Churchill NA-75 (15mm)

 On the off-chance that we might get a Battlegroup campaign book for Italy before I shuffle off this mortal coil, I've been messing about with one of the estimable Mr Bergman's designs, a Churchill NA75.

I've done almost nothing to the model itself except to add some sockets to magnetize the turret, but I've added a commander figure based on the one I did for my Humber scout car.

I've got a troop of three printed and primed, and now I just have to remember how I painted the last Churchill I did.

I like the way it turned out, but I painted it some considerable time ago in 2018, and I didn't make any notes. So I'll have to work it out by guess and fading memory.

The commander figures in the left and centre vehicles came (I think) from Battlefront, while the one on the right is one I sculpted myself. It's a tad too small I think, but it'll do.

As a side-effect of this tinkering, I made some commander figures that I can insert into any future British vehicles. These are the first batch, in 15mm scale.

I've enlarged them slightly from the original design, so that they fit better with other commercial 15mm figures.

I'd like to make a version in a pixie suit as well, for 1944 onwards.

Bison

I've been messing about with the Sturmpanzer II "Bison" from TigerAce1945's Panzer II Pack, bumping up the detail here and there and refining a bit of the geometry.

His models have been a real boon, to me and to hundreds and thousands of others. Sure, I _could_ make one myself, but then I am very lazy.

The crew figures are a couple of 3dBreed artillerymen that I have edited a bit — I got rid of the loader's Y-yoke, and gave him a better-shaped helmet. Most 3dBreed figures have wide open angry mouths, and I had a fairly limited choice from those that don't.

This will go to give my 15mm Afrika Korps a bit more artillery support. Who knows, one day I may even get that army finished to a state where I could put it on the wargaming table.

2024-02-19

I've printed it a couple of times. The one behind I did before I noticed that it was missing a set of road wheels, so it's actually a bit smaller than it should be. I'll just have to pretend it's further away.

Ah well, I've used less accurate models on the wargames table before I guess; it's still eminently usable, and I doubt that any except the very pernickety will even notice as long as they're not right next to each other.

2024-02-23

I've been fiddling about in Blender, doing a quick procedurally generated terrain to put the model in. It's not really relevant to 3d printing, or at least, not for my purposes. But it's an interesting way of teaching myself a thing or two about Blender's node systems.

Wespe

 

I've been working on a 1:100 scale Wespe in Blender for the last couple of days. I actually started it quite a long time ago, but for whatever reason abandoned it, and I just happened upon the files again in my digital modeling folder.

I've always been quite fond of the Wespe, I like its compact neatness. It's not a blundering bloated behemoth like the Hummel. I saved up my pocket-money to buy a Tamiya 1/35 model of it when I was about 13 — now long gone, alas.

This model has been a bit of a headache, though no more than usual I suppose. I do need to hunt out some more pictorial references though.

I was in two minds about adding much interior detail in the fighting compartment. It does make it look better than an empty shell, but on the other hand it makes putting crew figures in there a bit trickier. The internal clutter I eventually came up with is entirely specious and made up, but it looks okay I think.

When I get a successful test print, I'll do a version in a firing posture with the gun elevated and the back door down.

I've designed it in such a way that the gun and superstructure can be printed separately from the hull, and the running gear as another separate component, so that should (fingers crossed) make printing relatively straightforward.

2024-02-16

I've put the STLs online. They're available at https://www.wargaming3d.com/product/wespe/

It printed well and went together easy-peasy, so that's a win.

I'd think that the assembly of this very simple kit should be fairly obvious, but just in case, I prepared this:

Assembly guide

Flayed Demon Thing

 

I don't know what this thing is supposed to be, but it looks angry.

I think the design is from Schlossbauer*, in which case I would have got it from Thingiverse. It's been sitting in the painting queue for some considerable time, a couple of years at least.

* Nope, apparently it's a Gormaw from EC3D Designs,

Sergeant Measureby is, as usual, doing sterling scale-indicating work with his Spear of 5mm Increments.

A Mighty Boar

Miguel Zavala (who goes by the name MZ4250 on various online platforms) recently designed a bunch of mounts for TTRPG characters, and this is one of them, a Giant Boar.

The original model was armoured with plate barding, which I removed, and I gave it a more compact base. This is a particularly long-legged boar, and I've made another remix to shorten his legs — I haven't printed that one yet.

Sergeant Measureby, with his Spear of 5mm Increments, is shown alongside for scale.

PzJg38 Hetzer

 

A perennial favourite, the PzJg 38 Hetzer. This is a vehicle that for some reason I haven't owned or fielded since my early wargaming days in the late '70s. Now it has distracted me from all the other things I really should finish off.

This model is, once again, based on a design by the prolific Mr Bergman that I have tidied up and added some detail to. I have the first test print printing right this moment, so hopefully it will all be well, and I can add it to the ever-extending paint queue.

Later...

I'll call that a win I think. The test print went well, so if I ever find I need more than one 15mm Hetzer I know I can get them.

Kit Printing Possibilities

 

I haven't bothered printing my models on my Mars Pro as a kit of components, because the water-washable resin I was using was so dimensionally unstable that the components never, ever fitted together properly.

However, the spirit-based resin I've started using has been behaving very much better, so I thought I'd give kit-printing a go again.

The benefit of printing a model in multiple parts is that I can adjust the angling of each component on the print bed to maximise the benefit of supports, without those supports interfering with other parts of the model. Also, if an individual component fails, the reprinting time is usually much shorter, and there's less waste of expensive resin.

The Wirbelwind hull on the left of this photo was printed in one piece, and you can see that the dense mass of supports required for all the little nooks and nubbins of the running gear has interfered severely with areas of the model geometry. 

Some supports went right through important parts of the model, while others broke away parts of the tracks as they were removed.

The model on the right was printed with the running gear as separate components, and a much better result was achieved.

I'll certainly be less definite about printing models in one piece in the future.

Wirbelwind

 

Back on the ground again, and this time I'm working on a 1:100 (15mm) Flakpanzer Wirbelwind, mounting a 20mm Flakvierling. Mr. Bergman has given us a 37mm Ostwind, but this particular flakpanzer has been lacking until now. At least, as far as I've found.

The hull is taken from a Panzer IV-J (by Bergman I think). I've added a bit of detail refinement, and replaced the running gear with some by TigerAce1945. The crew are some figures I sculpted some time ago, and the turret and flakvierling are done from scratch, using one of the Bradford 1:72 drawings as reference. The armament is done pretty much by guess and memory; it's not all that visible in this scale, so I haven't busted a gut over accuracy. We'll see just how much that gnaws at me.

If I wanted to do a version with the guns elevated in their AA role, I'd have to completely redesign them. That's maybe a task for another day.

I might tinker with it a bit more, but it's in a usable state now.

2024-02-03

I reverted to a somewhat simplified running gear module as it would be easier to print, and would still look decent enough on the table top in this small scale.

I extracted the original running gear from the Pz.IV hull and set to work on it.

As usual, I discovered that it would have been more straightforward (and probably quicker) to have just built it from scratch, but by the time I decided on that I was too far through the process to stop and start over. Hey-ho.

I made a set with some track face detail as well.

Whether it's worth the trouble of printing it or not remains to be seen.

2024-02-05

Here's a comparison shot: the red primed vehicle on the right has running gear modules with just plain bars to indicate track links, while the raw grey resin one has some more indented detail.

The more detailed tracks definitely look better close up, but at tabletop distances there's not a lot to choose between them. The little nubbins running around the edges of the tracks are more visually important in suggesting links than the face detail.

In future, unless the track run is more exposed, I don't think it's really worth the extra effort to detail the track link faces. However, I've done this one now, so I might as well use it.