Italian Construction Difficulties

M15/42 model designed by m_bergman. Arrows indicate areas of bleeeagh.

I need to give my Italians armoured support a bit more effective than the humble CV-35, and this is what I currently have for that purpose.

It's actually a M15/42, but thanks to the conservatism of Italian tank design in the early part of WWII, it looks similar enough to the earlier M13/40 and M14/41 that it can stand in for both of those versions on the tabletop without raising too many eyebrows, except amongst the rivet-counters, and screw them.

The hull of this one was printed in one piece, standing up on its tail. This orientation renders the  sloping panels of the hull rear, and the long slope of the track-guards, in the smoothest possible manner. However, it means that the vertical areas have to be printed with supports, and such areas never print cleanly. Worse, the port rear idler and track failed to print at all from the start, so it's left a horrible mangled mess there until it got its act together.

None of this makes it unusable as a wargaming model, but I'd like to do better if I can.

I'm experimenting with bisecting the hull and tracks, and printing it in two halves.

This will print both the sloping and vertical panels as smoothly as possible, and though some supports are still necessary, they are minimised.

I haven't created any locating sockets in the joining faces, so I'll have to align them by eye. And for that, I think a slightly slower-setting cyanoacrylate will be best — I don't want to have to hold everything in place for too long, but I do want a little bit of working time.

Anyway, I'll be curious to see how it turns out. I've done this sort of thing before, with some success, on my Guy Lizard, so I'm reasonably confident that it will work out OK.

Split, printed and glued together

Later....

The split print worked just fine, and as an added bonus it reduced the amount of supports necessary, and they came away much more easily too.

The problematic areas in the first print (above) printed perfectly cleanly on this one.

It is possible to see where the join line is, but once the camo paint goes on that will be pretty much invisible. I could fill it I suppose, but I think that would be needless effort for my purposes.