king derelict

I air brushed a light mist of buff all over the tank and then deepened the spray over the lower hull to simulate a dusty vehicle rather than a muddy one (might try that next). Its done a nice job of knocking down the decal contrast too. I made a ditching beam from some spare wood stock and dirtied it up. Its just placed for size at present. I'm wondering if it should have iron bands at each end but my pictures found so far are unhelpful on that issue. I have chains to secure it on the ditching rails. First I will air brush a matte finish and then add the beam and chains Thanks for looking Alan

Thanks Mark I think my oven is more suited to the turkey on Thursday Alan

Thanks Grant The Ender is a great machine for the price. It seems to be Crealitys business plan to ship an "entry level" machine and then have a huge range of upgrades to support it. Being originally supplied as a kit it is amenable to being pulled apart and rebuilt which is nice. The upgrades are generally not expensive . The lack of an upgraded gear is a bit annoying though. They do sell a complete new extruder but I'll see how the new gear holds up now that I'm not banging out 30 hour hull part prints back to back. Alan

I did find a third party selling stainless gears but they got horrible reviews for poor teeth profiles and off centre bores that I didn't give them a try. One reviewer stated that out of ten two were useable. Alan

Hi Mark I was surprised that it has already worn smooth in about four months. It has done some pretty heavy printing though. With all the initial problems i probably printed the equivalent of two hulls to get good prints. The disappointment is that in the extruder upgrade you just get the same brass gear instead of a hardened one> creality seems to prefer selling you bags of ten replacement gears instead. Alan

A day for learning. The replacement aluminium extruder upgrade kit arrived. In typical Creality fashion the instructions were an illustration with no text but there is a good Creality video and it is not very difficult. When I removed the original gear from the exruder I found the cause of many of my recent woes. The PLA filament is obviously quite tough stuff and it had chewed a groove in teh brass wheel removing the majority of the teeth and allowing teh filament to slip. This explains the poor detail and poor structural integrity of some of the prints - especially the more delicate ones. Also when I checked the calibration of the stepper motor I found that for a 100 mm commanded extrusion I only got 90 mm. So the printer has been under extruding the whole time I have had it and I think that is why I have had so much trouble with the alignment to the print bed. With the nozzle under extruding the line of filament being put out is thinner and cooling faster so getting good adhesion to the bed is more difficult. I am amazed now watching the printer putting down solid lines which are well fused to their neighbours and not skipping lines as it fills in sections. Its very encouraging to have found a solid reason for the problem and be able to effect a cure. The upgrade kit provides a brass replacement gear and I haven't seen a further upgrade to a harder material so I suspect this problem will come round again but at least i know the symptoms and the cause. I have invested in a pack of ten gears from Creality for $10. The first prints are very promising so here are a few before and after photos. The four inch gun shield (half) And the piece that brought this all into focus - the life raft racks Now I have to decide how far back to go with repeating prints to clean up their appearance. I had only started printing the detail parts so hopefully not too far. Thanks for looking in. Hopefully the next entry will be a bit more boat like Alan

Thanks Mark. I like to make one change at a time too and looking at the parts to change it doesn't impact teh nozzle so it will be left alone for the while Alan

Minor progress. The decals have been added ready to dirt to layered on and the ditching beam Thanks for looking Alan

Thank you kindly OC. Its a great subject. I would like to try a diorama with one. More plans than time as always Alan

Not a lot of progress here; most of the effort has been with the 3D printer. I added the decals in preparation for washes and dirt. Putting the decals on at the end will leave them far too clean. Thanks for looking in Alan

Thank you Patrick. These Emhar kits have been very enjoyable Alan

Flyhawk have made a beautiful kit. Its going to be great Alan

Thank you Bruce - that is a great photo. Its interesting to see the canvas mudguards in place. That would be a really nice scene to try to model with the figures and the turret door open. I might have to get another kit and see if I can make it work. Many Thanks again Alan

Hopefully I am not going to be disciplined for clogging up the board with too many silly little tank builds but I have enjoyed the simple and fun work between wrestling with the corvette build. This is the Vickers Mark E Type A (twin turret) first built in 1928 by Vickers and rejected by the British Army but sold relatively successfully overseas to several countries. Poland bought 50 and a license to build more in-country. First to Fight is a Polish company and this is the first kit of theirs that I have bought. There are no instructions or decals included but on the underside of the box is a diagram showing the placement of parts and paint scheme I wasn't sure whether it was really a wargaming model rather than a serious scale model but it seems quite nicely detailed with two sprues of parts. The fit of parts is nice. I had to open out the holes in the turret halves to accept the pins but everything else was very well fitting with little flash. I kept the one piece track parts separate for the initial painting. At the end of the brief assembly I had a few bits left over. There seems to be an alternate turret base plate, an extra part for the second turret (only one turret has the part - unsure what it is) and a souple of idler wheels that don't seem to fit anywhere. Everything got a coat of black primer and then a coat of Tamiya Buff as the first of the three colour paint scheme. Now the masking starts for the darker colours. The hull looks straightforward but the turrets may be fiddly. Have a great weekend Alan

Now you have me wanting to dust off the Illustrious kit and dive back into some PE Alan

I hope the digressions into the 3D printing problems are acceptable in a build log rather than just a focus on teh model itself. I wanted to try to capture what I am learning with the process of making the 3D prints and maybe showing the lessons and results as well as the creation of a model This morning I found that the controls on the printer allow a set length of filament to be extruded through the nozzle. So if you set 100 mm and you only get 95 mm its under extruding. That was the sort of information I was looking for so I marked 100 mm on the filament and set it running. It only extruded 50mm! A repeat attempt gave the same result. That is much too far in error to be a factory calibration problem so I wondered if it was the filament possibly being too hard and slipping in the extruder so I got out another reel and this time I got 60 mm instead of a 100 mm. Out of curiosity I tried a brand new reel and got 70mm. The value for each reel seemed repeatable, I can't see anything wrong with the extruder but something is not right. I increased the e-steps (the ratio of stepper motor steps per mm extruded) and a print came out much better. I don't think this is a dependable fix so I have ordered an aluminium extruder upgrade set to replace the factory plastic one. I can only think the extruder gears are slipping and the relative hardness of the filament results in the different extrusion rates. With luck I can get the upgrade installed in the next few days and see how it works out. I might install a new nozzle at the same time. Hopefully the voodoo will return Alan

Sad but probably a good decision; some stuff just doesn't work out and moving on to a fresh adventure is better. Building a stunning Hood will more than compensate. Alan

Great to see this started Alan

Thanks Mark I have been reading that there are a batch of bad motherboards out there that cause extrusion issues, binitial layer instability - makes me wonder. 😄

I painted the raised edges of the tracks with gun metal to show bare metal and dry brushed more randomly onto the track plates. I think the bare metal, remnants of paint and rust is a starting point for adding mud and dirt. A thin coat of acrylic clear coat was then applied ready for oil based washes I dabbled with the mud patch to see if I could improve the mud quality. A welcome break from printer voodoo Thanks for checking in Alan

It think that is the frustration, I'm used to working through a clear diagnostic path to neck down to teh problem. This seems like you could end up with another machines worth of spare bits and still have no idea what is causing the problem. I forgot vibration, fluctuating ambient temperature, phase of the moon etc 😄 Alan

Thanks for the kind comment Denis. Its a relaxing and fun build and seems to be painting up nicely.. I'm tempted to try another in a trench diorama. The lack of colour photos means that evidence of the real colours on WW! tanks is very sketchy. I'm experimenting with the mud! Alan

Most of the day was spent down the rabbit hole of 3D printing but I did manage to get a coat of olive drab on teh Whippet. i tried for thin coats to try to let the black primer shade some of the panel lines and angles. It seems moderately successful Thanks for looking Alan

Darn it - that was looking so good only a couple of posts ago. I notice that I seem to have steered clear of anything that has a clear screen or canopy. I'm sorry to see it finish like this it. It was a great build Alan

Today was mostly spent with the mechanics of printing. I talked to my colleague in Maryland who has an Ender 3 and asked if he could try a print of the life raft support using the gcode file I sent to him to see if its a problem with the file or set up. He was in the middle of a TPU print so forwarded the request to a mutual friend who also has the same machine and he was able to get a good print at the first attempt. That suggests that there is nothing wrong with the files driving the machine and leaves the machine, the operator and the filament as the problem. On line research suggests that it could be one of the following - bad nozzle - under extruding - over extruding - bad motherboard - slack belts - over tight belts - bad stepper motors Its quite a (contrary) list and opens up the possibility of spending a lot of money chasing this around the machine. A new nozzle is not a big issue and an upgraded extruder is not too expensive. The belts look OK. Installing a new motherboard sounds difficult and pricey. The problem is diagnostics seem to be difficult to find; it seems to be a question of keep changing things until the problem goes away. At some point its cheaper to just get a new machine. I need to resolve this to print most of the remaining parts. As you can see in previous images there are areas of bad printing in some of the deck pieces but that can be fixed with primer and filler. The adventure continues Alan