CMP Chevy 15cwt 3d print

Here's my 3d printed CMP Chevrolet 15cwt light truck, all painted and crewed. The gunner is an assemblage of various bits and pieces out of the spares box; I think (though I'm not sure) that the figure is a gunner from a 25 pounder. It's from Battlefront, in any case, as is the Bren gun.

I have a bunch more of them awaiting paint, but this is the only one I've printed with the roof hatch open. Which turns out to be a relief, since putting the gunner together was kind of a pain with my decrepit eyes and fingers.

The markings are entirely specious; I know almost nothing about British WWII softskin markings, so I just made them up.

The model is available from my new shop on Gumroad.

CMP 15cwt (15mm)

I remodeled my CMP Chevy 3-tonner into a 15cwt light truck.

I thought it would be a simple job — just shorten the bed and rear chassis, move some things around, cut the canopy in half and resculpt it a bit....

It was not as simple a job as I had expected.

Partly due to lack of forethought in the original modeling, with respect to making changes in the future, but mostly because I decided to have a go at open flaps at the rear of the canopy, and (probably due to my inexperience with sculpting in Blender) that proved to be a much tricker task than I thought it would be. Somehow the smooth, clean sculpting the Youtube Dudes manage as a matter of course eluded me.

Still, it's done now, and the first test print is on the printer as I type this. Hopefully I can start to replace some of the Austin Tilleys I've been using for all my light trucking needs up until now.

Here's the test print, finished. I've removed its supports and airbrushed it with a coat of primer. The officer is a WW1 british figure from Peter Pig, the guy sticking out of the roof hatch is (I think) a gunner from a Battlefront 25 pounder.

Overall I'm fairly happy with how it turned out, and I've learned a bit about how not to make my life more difficult than it really needs to be.

CMP Chevy — FDM Test Prints

Left: 0.08mm layer height
Right: 0.1mm layer height

I've done a couple of test prints of the CMP Chevy model I designed the other day. Both models have had their supports removed, and been airbrushed with a primer coat, but no other post-processing has been done as yet.

On the left, the most recent version, after I'd sculpted in the folds and billows of the canvas tilt, and printed at a layer height of 0.08mm, that being an even multiple of the Ender 3's Z-stepping.

On the right, an older iteration, while the tilt was still in its basic geometry, printed at 0.1mm.

There is not a great deal of difference between the two in terms of layer artifacts, but the layer-stepping in the 0.1mm model is definitely more visibly pronounced on the sloping upper surfaces. Going to the finer layers does add to the printing time — another 25% — but it will be a bit easier to smooth down the upper surfaces.

As far as the sculpting of the canvas tilt goes, I'm fairly happy with it. The modelling on the sides could maybe be exaggerated a little bit more, but it doesn't need too much. Go too far, and it will start looking overly cartoonish. I've learned that I didn't really need to worry about pre-modelling the folds of the canvas over the ends before moving to sculpting in Blender; in fact, it probably made my life harder than it needed to be. I could have just modelled up the folds entirely within the sculpting mode.

Softskins

Trucks are not something that most wargames model companies tend to spend much effort on. They'll do some of the most common ones, just to show willing, and leave it at that. I can't say that I blame them, since most wargamers are equally uninterested in spending money on anything that doesn't have armour and goes boom.

I've been looking through my old Military Modelling magazines for scale drawings of some of the more interesting looking British trucks of the interwar period and WWII. I don't really need them, as such; I have enough common-or-garden 15mm truck models to stand in when I want to deploy them on to the game table, but I'd like to be able to field some of the funkier looking vehicles that were pressed into service. The interwar Thornycrofts, for example, that were still being used in WWII, and looked like something out of the Great War.

This one is the first fruit of my digital trucking loins, a CMP Chevrolet 3-tonner. It's not a truck that is hard to come by a model of, even in 1:100 scale, but I did it to learn my way around modelling non-tankish things, and also because this one will be dead easy to change to the 15cwt version just by cutting the back in half and moving a few bits around. The main thing I need experience with is the fabric tilt — I need to learn just how far I need to take the sculpting to ensure that it looks appropriately canvas-like when it's printed on my FDM printer.

More Trucks

I've added a couple more trucks to my 15mm 1940 B.E.F. truck fleet. In this case they're actually 1:100 scale Soviet Zis 5 trucks by Zvezda, but they're generic-looking enough for my purposes to be requisitioned civilian Fiats or the like.

These are snap-together kits, and not too bad for the price, but they do lack detail on the sides of the canopy and cargo bed (just like their Opel Blitz model). I've painted in some drapery in the canvas, and drawn in the planking with a 0.1mm technical pen.