Parts need to fit better

  Just wanted to post a pic of something I was working on. A walking recon tank. This is one of the first out of the press and the only real issue is that the front leg posts do not fit into the slots properly. Still need to do a bit of polish work on the mold and not really sure how to get the front legs to go on straight instead of wobbly looking. If I figure it out I will put them in the store.
   Thanks for the feedback on the building, I am cutting on it now. I am going to leave it unscathed and put some small ledges on the back to attach plasticard to.
    The recon tank has a complex parting line that travels along the fender, a bit tougher than the flat stuff I was making. After the fitting problems I decided to postpone the female figs for another few weeks. I am currently designing a multi-part armored troll. This will be one fig per sprue with a few options. It will give more practice on the parting line and help me to get better at making parts fit together. I hope to start cutting it as soon as the new building is done.
    I do have another nagging idea on the back of my head. My kids got me addicted to watching a Nickelodeon cartoon called Avatar the Last Airbender. There were some pretty cool tanks used by the bad guys in the show.  I kind of want to make some like them.
   I did have ANOTHER breakdown this week which had me quite dismayed. CNC power switch did nothing when I turned it on. Seems the PC power supply had gotten fried. Took me a while to sort it out, luckily I had an old one lying about.  Still-the gremlins in the shop have got to go.
   That's the news for this week. I will post more when something interesting pops out of the machine.

Some new tanks available, and new building idea

  In spite of the oppressive heat I managed to build a few packs of stalker tanks and put them in the store. Same price as the other platoon. I have a home made mold cooling set up. It is a 30 gallon drum that I circulate water through. It seems to work fine for the limited production that I am running, but these tanks tank a long time to cool in this heat. That causes the heat to be transfered into my water drum, and it seems that once that water gets cooking it stays hot since the shop is over 90 degrees. Come on fall!

  I got a desire to build this building in 15mm. Trouble is the plastic machine is pretty small. So far the best I can do is get one front with door, one side and the little steps onto a sprue. I was going to damage it all up, but if I leave it intact it can be mass assembled into huge cathedrals or damaged with a pair of pliers.  Got to think on this one, because it would not have the floors or roof unless I made another mold for them.
And finally.........I finally got rid of those baby birds from the shop. They were hopping all over the place, knocking things off shelves and leaving piles of droppings. They actually perched atop a regiment of dark elf executioners, which is no easy feat considering all the pointy swords sticking up.  I opened the door one day and they made their way over and walked out. They never came back, so I guess they are OK. But........

  This is my new dinner guest. Now this guy has been feasting on my fish in the pond. He is amazingly skilled at catching them. I am going to leave him alone, I just hope the fish can reproduce faster than he can eat.

   Just frustrating, you try to build a little place to enjoy nature and all this wildlife shows up and ruins things.

   Have a great weekend.   :)

Things keep breaking- I keep fixing.

  Ok, it has been quite a while since anything worth mentioning has happened. I spent about 3 weeks programming G-code to cut out my female militia, and they molds were looking quite good. Then the CNC machine spindle motor burned up, gouging the mold and ruining it. It is a 24 volt DC, 3 phase, brushless, variable pulse input motor.  Not something you can find easily. I wasted a lot of time trying to decide how to fix it. I finally managed to do a lot of patch work and got the motor working again. At least for now. But I had to deal with the fact that the mold was shot. I also thought the guns were a bit thin. So I am going to re-do the whole thing. In the meantime another machine broke too. Egads! I got that one fixed as well and made some progress on some tanks. These are the new stalkers. One has the optional urban barrel for close quarter action. I got another one the way too and hope to make them available ASAP.
   It has been a bit trying, I make all these plans to have molds finished and stuff available and sometimes it just ain't  possible. Right now everything looks like a green light and I am pressing full ahead full. If anything else breaks I guess there will be more delays. I guess when you operate a plastic minis production facility with a budget that would be tight for a lemonade stand these things will happen.

   I did managed to rid myself of the reptilian menace that was eating all of my frogs.

Here is my son holding the monster. He was elusive but eventually he was ousted from my water garden.

  I will post more news when it seems to be interesting.