Interwar Micros

I've been revisiting a bunch of my interwar vehicle models, rescaling them to 1:285 for micro gaming, and I've put them up on wargaming3d.com in packs of six to eight models.

This first one is British: a Birch Gun SPG, a Peerless armoured car, a Lanchester Mk.II, a Burford-Kegresse half-track MG carrier/APC, a Lancia armoured lorry, and a Carden-Loyd Carrier Mk.VI.

It's available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/british-interwar-micro-pack-other/

The next one is also British, but it's tanks this time.

There's the A1E1 Independent, the Vickers Medium C, The Vickers Medium Mk.III, The Vickers Medium Mk.II and II*, and the Medium Mk.II Hornet.

It's at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/british-interwar-micro-pack-other/

 The third is a bunch of Soviets.

This is the Komintern heavy tractor, the T24 medium tank, the Austin-Kegresse half-track armoured car, the Garford-Putilov SPG lorry, the Benz-Mgebrov armoured car, the T27 tankette, the SU18 SPG, and the T18 light tank.

You can get this pack from https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/interwar-soviet-micro-pack/

3d Printing – SLA vs. FDM

These 3d printed vehicles are all 1/285 scale, so the largest of them is only about 25mm (an inch) long. I thought these tiny little models would do best to compare the merits of FDM and SLA printing.

All of the SLA prints were done by Shapeways, and all in their "Smooth Fine Detail Plastic" material, which is the lower of the two detail options they offer in resin printing.

The two FDM prints were done by me on my Ender 3 with a 0.4mm nozzle at 0.08mm layer height in PLA.

1. Vickers Medium Mk.III — SLA
2. Burford Kegresse — SLA
3. Carden-Loyd MG carrier — SLA
4. Vickers Medium Mk.II — FDM
5. Vickers Medium Mk.II — FDM. Printed with no gun barrel, and a brass pin added later.
6. Vickers Medium Mk.II** — SLA

SLA uses a UV laser to selectively cure a photopolymer, layer by layer, within a wax support medium, so requires no additional supports and is capable of rendering very fine surface detail. The sloping panels are cleaner owing to its finer layer discrimination. Shapeways used to have information on the exact layer heights on their website, but they no longer do now that they've "improved" their site design again.

DLP is another process that uses a photosensitive resin, but in a different manner: it employs a LCD screen to expose each layer in one go. It has the advantage that the amount of build-plate coverage has no effect on its print speed, but the disadvantage that its horizontal resolution is dictated by the resolution of the LCD exposure screen it uses. The finer screens now available, and antialiasing technologies, have improved this substantially in just a few years, but it is still likely that pixelation effects might be seen on curved surfaces. Nevertheless, like SLA it is generally capable of much finer layer heights than FDM printing. DLP printing uses printed support structures in much the same way as FDM.

The two FDM examples I've shown here, for all the limitations of that medium, are really not too bad as wargaming models. Both of these have been printed at 0.08mm layer height; my machine will go as low as 0.04mm, but with only a slight improvement in visual quality, and at the cost of doubling the print time. The surface detail is much lower than SLA (or DLP) is capable of, though this could be improved by printing with a smaller nozzle — 0.2mm or 0.25mm — though this once again increases print times substantially.

I'm unlikely to do any more 1/285 scale printing myself, as my eyesight has grown too poor to easily distinguish the different models on the wargames table without a lot of leaning and peering. However, as you can see, it's certainly a viable prospect to print usable 6mm wargames vehicles, even on a cheap entry-level printer.

MicroVickers

This is a model I printed a little while ago when I was learning my way around what to expect from my Ender-3, now all painted up and ready for the wargames table. It's a model I originally designed to be SLA-printed by Shapeways, modified to print better on my own FDM machine.

It's is a British Vickers Medium Mk.II, the standard workhorse tank of the British army from the mid 1920s through to the mid 1930s.

The model has been printed in PLA at 0.08mm, and I modified the model to remove the gun and leave a dimple to indicate where I should bore a hole for a brass pin. Printing wires in this size is seldom very successful I've found, and using a piece of brass is much cleaner and easier in the long run. The paints are all Vallejo acrylics.

The model quality is surprisingly good; I wasn't really expecting anything much more than a vaguely Vickers-shaped blob, but the detail the printer has rendered is quite acceptable in a wargaming piece.

Ford Trekker DUF 1940 (1:285)

Back to the 3d-printing mines again, and this time I've designed a 1:285 scale Ford DAF Trekker, used by the Dutch (and then the Germans) as a light anti-tank gun tractor and utility vehicle.

It came in various configurations, with two or three bench seats and a large or small trunk, and several different styles of engine grille. This is one of the 1940 models.

The single model is available from http://shpws.me/Ppur, and a much more cost-effective sprue of six is available at http://shpws.me/Ppxl

I don't usually start my designing in 1:285, I usually build the base model in 1:100 and then re-scale and re-design from that base. This was a special case though, as it was specifically a 6mm request.

K-Wagen (1:285)

3-up sprue

Single model

I've re-scaled my model of the K-Wagen to 1:285 for use in 6mm games.

It's available as a single model or as a 3-up sprue.

This would be a real monster on the wargames table; it's about 47mm long and 25mm across the beam. That would make it even more massive than the Soviet WWII T-35.

Guns! Guns! Guns!

These are the first models I've designed specifically for 1:285 (6mm) scale, rather than starting out with a 1:100 scale model and down-scaling it. As a consequence, they're very much simplified in terms of their geometry, and I've had to make no real changes to accommodate Shapeways' 3d-printing material limitations. So, hoorah.

They're available from my Shapeways shop at http://shpws.me/MGqB for $17 ($22 for the super-duper detailed resin).

In the early part of WWII, British medium gun batteries were huge: twelve guns each. That didn't last all that long; though able to bring down a frightening amount of firepower in a very short space of time, the twelve-gun batteries weren't flexible enough in use, and they were split up into more manageable sizes.

However, if you want to represent an early battery, you need a lot of guns, so here they are: twelve early-model 25 pounders with their limbers. The guns are represented in firing mode, and I haven't yet made a model of a quad tractor — when I do, I'll probably make another sprue with the guns and limbers in travel mode. But that may not be for a while; it's not a big priority for me.

T27a tankette (1:285)

Here's the diminutive interwar Soviet T27a tankette in 1:285 scale. It's small enough in 1:100, but this one is only about 9.5mm long.

It's at http://shpws.me/MDlJ

They really need to be used in swarms, so I may have to go back on my resolution to delay sprued multiples just this once. I'll have to find out something about the composition of the units they were used in to determine the optimal number to put on a sprue.

---

OK, so it turns out that the pricing sweet spot for this one is for ten tankettes on the sprue. The single model is $11, while this lot — two whole platoons of tankettes — is only $15.

I couldn't find precise information about the Soviets' use of tankettes specifically, but I did find out that light tank battalions used five-tank platoons right up until they were disestablished in 1943, and I'm making the assumption that tankettes were organised similarly.

The ten-up sprue is available at http://shpws.me/MDzT

Lancia (1:285)

Here's the Lancia armoured truck in 1:285 scale, based on the 1921 version used in Ireland and elsewhere.

I should probably also put out a version with the anti-missile cage frame mounted over the back, though it would look a lot chunkier in this scale than it actually was.

You can get it at http://shpws.me/MDfo

I've decided to hold off on putting out any more multiple-model sprues until I can be sure that the single models will print successfully. It shouldn't impact too much on my clientele anyway; I don't recall very many people buying other than the single models, which indicates to me that they're being bought by collectors rather than gamers, since the sprues are all so much better value for money if you're wanting more than one.

And here's the version with the anti-missile frame, as used in Ireland. It would have been covered in wire mesh, to ward off grenades, bricks and other missiles (though I doubt that it would have been any use against the contents of chamber-pots).

That's as thin as I can make the framing, but remember that although it looks like it's made out of telephone poles the members are actually only 0.6mm thick.

You can get this one at http://shpws.me/MDhT

Austin-Kegresse in 1/285

This is the next on the list of miniaturizations — the Austin-Kegresse half-track, based on the Austin-Putilov armoured car.

This one was a bit of a nightmare to re-scale; it needed a lot more work than usual to make it printable. I think I've got it now... fingers crossed.

The single model is available at http://shpws.me/MD4g

The five-up sprue is at http://shpws.me/MD4i

(I've temporarily withdrawn the five-up sprue until I've had a successful print of the single model).

More Shrinkage

Next up, the WW1 and interwar Russian/Soviet Garford-Putilov. It's an ugly thing, but somehow endearing.

The single model is at http://shpws.me/MCK5

The four-up sprue is at http://shpws.me/MCK6