handed to HMRC.

It's not an immediate threat to us, but - as a bit of a scam - it'll become a stick for governments to beat the silicon-valley people with, especially when old-media, establishment paper's like the Daily Wail decide to crusade on the issue.

Link

The Scythian exhibition at the British Museum now has a Blog-post.