Kevin-the-lubber

That looks like a good idea, I’ll be very interested in how you get on. Previously I’ve tried tweaking svg’s created from photos, but that’s not been terribly successful, I always seem to end up with vector triangles all over the place.

Still chipping away at it.... renders of (maybe) final modelling of everything so far, bar the lowest rail, which still needs a small bit of work to make it a kit part. The zigzag lines are not real of course, just the software can do. Everything yellow is a separate part, fits into place on the stern plate, either in a recess or via locating pins (the toothed rail). For anyone interested, the ideal clearance seems to be 0.2mm as a rule of thumb. I overlap wherever possible but even where this isn't possible, the join gaps are virtually non-existent in test pieces. Lower balustrade next, then all the really tricky bits, the scrolls, figurines and trophy. The name has to wait until I mirror to create the whole thing. There's so much sketch detail underlying this that I doubt the software could cope with everything doubled as I go. The plan is to try to make the scrollwork integral to the toothed rail and lower balustrade respectively, whether that'll be printable I don't yet know. Otherwise maybe dovetails to link them post-printing. Everything is straightforward-ish when done in the flat as per the trial parts, but much less so when doing it true to the curved face plate. The ropework is probably a bit over-scaled but it's such a pretty feature I will at least leave it this size for the first print, paint and join. Note to self - remember to add the location holes for the lanterns!

I think this is just what I need, there are a few bits on the victory that I doubt I’ll ever get right in fusion.

I’d never even heard of these drawing tablets, think I’ll give that a go when I’m finished with the parts I can do in f360. I’ll need to try to sculpt some figurines soon. The other day I read with interest an article on home made 3D scanners on All3d. All of which looked simple and cheap to make. No good for something on your scale, Haze, but maybe useful for recreating small objects.

I’m on the cusp of trying to get a handle on blender myself, to remake some figures. My previous attempts at remodelling svg’s or was it stl’s have not gone terribly well, things weren’t behaving as I expected, so I guess I’ll have to spend some time learning it properly. why is a pen tablet needed? I’ve just used a PC.

You do quickly run up against the size limitations with the small home machines. But even something like the peopoly is many times the cost of the elegoo Mars I bought a couple of months ago. Personally, I think if I was to ‘invest’ any further I’d want to look at SLS and solve the supports and brittleness problems that come with resin, but that’s a whole different ball game cost-wise.

March 2021: Work in progress.... scratch built stern plate, mostly modelled in Fusion 360, printed in resin. The end aim is that this will go together as a mini-kit that allows the ochre-coloured parts to be painted prior to assembly so that the lines are completely clean and largely slot into place in the pre-painted black plate. This is the first proper print of the plate and top windows and I have some work to do on the fit clearances, which currently are too tight at 100 microns (0.1mm). Also, on thicknesses - go too thin and you become a hostage to the brittleness of resin, parts can snap during clean-up. It fits surprisingly well to the hull though, but needs the odd tweak here and there. Also need to convert the trials of items like the balustrades, scrolls, figurines, ropes etc into kit pieces i.e. add location pins or grooves, some of which will be further improved, especially the trophy, but it's coming along well enough. I particularly like the rope work, it comes out so beautifully in resin. I've taken licence and changed those two portholes to follow the curve, as that's how they appear on photos of the real thing. And then next will be the side galleries. These will be more challenging as the geometry is devilishly complex and I have a feeling I'm going to need to model the stern section of the hull itself, using Anatomy of the Ship drawings as the start point, as a means to the end. For the stern, I've used the model itself as the key reference (as it obviously has to fit to that!) but re-designed a lot of the detail to be more consistent with photos of the real thing.

That made me laugh. Yup, perfect description. Re’ F360, guns etc. I haven’t used the function yet but somewhere there’s a tool to add a wall thickness, might that help? Personally, on my try out on the filament printer (as far as I’ve gone with cannons), I split it halfway down the barrel and dowelled the two halves together with a bit of filament, which came out fine. That way you avoid the ugly seams along the length and possibly any need for supports if using resin. It was too tricky doing upright in filament, far too much tendency for the filament to cause the barrel to wobble, so I’ll do them in resin when I get to it. I don’t have any probs with my elegoo, so long as I set the supports and orientation right.

Oh dear. I feel myself falling.... I've had a few stabs at blender and meshmixer without the least success, but they may make more sense now that I'm over the hump with F360. Even between this and my last reply I was starting to think, all the plans are there in 'the anatomy of...." series, section by section. It probably wouldn't even be that hard to scan and convert to sketches, then loft.

Please, no more, I can't take it :-). Way, way back I came to these forums because I'd just bought the heller victory and needed to figure out some really simple things. After seeing Danials amazing work and that of several others I became lost to this hopeless pursuit for making the detail better. Now you're throwing self-printed hulls into the mix. I have the kit - both filament and resin printers. I'm starting to get a handle on F360. It's not looking good. More seriously, I'd love to be able to build the entire kit from scratch, since that would allow me to design in all the detail I could ever wish for. Those are some very impressive models, Haze, and if it wouldn't lead me astray I'd love to know how you set about designing them.

That MPCNC is really interesting. What kind of accuracy is possible? You're right that the time and effort involved in designing stuff, especially very detailed or awkward bits, can be disproportionate but for me this is okay as I'm a problem solver by nature and quite enjoy that moment of triumph when you figure out how to get what you want out of the software or hardware; if I wasn't designing model parts, I'd just be looking for something else to fix 🙂. And as it's a cold, wet winter I'd rather be sat here than in the workshop with numb fingers and toes. The setup for filament printing micro-parts is much more difficult than resin and you can end up chasing your tail with so many variables. Although I've never been able to print a single thing in ABS I've had great results with PETG & PLA on larger items and one major advantage over resin is that with, PETG for instance, the parts are flexible and robust whereas small or very fine resin parts are quite fragile and brittle. The downside (of filament) is that you simply can't get anywhere near the level of detail possible with resin and, unfortunately, this is visibly apparent. I've tried the smallest nozzles (0.1mm) but the reality is that this is pushing too far at the margins, at least of the home printer. Resin is a different ball game altogether. The point at which it's too small to print (less than 0.05mm) seems to be below that which is noticeable to the (unaided) eye. The pic below is work in progress, designing & printing the Trophy of Arms for the stern of the 1:100 Heller Victory. Feathers not quite there yet but look at the detail on the crown and the feather edges. Horses for courses I guess.

And then some! While I’ve largely got (beginners level) grips with F360 now, it can take many, many hours to create each piece. The upside is that instead of tearing your hair out when the scratch built doesn’t fit or doesn’t look good enough, you can just tweak the design a tad, print again and so on. And the 3D route also means you can make several extras with no additional effort, to play around with painting, glueing etc until you’re happy with what you’ve got. But, in case I make it all sound too easy, it still requires a lot of determination and perseverance and there are some long learning curves along the way.

I’ve just bought a SLA printer (Elegoo Mars, around £300 including the other essentials to start printing) as I was never going to get the results I wanted with the filament printer. I was a little nervous that this would be as frustrating and disappointing as FDM but the results of a few tests are fantastic and it’s a darned sight easier than FDM. I went down the FDM route when I originally bought, this time last year, as SLA sounded messy and fiddly, having to wash and cure resin prints, but actually this is not the hassle it sounds like and only takes 10 minutes after each print. The build size is a bit limited but more than enough for 99% of what I’ll be doing. I’m sure I’ll still use FDM for some stuff, possibly try a laser attachment at some point, so I’ll hang on to it for now. Meanwhile, I’m busy creating all the decoration on the stern of the heller victory, the trophy of arms, rope edging, balustrades, figures etc, having established that the printer can deliver this level of detail comfortably. Having totted up the cost of buying all the aftermarket items, it’s cheaper to do it myself and, taking into account all the other bits I’m likely to want to remake, significantly so. Plus I’m a bit iterative on the design side. One of the things I really like about SLA is that there are hardly any settings to have to mess around with, it is basically just a machine that magically produces what you’ve designed straight out of the box. I’m still struggling with F360, finding it hard to get to grips with the basics. Same with Blender, Meshmixer and a host of other 3D applications, so keep reverting to Tinkercad, where almost everything is possible if you put your mind to it, along with a site called Lithopane Maker. It’s probably that I’m wanting to do complex things from the outset on F360, and if I persevere long enough to successfully make one item it’ll start to fall into place, but it’s hard going.

Thanks Hubac, it's mostly a question of being able to think, when I attach the last bit of rigging in 10 years time, that I've done the best I could - and I think I can do a bit better on these things. I had one go at dry-brushing but that didn't come out so well. The great thing about acrylics, at least the one's I'm using, is that it's very easy to scrub paint off if you don't like the end result. So now I'm about to try yellow first, then ink in between with an ultra fine artists pen. You have to admire the craftsmanship that went into the design and mould-making for this model, the level of detail is simply fabulous.

Not happy enough with the results so far. Regarding the side steps I have a good-ish side and a not so good side. As luck would have it these are on opposite sides to the good and bad hull thickening sides, so there might always be something on view to spoil the effect. Since I have a spare kit, I've started again on the hulls. Different method along the lines mentioned above; I'm making inserts on the 3D printer that go inside each gunport once it's been fettled to suit. This allows me to have identical frame/surround sizes throughout, make the frame 0.3mm thick, avoid getting glue everywhere as they can be glued inside and generally get a better, tidier appearance. Starting again from scratch isn't as bad as it sounds, 90% of the time spent so far has been thinking rather than doing and things are always easier second time round. Not yet sure what to do with the side steps. The work to date is 'okay' but just doesn't look quite right, and I learned stuff along the way that should make a second go come out better. Meanwhile, playing around with the stern, as I need a change of scenery; this is a test piece for the lettering, at the proper scale. Printed at 1mm thick for the test but I quite like this raised effect so might keep it fairly thick, maybe 0.5mm - 0.8mm instead. Doing it this way isn't entirely about the aesthetics for me, it's to compensate for my apparent inability to draw, paint, cut or file a straight line on anything. So I painted the letters while on their sprue, CA'ed them on once dry, snipped off the sprue and tidied up, then only had to do some touching up of the paintwork (black still a bit wet here). While scouring the web to find a suitable font to snip and 3D, (using Daniels as the reference) I saw that the sign has been all sizes and styles over the years, including that used on the model. This one came from Victory - ABYME, who appear to have been contracted to do the real thing. Question: Anyone got any good tips for painting the balustrades on the stern?

Your work is on another level altogether Patrick, stunning stuff. Can I ask what CAD package(s) you use? I too don’t want 3D printing to become a hobby itself, for me it’s just a tool to compensate for a lack of fine hand skills - as they say, my ambition outweighs my talent - but I could see it costing a fortune to have parts printed professionally, plus you must need to be very sure you’ve got it designed to perfection. I’m guessing your CAD allows you to test fit against other parts on screen? I smiled at ‘wicker chairs’. Yes, FDM is a bit in that direction but not quite that bad. I wouldn’t want to be making 100 of something curvy that I had to skim and smooth with putty but it’ll be fine for one-off’s and if it’s a flat surface, printing face down on a glass platter will give a perfectly smooth, glass-like finish.

Had a quick'n'dirty go at a 2mm x 2mm x 1.5mm thick block this evening with a 0.5mm channel for the rope, while doing something else. No dice, basically just got a blob of plastic. I don't think that's necessarily the end of the issue, just that this would need some thinking about, as I've already printed detail down to about 0.3mm. I'll be trying a 0.1mm nozzle presently for the crown above the entrance so may have another go then.

Peter, that's a nice build, I wouldn't be surprised if all of it is indistinguishable in the flesh. I must read all of Patricks links on this topic, I'm sure I'll learn something. For me, there have been two learning curves. The first (somewhat obviously!) is designing parts. Currently I do everything in Tinkercad, a really lovely, easy-to-get-your-head-around, online application with tremendous scope. But you often have to think very creatively to figure out how to make the shapes you want and with the accuracy you need. One major limitation is that, although you do determine sizes, angles and curves are hard to play with after the event i.e. you dont build to a spec sheet but rather create shapes and then alter their dimensions. The other is that you have a limited library of shapes to play with and sometimes you really want to be able to create an object from scratch, a figurehead for instance, and that would be extremely hard in Tinkercad. I know I need to move up a step so that I can design as an engineer rather than artist, but all the free CAD packages I've tried seem really hard to figure out. But that may be because I'm way beyond new software being fun, I just want to use it as a tool so become impatient if that's difficult. The second curve is learning how to get the best of the printer, and I'm probably still quite early in that journey. I can usually find the sweet spot for settings eventually, through trial and error, but can't yet set it up based on knowledge and experience, confident that I'll get the desired result. And that can make it a little tedious, with umpteen 'almost right' models until you get there. However, I do think it's a fantastic tool and I won't be at all surprised if, before too long, we start seeing some wonderful kits that you self-print. I know for sure that if I had access to a really good engineering-level object scanner, I could make perfect copies of the victory hulls in sections, 'kit-bash' these electronically in all sorts of ways, and still have a lot of fun on the assembly and finishing. Maybe even more fun! Assembling two part cannon barrels was fun for the first dozen but it does begin to pale eventually, especially as there's no good reason for them being in parts to begin with! Though I'm sure I'll feel very satisfied and forget the pain when I eventually finish everything! I don't think there's any real problem with materials strength - I now use PETG for everything, because it's both strong and flexible and easy to print with - but there's such a wide range of materials that I'd expect to there to be something suitable for everything. A lot of the strength comes back to print quality, if you get that right the layers will be properly fused and the object will be near indestructible. (Which is a bit of an issue in itself, as I'm conscious this isn't the most planet-friendly thing to be doing). I'll be trying blocks soonish, keep an eye on my build log.

Just stumbled across this thread while reviewing pipers build log for the victory, in preparation for my own next steps. I don’t know what FDM printers were like back in 2013 but mine, bought this year, only cost £200 and allows me to print some very, very small objects that are more than good enough for the model. So I certainly wouldn’t write this off as a method. I was torn between FDM and SLA but the latter sounded so messy, with chemicals and cleaning to deal with, but does look like it’s better for really fine detail. Same kind of cost for the machine though I believe the materials are more expensive. However, I’m sure I could make all those stern parts on my FDM and absolutely certain I’ll be able to make cannons, blocks, masts, windows etc, based on the various household things I’ve made this year already.

Hi Ian, it’s easier than you think. I took an image from a suitable photo and converted it via a free web portal called convertio into an .svg file, which creates relief based on colour and pattern differences. I then imported it as a shape into tinkercad. From there it’s just a matter of snipping out what you don’t want and scaling etc. It does require a good, contrasty photo though. This is where you hit the limitations of tinkercad. Looking ahead, I’m probably going to want to make my own masts, spars, rear gallery etc, and would need to learn how to use normal cad, as ideally you want to be able to do this by plotting measurements rather than forming shapes etc. It’s a shame tinkercad doesn’t give you a full table of properties for objects, but then again, I wouldn’t have got anywhere without tinkercad.

Glue-ing... yes, really. Today I've gone where Kevin-the-lubber has never gone before and started glue-ing the steps. This is a jig to get the steps perfectly aligned vertically. In theory at least. I measured the hull contour at 0.5mm increments, transferred those into TinkerCad and tweaked out any errors. Ian, I too am using TinkerCad, it's brilliant despite it's limitations, but I haven't had the will to learn the more complex mesh software. I've tried loads of those that are free but haven't found anything that's intuitive so far. And this is it in action, held in place with a couple of the tiniest screws I've ever seen. The hull is upside down because I set the steps using their top surface... This is an improved version of the height gauge for setting the steps at exact spacings and true to horizontal. I wasn't sure just how well this was going to work for actually glue-ing but it went pretty well. A tip for anyone else looking at this method, work upwards, it's tricky to see if the step has aligned and attached if, like the over-excited me, you start with the biggest shaped steps. I'm quite looking forward to finishing these steps and reclaiming my big vernier! And here's todays product. I need to recheck the maths before re-printing the top one's, as I'm loosely working off a photo of the real thing and they dogleg a bit to dodge stuff. I think this is probably as good as I can get it with this printer (Creality Ender Pro) but I'm happy enough with that. The scale looks about right and, hopefully, I can soon move on a bit. I've had another go at creating the crest above the entrance, the pic below is of the 3D model. However, I haven't yet been able to get a usable print as this is such a tiny object. At 10mm across most of that relief is less than 0.1mm across and the entire thickness is only 0.4mm. If I do manage to crack it I figure it may be possible to rub it facedown on some gold paint, to get the highlights. Which brings me on to a question. I want to buy an airbrush kit and have never used one in my life. Anyone got any suggestions for something under £150 including the compressor?

Hello Ian, nice to hear from you. It's such a shame Pete's site came to and end but luckily some people, like you, were kind enough to upload their journals to here. I think I might have not re-started if I hadn't been able to find these fonts of inspiration. I've been tempted a few times to buy the Soleil Royale when it's come up cheap(ish) on ebay but I've sworn to at least be a decent way through the Victory before even buying another kit. For me the choices will be limited, I don't think I could bear trying anything smaller than 1:100! Progress report coming shortly....

Work in progress this evening. The canopy is straight off the printer and needs fettling, though I have a further iteration printing as I write, as the angle to hull is off by about 4 degrees . The rippling is grossly exaggerated by the flash, looks a lot smoother in the flesh, so I won't do too much smoothing. Shapeways appear to do an amazingly good version of this, but I imagine they are printing using stereolithography, whereas my machine is Fused Depositing Modelling. I did a version with all the relief detail but this was just too small for this type of printer and it comes out a bit blobby, so I think I'll settle for trying to paint that on. Panelling on the entrance came out fairly well though.

Hello Marc. Blimey, where did the last 6 months go? Well, mostly on refitting a bathroom, converting my squalid workshop into an office-cum-hobby room, and various other essential home maintenance jobs. Anyway, today is my first day back 'home' (the new hobby room) after having to put everything away while doing my duty and I'm reviewing where I'd got to, now that I'm able to print plastic again. I just hope I can find all my sketches and measurements! I should have mentioned, all the tools shown above are 3D printed apart from the vernier itself. It really is an excellent piece of kit for those of us with 5 thumbs on each hand but an interest in IT. So, I'll be doing some more over the next few weeks I hope, maybe finally get the entrance and steps glued on. (If there's a prize for the longest, slowest build I think I'm definitely in with a chance).

This evening I finally finished making a tool that does two things; a) it’s a better version of the gizmo I made to precisely set the steps dead level and correctly spaced; no doubt I’ll some back to that in a few days or weeks, when I’m ready to glue; and b) it’s to let me precisely measure the different angles on the hull. In the immediate term that will let me ‘cut’ the steps to the right angles in the 3D software so that, in theory at least, no post-production fettling should be needed. Right now I’m still working on creating the canopy, quite a complex and detailed thing to do from scratch in the software, and a final version of the entrance itself; These are a couple of test pieces, largely to see how good I could get the panel moulding detail. The photo doesn’t really do the result justice, even in this untouched up state the finish is much smoother to the naked eye and of course these are dead square, perfectly angled and so on. The prize though may be the gunports themselves. I’ve never been that happy with the work I’ve done on these so far - the finished model would kind of have a good side and a not so good side, and it’ll be Sod’s law that this will vary according to which bit of the model you’re looking at. So what you see above is my spare hull, untouched so far, and I’m thinking I could probably do a much, much better job of the gunports if I made all-in-one inserts and thickeners on the printer. Key to that is knowing the precise angles on the hull, hence all this work making the tool. So, all going well I’ll be able to get going again shortly.