[BFG] 3D Printed Grey Knight Fleet Project (Small Craft Update!)

[Malika]

From my experience with the material I'm almost tempted to say that you should try to cast them yourself, just make one of those lego moulds. No worries if you have big mould lines or anything, the resin is a bit easier to work with than the acrylic polymer. At least in my opinion.

[MetalCoreKnight]

From my experience with the material I'm almost tempted to say that you should try to cast them yourself, just make one of those lego moulds. No worries if you have big mould lines or anything, the resin is a bit easier to work with than the acrylic polymer. At least in my opinion.

Maybe at some point but so far I haven't had much luck with resin casting, I'm giving it a second go around with some generic 40K parts but each one of these ships is about ~10 parts and some of them are pretty small/thin so it could end up not working that well, especially with the potential for air bubbles and what not.

[MetalCoreKnight]

Okay, I've been sitting on these long enough so over teh weekend I focused on making sure I got all the pictures I'd need for my basic guide to working on these models and writing out as much as I can think of to start with so I can finally break down the 9 ships I still had on the sprues! I now have a fleet worth approximately 900 pts with 3 Strike Cruisers, 4 Gladius, 2 Novas and 4 Hunters!

Images on this forum are a bit weird, so here is the Strike Cruiser and a link to the full Imgur Album.

[marell le fou]

I really like the prow, with the book and sword. It will just be nice when painted.

[MetalCoreKnight]

I really like the prow, with the book and sword. It will just be nice when painted.

Well not if I paint it! xD But yeah, there are 3 icons that are repeated across all the ships, the Sword in the Book, just a sword and the shield/crest.

[MaWo79]

Wow, really cool stuff. The details of the models are impressive. I can’t wait to see the progress on these miniatures.

[MetalCoreKnight]

Wow, really cool stuff. The details of the models are impressive. I can’t wait to see the progress on these miniatures.

Thanks! Shapeways is doing a designer sale on this material so I'm gonna try to pick up a few related bitz I didn't pick up with my last order along with an extra Strike Cruiser and Nova set! xD

[MaWo79]

Interesting. I'd like to try Shapeways myself one day. But I guess I would have to rework my models or better design new ones at first. At the moment all my 3d models are optimized for my FDM 3d printer. So they are rather crude due to the lower resolution and the printing method. Sigh, I can’t wait till high resolution SLA or SLS printer finally become a lot more affordable for home/hobby use.

Generally I do not really like the idea of sending my prints to someone else to do the job. There are always a lot of adjustments and little changes to make, till you get the optimal result. That is something you can’t easily do with an external printing service I guess.

[MetalCoreKnight]

Interesting. I'd like to try Shapeways myself one day. But I guess I would have to rework my models or better design new ones at first. At the moment all my 3d models are optimized for my FDM 3d printer. So they are rather crude due to the lower resolution and the printing method. Sigh, I can’t wait till high resolution SLA or SLS printer finally become a lot more affordable for home/hobby use.

Heh, Shapeways has a bit of a learning curve to it, I've been using them for about a year and a half now and for these models they actually come with up to 11 parts per ship all connected with a sprue in order to try and get the best orientation that impacts the visible areas as much as possible.



As far as the printers go, SLS is still quite a ways off, I think the cheapest option available is still like 10-20k or something. SLA on the other hand is getting there, still a bit high end but a lot closer than it was 5 years ago at least!

[MetalCoreKnight]

So I recently learned about the 2010 compendium Ruleset for BFG and was delighted that there are now some OPTIONS for Strike Cruisers! This does mean that my Strike Cruiser model isn't complete! For those that don't know, you can replace the Bombardment Cannon for a Lance Turret, replace the Launch Bay with Str6 Torpedoes or replace the Launch Bay with a Forward facing Bombardment Cannon.

The first one is easy, I already designed a Lance Turret for the Nova so I just tweaked that to fit in where the Bombardment did and voila!



The tougher designs will the be Launch Bay swap outs, not sure how to approach that yet, especially the Torpedoes, does anyone have any ideas/thoughts?

[lord_blackfang]

It can just be a panel that fits over the aperture.

[MetalCoreKnight]

It can just be a panel that fits over the aperture.

Technically yes that would be sufficient but I'm in a position where I can get a bit more involved with it as it is my design after all! Because of the way I cut up the parts for assembly I can easily just redesign the front part of the ship, shown here with teh white wireframe;

[marell le fou]

For my part i like both, but the last one with the big "mouth" in front is great.

[MetalCoreKnight]

For my part i like both, but the last one with the big "mouth" in front is great.

Apologies, but aside from the turret swap I haven't done any new design work yet so I'm not sure what you're referring to.

[marell le fou]

Apologies. Seeing the sprues upward i could not find the same shape, so i thought you had changed the extremity of the vessel. But you're right, nothing new since the white base one in fact.