3D Scratch Build - Battletech Argo

[modelerdave]

LOL. You mean 80% of the 33% Brainpower that we actually tap into.

Yeah, that's a widely-held belief that's nevertheless entirely wrong. We use most of our brain most of the time.

How much of our brain do we actually use? Brain facts and myths

Anyway, I love this build! Great work!

 

[joberg]

Waddya mean "the detailed work" This, so far, wasn't detailed? You're killing me man

 

[JPH]

Yeah, that's a widely-held belief that's nevertheless entirely wrong. We use most of our brain most of the time.

How much of our brain do we actually use? Brain facts and myths

Anyway, I love this build! Great work!

I hope this settles the argument

'You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent...' - Wedding Crashers

John Beckwith: You know how they say we only use 10 percent of our brains? I think we only use 10 percent of our hearts.

clip.cafe

 

[JPH]

Waddya mean "the detailed work" This, so far, wasn't detailed? You're killing me man

I am still awaiting/hoping for the post with poorly assembled legos held together with wood glue and a bent nail driven through them. It will help me feel better about the attention to detail and speed of productivity

 

[Pixelworks]

poorly assembled legos held together with wood glue and a bent nail driven through them

 

[Pixelworks]

Yeah, that's a widely-held belief that's nevertheless entirely wrong. We use most of our brain most of the time.

Let me introduce you to my 16 year old son in his puberty phase... you might change your opinion.

 

[joberg]

View attachment 1896793

I see now; love the bean cans for scale

 

[Pixelworks]

Here the lighting plan for the Habitat Pods and the wiring plan for the Centrifugal section.

Lighting the pods themselves will not be that hard (once (+) and (-) are there), the challenge will be getting the light points that are on the Centrifugal section in the limited amount of space. For this,I pre-printed a couple passageways to route cables through, but I am using my dremmel to channel out little "compartments" to bury the LEDs in and create any channels that are still needed.

This picture from an earlier post shows the pre-printed channels (skin colored) and a very generic wiring plan

That was the general plan... here is the more complete wiring:

The purple lines are a channel from the ATmega in Pod A for the blinking navigation lights, which needs to be in sync with all three pods. The grey lines are 0.5mm fiber optic for the little red and white lights on the centrifugal section. This is to reduce the amount of LEDs needed (and the power consumption). Lastly the LEDs marked as "Illumination" are LEDs that will be placed in a tiny pipe to direct the red light up onto the centrifugal pivoting mechanism like a spotlight illumination. For these I will need to do a few tests to see where the best placement is.

 

[joberg]

Here the lighting plan for the Habitat Pods and the wiring plan for the Centrifugal section.

View attachment 1897318

Lighting the pods themselves will not be that hard (once (+) and (-) are there), the challenge will be getting the light points that are on the Centrifugal section in the limited amount of space. For this,I pre-printed a couple passageways to route cables through, but I am using my dremmel to channel out little "compartments" to bury the LEDs in and create any channels that are still needed.

This picture from an earlier post shows the pre-printed channels (skin colored) and a very generic wiring plan

View attachment 1897316

That was the general plan... here is the more complete wiring:

View attachment 1897319
The purple lines are a channel from the ATmega in Pod A for the blinking navigation lights, which needs to be in sync with all three pods. The grey lines are 0.5mm fiber optic for the little red and white lights on the centrifugal section. This is to reduce the amount of LEDs needed (and the power consumption). Lastly the LEDs marked as "Illumination" are LEDs that will be placed in a tiny pipe to direct the red light up onto the centrifugal pivoting mechanism like a spot light illumination.

That's what I called DETAILLED!

 

[Pixelworks]

Nothing worth showing yet, just a little bit of painting and a lot of drilling holes for fiberoptic and chiseling out channels for wiring... A lot of which would have been easier if considered in the 3D design. Too late for this go-around, but I have them on my list of improvements.

Color Identification

While I was painting, there where a couple colors that I needed to find an exact definition of. I thought it might be a good idea to share a method that I have used for quite a long time if you have a picture and are not quite certain what the color is. I discovered this back in my web-designing days, for the times that I needed to seamlessly match the background color with something else. This should work just as well or better with any decent photo editor or vector design software..., but if you do not feel like robbing a bank to be able to afford one of those, this also works great with Microsoft PowerPoint:

1. Copy and paste your picture into PowerPoint. You can also do this with an actual object (see edit below).
   
   
2. On the same slide as your picture, create a simple form. I have an orange square above... the type of shape or its color does not matter at this point, as long as it has a fill color.
   
   
3. Next open the Shape Fill drop-down menu to give your shape a new color
   
   
4. Choose "Eyedropper"
   
   
5. Now you can move your mouse anywhere on your picture. If you leave your mouse on a point for a couple seconds, a small tool-tip with the RGB value of that pixel will appear.
   
   
6. If you need other values like the Hex color code (#123456) or the HSL value you can click with the eyedropper to paint your shape with the selected color. Then go back to the Shape Fill drop-down again, this time click on "More Fill Colors..." and under the Custom tab you can see the other values for the current color. If you are lazy like me, you can mark them with a double-click of your cursor and then copy them out.

A slight downfall of this is that if your picture is shadowed like the one above, it may be difficult to find that one pixel that is not too light (due to being lighted) and not to dark (due to being in the shadow), but still it is a great help to know where to start.

Hope some of you find that useful.

[EDIT]
This is also an excellent method if you need to print your own decals on white decal transfer sheets (i.e. for decals with white in them) and you need to match the surface color perfect so that the part of the decal that is supposed to be transparent has the same color as the model's surface. For this, take a picture of your model in the best lighting possible and then use your picture in the steps above.

Reposted this in "Products that were not intended to be used in model making but work anyway"

 

[joberg]

Nothing worth showing yet, just a little bit of painting and a lot of drilling holes for fiberoptic and chiseling out channels for wiring... A lot of which would have been easier if considered in the 3D design. Too late for this go-around, but I have them on my list of improvements.

Color Identification

While I was painting, there where a couple colors that I needed to find an exact definition. I thought it might be a good idea to share a method that I have used for quite a long time if you have a picture and are not quite certain what the color is. I discovered this back in my web-designing days, if I needed a background color to match something else. This should work just as well or better with any decent photo editor or vector design software, but if don't have one, this works fine with Microsoft PowerPoint:

View attachment 1897542

1. Copy and paste your picture into PowerPoint. You can also do this with an actual object if you take a digital picture of it and upload that.
   
   
2. On the same slide as your picture, create a simple form. I have an orange square above... the type of shape or its color does not matter at this point, as long as it has a fill color.
   
   
3. Next open the Shape Fill drop-down to give your shape a new color
   
   
4. choose "Eyedropper"
   
   
5. Now you can move your mouse anywhere on your picture. If you leave your mouse on a point for a couple seconds, a small tool-tip with the RGB value of that pixel will appear.
   
   
6. If you need other values like the Hex color code (#123456) or the HSL value you can click with the eyedropper to paint your shape with the selected color. If you go back to the Shape Fill drop-down, now click on "More Fill Colors..." and under the Custom tab you can see the other values. If you are lazy like me, you can mark them with a double-click of your cursor and then copy them out.

A slight downfall of this is that if your picture is shadowed like the one above, it may be difficult to find that one pixel that is not too light (due to being lighted) and not to dark (due to being in the shadow), but still it is a great help to know where to start.

Hope some of you find that useful.

Great trick to get that RGB value on any prop/model

 

[Pixelworks]

The Centrifugal section now has a maze of channels and opened-up spaces to contain the electric and fiberoptic. I tried drilling all of these out with my dremmel, but in the end it was faster to redesign the piece and print it out again.

There was also some surface detail that was needed on this piece as well as some of the command section pieces... Soooo, I decided to upgrade most of the pieces to version 3. Incorporated into that, I changed (yet again) the attachment method to free up some space inside of the model. With the new design, the pieces are solid, allowing me to hollow out the inside automatically in my slicing program before printing. This reduces the wall thickness to 1.7mm and thus makes it easier for drilling holes for FO. I also used the opportunity to tear apart the tinkercad design "block for block" to correct misalignments and delete unneeded building-blocks, in order to reduce the overall complexity. After the corrections I then put everything more efficiently back together again. I did this, because I am slowly reaching the boundaries of what Tinkercad has to offer.

The most detail was needed on the bridge section and the top of the habitat pods. I did not realize it when I first started, but the bridge has sections where the hull is missing and a view into the internal structure and piping is seen (the areas above in red). I indented these deeply so that I can add the internal structure, piping, and greebles later.

The top of the Habitat-pod also received a makeover and some relief detailing (again something that had missed my scrutiny in the beginning). I also added some depressions to help with aligning the fiberoptic strands for windows.

While assembling the last printed version, I also had some difficulties where the rings close with the rest of the ship. In that version, I had cut the unseen parts out of the rings themselves. One of my updates was to reverse this so that the rings are continuous and the cut-out is done on the ship's hull pieces instead. This helps a lot with the alignment and actually makes it look more realistic. I also made the docking collars more massive. Now they actually insert into the hull instead of being glued to the surface, makeing them easier to print and allowing the ring to curve into the slot.

Regardless of the cleaning-up that I did, this will only prolong the inevitable, Tinkercad is a great tool to get started in, but there are limitations in the amount of polygons (complexity) a model can have, and even if you stay within that by splitting pieces up, it can be a pain to download large STLs. I looked into Blender a couple years ago, but even the experts out there will tell you that the learning curve is really difficult. At any rate, I decided it is time to try a second attempt at blender, especially because I would like to do some things with texturing that are just not possible in Tinkercad. For example, the "space shuttle-like" tiling on the hull, should be possible to apply to the entire surface as a texture.

 

[Pixelworks]

The last couple months this has been waiting for me to continue where I left off. I had an issue with my 3D printer after my last post where a print failed to the point that the failed print poked through the resin tub and the resin that escaped damaged my screen when I attempted to remove it. The printer still works, as long as I do not print anything on the corner of the scan bed that is now defect, but to replace everything that is broken, it will cost me about the half of what a new printer would cost... so needless to say I was slightly disgusted and put this on hold until my calm returned.

In the meantime I found little details that are impossible to miss and yes somehow I missed them. One of these was on the reactor coolant fins. I was looking for an easy way to allow me to paint them and yet have the little spot for the light to channel out of. I found a solution that just might work and save me a lot of time and effort along the way... during this research I found that the fins have a slight relief on them in the form of six darker rectangles on the front and a large one with two small ones on the back. Seriously, was I blind? I don't know how I missed them the first time around.

To correct this I went back to my design software and added the upraised rectangles, they are less than a half of a millimeter high, but still that little ridge makes it wonderfully easy to pull the paint out to the edges and get those sharp corners between the two tones.

The resolution is not the best but good enough to get the picture.

I did this with a light copper for the fin itself and a dark copper for the upraised rectangles. It is a bit brighter in this last shot because the two copper tones are very metallicy and only really visibly different if the light hits them just right... very similar to the iridescent effect on the Enterprise, however, this makes it even harder to see the difference on camera unless the light is reflecting directly towards the lens... so you are seeing a lot of light reflecting off the surface that is normally not there. The high reflection of light also highlights the rough paint and imperfections, in real life it looks much smoother.

This was just a test piece that I only quickly slapped some paint on to see if the colors worked together or not. Not sure if this is end station or if I will put another very thin coat of matte dark brown to highlight the rectangles a little more.

Well that is it for now.
Thanks for tuning in.

 

[joberg]

Glad to see that the project is still on! Looking forward to your next update

 

[Sluis Van Shipyards]

Cool!

I just got a Saturn 4 Ultra 16k and haven't tried it yet. It's my first resin printer. When I saw that the only thing that holds resin in the vat is the FEP, I was like "Dude... really?" It seems so sketchy!

 

[Pixelworks]

Cool!

I just got a Saturn 4 Ultra 16k and haven't tried it yet. It's my first resin printer. When I saw that the only thing that holds resin in the vat is the FEP, I was like "Dude... really?" It seems so sketchy!

Yeah, after I had my little incident, I was looking at that one. I have a Mars2 Pro that I purchased back when they were best on the market and have been REALLY happy with it all these years. Resin printing is a bit of a hassle dealing with all the chemicals but in terms of resolution and clean prints they are just in a whole other ballpark compared to the filament printers. I buy only water-washable resins and only plant-based to keep my ecological footprint at least a little green around the edges... but there is extra effort that you do not have with filament. On the other hand you get prints that for the most part require little to no sanding cleanup.

The 16k is a little bit overrated in my opinion, to be honest, my prints are 4k (I think) and are just awesome, I read that anything above 8k is hardly perceivable by the human eye. My next will likely also be 16k but only because you cant find anything with less anymore but I will not let that be the deciding factor.

What I CAN recommend is to get all the little protection gadgets that are out there.... there are transparent films that you stick to the scan bed to avoid exactly the damage that happened to me. It was on my wish list but I never got around to it and now falls under the category, "doesn't hurt until you needed it." Also DEFINITLY get the magnetic print bed... It reduces your height by about a centimeter, but is worth it's weight in gold. It makes removing the prints from the print bed a dream and if you have two or more of the floppy metal pieces you can take one print off the lift, put a new one on, and you are ready to start printing the next batch while cleaning up the first. Along the same line, get yourself a couple extra vats (ones that have a UV-proof cover), it is really convenient when you need to switch between resins (e.g. colored and transparent, or some pieces in black and then the next batch in white, etc.), all you need to do is take one vat out and put the next in with the new resin and off you go.

I have to admit the only problems that I have ever had with mine were 99.9% user error, most of the failed prints were due to me cutting corners on the design with me thinking "Aw he can handle it" or printing in rooms where the temperature was too cold (resin printers like 25° C or even above when printing.) A lot of the new ones have heated printing chambers, I doctored a heater for my printer out of a Terainium heater mounted on the inside of the cover which solved a lot of my problems in the beginning. So a heater is a good idea.

Some of them have cameras so you can monitor the progress, however, most of the time it is dark and the little space where you can see something is minimal and only after the print is higher than the vat... so nothing that is going to save your print by you sitting and watching the video feed for eleven hours. So the camera falls under nice-to-have, but not really.

My last suggestion is a printer with a network connection. Mine has a USB and it is not that much of a hassle, but it would be so much nicer if I could just send it to the printer over the network (even if that means I need to go down to the cellar to start it) and avoid the constant sticking-in and pulling out of an USB Stick.

[EDIT] Oh one last thing did occur to me, the only really thing that kind of sucks about Elegoo printers is that you are 'forced' to work with Chitubox, their (made in China) slicing program. I suppose you can use other programs, but it was always too much of a hassle for me to find the right parameters to slice the things correctly. Chitubox is 'ok' and does have a couple nice features but in the end it is a program that gets the job done but does not have any of the neat features that you might find in the other slicing tools.

 

[Pixelworks]

Cool!

I just got a Saturn 4 Ultra 16k and haven't tried it yet. It's my first resin printer. When I saw that the only thing that holds resin in the vat is the FEP, I was like "Dude... really?" It seems so sketchy!

BTW, I do not do it often, but even though it is said not to do it, I do mix and match my resins on occasion (sometimes from different companies) if I need to get a certain color and the worst-case scenario is that one bottle where I dump all the leftover resins together over the last year from different companies, different types. I use that resin cocktail whenever printing prints to test a design, where it does not really matter if there are imperfections. I may have only been extremely lucky, but I have never had problems due to that.