Small Scale Military Headquarters

I went down to Kinkos today to enlarge some scale prints that I have.
I enlarged a Stuart tank a Jagdtiger and a LVT with a Stuart turret on top just for laughs.

Well I tell you guys the Jagdtiger was awesome it really spoke to me.

The Stuart , I enlarged a Honey and the M-5 and compared it to a 1/18 scale Shermy my head was racing with the possibilities. This could be done ! Man the Stuart has always been my favorite American tank. Wheels and such match up after a amount of work.

The LVT is about 4 inches longer than the Sherman and over a full track wider. Didn't Red do a LVT ? The LVT's track are kind of simple and the wheels are kind of small and with that turret you don't have to worry about an interior.

I sure wish making the models were as easy as enlarging the prints. All of these projects would not be hard to do.

Oh I did leave one thing out we don't have the KT yet so the Jagdtiger would be a bit of a task.

i've done lots of that enlarging stuff in the past. Years ago i was really into it and enlarged all kinds of pictures of tanks and planes to 1/18 scale, glued them onto cardboard and cut them out. Was fun for a while but in the long run it only made me long for the 1/18 scale models of them even more.

Last year, however i did it with a u-boat (12.5 feet long) and a british destroyer (16.5 feet long). Both took a while to piece together and cut out but it was a lot of fun. When summer came the humidity spiked and they both curled up like potato chips. They're a bit better now in the dry winter air so i keep them hanging on the walls as they look neat. When i retire i'm going to build 1/18 model versions of both of them....i figure each will take a year or so to make.

When I was reading your post PH, I thought yeah it would be cool to draw or photograph something and somehow make the parts you need from the reference.
Then I remembered a thing called Stereo Lithography where you can make models or prototypes out of resin and lasers. It really is phenomenal what you can do with this technology.
I wonder if model makers or toy makers use these now. I wish I had the bucks to get one, then the schooling to use it:
http://www.modelin3d.com/

Hey yall!!!Why---yes I did!!! If yall want you can go check it out in the CUSTOMS and MODS forum---I bumped the thread back up to the top!!!---RED---

Dauntless wrote:When I was reading your post PH, I thought yeah it would be cool to draw or photograph something and somehow make the parts you need from the reference.
Then I remembered a thing called Stereo Lithography where you can make models or prototypes out of resin and lasers. It really is phenomenal what you can do with this technology.
I wonder if model makers or toy makers use these now. I wish I had the bucks to get one, then the schooling to use it:
http://www.modelin3d.com/

$9,000 price tag kind of pricey but it could pay for itself in 6 months. But it is not available for retail yet. I wonder how much it would cost to make the masters ? They do not tell you. They use some kind of resin/plastic that is cured by UV. The wave of the future but we are not there yet. I guess I will keep be my magna lite and a X-acto for a while. And a lot of head sratching and eye rubbing to go with that.

9000 is a lot better than it used to cost. Starting to get in the realm of affordability. I wonder how much it would cost to make an average sized tank model, material-wise. Would it be the same resin you use, pH or something else?

Certainly has possibilities for the future..

aferguson wrote:9000 is a lot better than it used to cost. Starting to get in the realm of affordability. I wonder how much it would cost to make an average sized tank model, material-wise. Would it be the same resin you use, pH or something else?

Certainly has possibilities for the future..

I don't know they said material activated with UV lights . Nothing I everheard of. So deffinatley nothing I use.

I have already seen this in action on one of those Science programs. A guy made a distributor cap from a drawing then it rose out of a vat. They are using this process to make prosthetic parts for people.

I think this is the wave of the future for toy prototype making.

Imagine drawing an action figure and the machine makes it. It would then take some skill to figure out the joints, but that can come later.

Seems to me this would revolutionize the model making industry. Especially when there are existing blueprints of military hardware. The software can probably adjust the size down to scale to exacting specs.
It's probably a little
ways off but it seems to me a lot of the mold making of different parts of say an XD model's development can be shortened.

It would still take experts at modeling or figuring out how to piece it together though.

There is already 3D scanning technology.
It's then a little hop skip and jump from there me thinks.

But no I wouldn't get rid of any of your modeling tools.

Here's some info on UV activated resin:
https://decs.nhgl.med.navy.mil/DIS55/sec5.htm

Our parent company owns a rapid prototyping machine and they use two different type of materials; one is very brittle and can be used for mock ups and fit-to checks only. The other material is a bit more durable. We make 3-D copies of our customer's punch mandrels for use in the plant checking fit. Not to many problems with these yet...