A few years ago, Winchell Chung (of
Atomic Rockets) and I were discussing the lifeboats/re-entry vehicles from the old Hawk MOL kit:
I made a
1/72 scratchbuild years ago, followed by a
1/72 3D printed version.
The versions I made were all based on the kit parts while Winchell's was a 3D version of the boxtop vehicles (and of the original design). He sent me the .obj files (which were not printable) and I started working on making them printable.
I had my 3D version printed at Shapeways, but they've been a disappointment over the years. This - in part - caused the Winchell version to languish.
Recently, I saw that
Fantastic Plastic has a version in 1/48; this and other events (one being my getting a larger printer and needing suitable test subjects) motivated me to finish the conversion of Winchell's version and send him a printed and painted model.
The Elegoo Saturn is a considerably larger printer than the Mars I'd used before and it can have a painful learning curve. I tried many different prints of the re-entry vehicle (1/144 hollow, 1/144 solid, 1/72 hollow and 1/72 solid) while adjusting the parameters until I decided to go with the brute force method of printing several solid versions right on the build plate, which usually isn't the best solution but it worked well here.
I had a small indentation in the rear (right on the build plate) for the engine insert, but the resin didn't fully empty, so I had to come up with a solution. Here is the model with some slight sanding and the engine insert glued to the rear:
Rear view:
Compared to my "kit version":
I wasn't happy with the 3D printed engine section, so I used a small square of styrene and some Gundam add-on parts to recreate it. I printed a decal with the positions of the parts (to use as a guide) and glued the parts over the decals.
I screwed up the paint job slightly when I darkened the panel lines - it looks far worse in these pictures - it's not very visible in the original:
The model is on its way to Winchell now. The files are his, so it's up to him to make them available to others.
