Some progress- prototype painted

Hello again, here is a brief update on what I have been doing lately.

  Here is a pic of the gothic building painted up with a quick drybrush. It measures 2.25" square across the top so it is smaller than the other ruins. It can be combined with a second kit to make it larger. I glued in some card stock for floors. I was thinking of doing a floor mold but without any floors it makes it easier to build a bigger version and add some sheet styrene or cardboard. I got a fair bit of polishing to do on this one, but it should be available in a day or so.  The butresses want to stick in the mold so I have to take small polishing stones and smooth it out. That is a pain but it seems to be a requirement if you want the parts to come out.

  

Here is a pic of the new sci fi womans militia. There are some fundamental changes. The weapon is not in the hands. It must be attached but this will allow me to include a flamethrower and sniper rifle. I added a belt which I plan to seperate the torso at. This can make the model more multi-pose. The arms are a generic semi-bent. I am going to take them off at the shoulder. The head will most likely have to stay with the torso due to the hair hanging down. I hope to create a sprue that will allow a variety of builds.
 But I need a LOT more practice getting parts to fit together nice. So, I am going to make this guy-or somewhat like him first.

   I am cutting it out now. I removed the boots and helmet and made him a bit more plain, but it will give me a chance to see how a 5 part model fits together. This troll will have the usual torso, legs, right and left arms, and head assembly that is my ultmate goal. I left his 2 fingered hands open and gave him a choice of 2 primitive weapons.   After looking at the sci fi women I was working on I realized that I still have a lot of work to do before I am able to make the versatile multi part molds I want to make, so this guy is a baby step in that direction.
   So that is about it for now. I hope to have the building out by the weekend, the troll if it turns out, then on to those canon fodder militia. After that, I got to see what looks interesting.

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.

Photos of the almost guys

Got an e-mail this morning from someone who likes seeing the details of mold making, so I thought I would post some pics of things that did not quite make the cut the past few weeks and the reasons why.

  First off we have my long range project the stalker tank. In this pic we can see that the left front fender was not cut out. This was simply a careless oversight on my part.  In this case the parting line at the front fender was off slightly resulting in part of the model not being cut out. What happened is that the bottom of the fender was floating into the top side mold. It pays to run a simulation on your cutting and really watch the tool path.

  Here is a Federal main battle tank. Looks OK, but the treads have some sort of angle that makes them really want to hang up. This means I can not make this yet. I have to polish and file the treads until they stop sticking. This tank is supposed to be a foe of the earlier trencher tank but right now it is MIA.

Here is a pic with a trencher turret. I think it makes a nice opponent. Maybe it will work someday. On a positive note the women 28mm troops are looking good. Almost got the backside mold finished and will start on the face side then. 
   With any luck the next post will have pics of these troops painted up and I will start working on the heavy weapons sprue.

Recruits are taking shape

  Wanted to post a few pics for those curious about the process of home mold making.   I am starting to think it would be much better to have someone do this part, but then I would miss out on all the fun. I by fun I mean frustrations. It is still way cheaper to make your own. For less than the cost of a single mold you can have equipment and software to make all the molds you want. It is getting the knowledge that is elusive.

Here is a block on the mill after roughing in the cavities for the sci-fi troopers. I used a .125 ball up to this point, a really big tool for our size objects.

Here is a body further detailed with a .060 ball mill. It is actually recognizable with boots and legs if you look closely. The head attaches closest to you from this angle.

This is a .012 bit, the smallest I could ever see the need to use. I will only use this for areas needed fine detail. These first women I am trying to make are fairly simple, just raw militia in a jump suit and carrying your basic small arms. If they turn out, which I think is a big if, I am going to make a sprue of heavy weapons for them.

  And this is a strange bird who built a nest in my shop rags right beside the CNC mill. It sets there looking at me and seems to be confident in its camoflage, even though it built a nest on bright red rags. I do not even know how it gets in and out, but it must make its way through a roof vent or beside the big doors. I have decided to allow it to stay, even though the 4 eggs are sure to lead to a quartet of annoying screaming chicks and a pile of crap covered shop rags.   And that is what has been happening at the shop. I still have to get that other tank mass produced, but the ejection is being a real pain. I tend to get frustrated and then set things down for a while. Once I get some fresh energy I will tackle it. I have to admit I am a bit focused on getting a few squads of these hapless female cannon fodder on the battlefield.  Squads like this are great, because sometimes they get lucky and take out a Chaos lord or something, giving you bragging rights for years. "Hey, remember that time my squad of housewives armed with rolling pins killed your 10,000 year old demonicly empowered, runic armored, power sword wielding berserking lunatic? Boy was that great."  

Snakes again

  Been working quite a bit, and as usual spreading myself too thin. I spent some time working on 2 new tank molds, I hope to have them up soon. I have also been battling snakes. This is my little "Zen" garden I built outside of the barn. I find it a nice place to relax. Sadly, snakes feel this way also and I spend most summers battling to rid myself of them. This year a very elusive monster comes slithering out of the water and suns himself on a rock. I have a small pellet gun with a range of about 8 feet it seems and he always gets away. I will prevail at some point.
   Besides working on more 15mm tanks, I got some work done on 28mm sci fi troopers. I hope to be cutting this mold next. This is my most challenging mold so far. I had trouble with the hair, so I left them shaved. They are after all female militia, the planets very last line of defense.

  This type of mold requires a complex parting line- like this.

  Still learning as I go, but if I can get this sorted it will go a long way towards making available all the minis I ever wanted but no one else made!   And, as if my plate was not full enough, I have really been delving into 1/32 slot cars. And there are quite a few not being made... so.....

  The old Cyclone is on my to do list.      I will keep pushing away and boring folks with info about how to make your own stuff on a shoestring budget in your back yard.

 Have a nice weekend.   :)