Starship Modeler Discussion Forums

Joseph C. Brown wrote:Thanks, Steve!


But when I do the math, 40 years ago was 1976 and I was 14.

Ah. There is that. Well....then, how do you feel about New Zealand?

You amaze me, Joe. 40 years ago, you would easily have found employment at ILM.

By the end of the month or early December, I'll have that 1/72nd Gato I've been looking forward to for rather a long time. I will also have all the Eduard photo-etch I need. I just learned about annealing the stuff, and will certainly need to do that for this enormous boat. But there are large swath...

Tracy, your best bet in my opinion is Rhino3D. It has the capacity to take work with a large point cloud to create a mesh: http://www.rhino3d.com/new/capture

That's what I was thinking of when I made that suggestion, Chas. I ran into surface plates for the first time last fall in an entry level machine tool class. Mistreat that great big block of rock and teach would be all over us.

If the surface is large, I'd suggest getting a nice 12" x 12" thick marble or granite floor tile from Home Depot or Lowes, and then taping a piece of appropriate grit sandpaper to the surface. This product is very flat, rigid and robust. Then, applying light pressure only over the center o...

Isopropyl alcohol removes sharpie ink. Use generously. Lather, rinse, repeat. If marked on a flat painted surface, yer scrod.

Ah. Good work. You split that hair right down the middle , John!! ;) But while you do raise a good point, I always want to see the big picture as well as the specific steps. Evaluating one's decals is the first thing one should do before anything else, lest they be unfortunately surprised. I can't r...

Not so fast, John. Depending on the pedigree of the decals, I understand some folks prepare the decal sheet itself in some way. I'm curious about this myself as some of my older kits in the stash, the one's I really, really know I'm going to build at some point, have decals that may be more fragile ...

I used three of the red/green alternating color 10mm units for the gear indicator lights in my cockpit. Very bright! The warm white 10mm LED's I got for my Seaview aren't quite as bright, but I have a feeling that will be good, since those lights don't want to be super effective, searchlights or not...

starseeker wrote:... In the dark days of flint knives, stone tools, and 3 and 5mm leds...

LOFL!

You can add 10mm LED's to your list, and warm white one's at that. Last month I got a number of 10mm white one's for my Seaview searchlights. Huge mutha's.

Starseeker...what you're describing is a different beast with multiple LED's behind a plastic light diffuser of some sort. The LED product in this thread is a single LED applied to the edge of a special formulation of acrylic that produces an even glow throughout the miniature panel.

Use in models....for me...Hah! But for my flight simulator....another thing. This will make creating my next generation of control panels extremely sweet. Must share with my cockpit building buddies. Excellent find!

I was wondering if anyone had firm knowledge that using Mr Surfacer - a primer - might not be a good idea for a final coat. I've used this product and the finish is astounding right out of the rattle can. I know that primers are intended to give subsequent paint a degree of bite, but when the primer...

Immerse in very hot, if not boiling water. Remove. Straighten and hold until cool. Repeat as necessary. Did this once with okay results. I'd approach the heat of the water cautiously. I've got one of these things too.....thanks for the reminder. I need to get it sold.

It's fine as long as that's a typical 20 ma LED.

http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

I've had some stuff grown for a personal project and parts of the long out of production SSC Christopher Columbus were grown as well. In the main, though, I'm nowhere's near a GK kit producer and have no desire to be. I'm just a happy polygon pusher for flight sim, rendered images and video. WarpeD ...

If you're a student, McNeel does offer an academic discount! Have fun. Rhino is more addictive than drugs.

Magics wraps the model in a completely new polygon mesh that exactly conforms to the original outlines, and covers voids. Kind of like a wetsuit for a 3D model. :P I'm aware of it, I saw Tony's (tonzye) presentation at Wonderfest a few years ago. I have no problem with that approach, but it's an ext...

You're welcome. One of the tricks is getting used to slicing surfaces - making other surfaces to serve as tools. That, and object snap. You can do some really nice precision stuff. If you think the Rhino interface is hard, try Blender! (Then again, maybe it's more like Lightwave. Dunno. Blender is f...

The trick to RP is what's called a "watertight mesh." NURBS modeling is terrific, but in the end you will have to "mesh" the model bits before you can export to .stl for RP. You can't RP from NURBS. Rhino will tell you if your polysurfaces are "closed" or "open.&qu...

When you've got the LED, the camera flash, the camera electronics, color tone of your monitor and all of the other fiddly bits involved in getting the picture of the LED from LED to your eyes, the color balance has way too many opportunities to get skewed. I suggest ordering a small quantity and try...

Listen to everything Ed has to say. The 1/72nd scale Typhoon submarine he made for the Pima Air & Space Museum remains one of the coolest large scale models I've seen. The guy knows what he's doing!

All of your Activeboard links are dead. Access denied.

You mean duct tape won't do the trick?

This was helpful when I did calculations for my cockpit LED's (didn't follow through....didn't have right kind of backlit panels made. )....

http://led.linear1.org/led.wiz

In the late middle 1900's, around the time of the legendary US lunar space program, when I needed to tint a model aircraft canopy I used Rit Fabric dye. Duration of immersion darkens the tint, although it never got truly dark. Watch out for using just black - it has a strong purplish lean.

Wish I'd known about the plexi thing earlier. It's holding up so far with the plex scuffed with 320 grit.....I just don't want to have to take apart all of the switch panels in my cockpit to repaint the supporting framework....made of plexiglas, naturally. Next time....a good scuff and good ol' Kryl...

The reason for Krylon's Fusion is to get a chemical bond that is not supposed to need the very same sanding that any other paint typically needs when used on plastic. That way you can take advantage of that super smooth surface while saving work time. In theory. Theory disproven, in my case, anyway....