Egilman

Good question... I don't think I have any good answers.. Wish I did.... Outside the initial cost factor, you have to decide how big your going to build... What scales your going to be working in and what type of projects.... Think towards the largest single part you will need towards what your going to build... Get it's measured size in real life, down scale it to your working scale, and buy build volume accordingly... One of the advantages of larger build volume is you can make repetitive parts in one printing, you need a dozen of a certain part you can do it in one print rather than a dozen separate prints... That's my situation, I'm going to need a dozens of tall parts that are identical or close to identical, that measure around 8" so a 9.5" print height is required... The Mono X will print a dozen of those all at once easily... That how I reasoned it out.... It all depends on what you want to do with it....

Hi Jacek, I need the larger build area specifically cause I'm going to be building one of these...... Easiest way is to 3D print it rather than scratchbuild it.... 1/72nd scale to fit the Dragon Saturn V.... But first, I have to create the files..... Big mountain to climb....

Hi Henry, Phew, Thingiverse.... What a mess.... Everyone says get something from Thingiverse, most suggest a particular Eiffel Tower..... High res of course, problem is no one provides a link to it.... and there are 600 pages of Eiffel Towers... Some look great some not so great... There are several online you tube walkthroughs of Chitubox and how to use it but I haven't found one yet that hasn't put me to sleep.... Reminds me of Blender in the early days, trying to find useful info that is presented well is a challenge..... You would think that something that is this revolutionary would now have a source of good verifiable info easily available after what 5 years? I think the biggest difficulty in getting into this is finding good reliable info... Thanks for the offer of help, I will be asking questions when I run into problems and will post my solutions, (with linkage) when I discover them... Still trying to figure out the workflow to getting from an STL file output from whatever software, (in my case solidworks) to a finished print... New mountains to climb.... {chuckle} Right now I just want to get the printer working and make sure there is nothing wrong with it.... once I get the print-wash-cure process down, I'll start working on fine tuning the process... A door to a big huge world is opening, and I still have to get through the door... All help is appreciated... EG

Thanks Ron, I bookmarked this for future reference... I'm very familiar with how brittle resin is in general....

Hi Mike, I went with the Mono X for it's build area of 192x120x245... Anycubic didn't respond to my email about the missing resin today, probably take a couple of days so I went ahead and ordered a liter from amazon... I've downloaded Chitobox free and see I have another learning process to go thru... Right now, I just want to get this up and running.... I will probably turn to water based resins eventually once I learn a bit more to save the costs of large quantities of IPA... I think even with water based resins the Wash & Cure will be an asset to keep things efficient.... Then I have to create something.... The Admiral is waiting..... {chuckle}

Well, My Anycubic Mono X finally arrived today, (2 days late after a 1k miles side trip around southern California) along with it's accompanying Wash & Cure Plus...... Unfortunately, the 1 kg of resin that was supposed to be delivered with it didn't arrive.... I hope Anycubic is as good as the reviews say they are and they get it out quickly.... So until then, I'm still waiting... Will say more when there is something to say... {chuckle} EG

2021 SP3 There's a newer version out there now...

I'll be talking about it Craig, once it gets here and I've had a chance to set it up.... Still need to finish my Solidworks courses... (as life allows) But I think I'm making progress..... For example.... A Sunseeker Predator 108 in Solidworks..... I think I'm learning something..... I'll keep everyone informed... (and stop hijacking the thread)

It was a combo deal direct from Anycubic... got the Mono X and the Wash n Cure 2 as well... The build cube is 7.5"w x 4.5"d x 9.5"t ... The Elegoo Saturn has the same build cube volume... DLP is the coming thing, FormLabs is already out there with it for commercial use... (at a commercial price tag as well, well north of $4,000) but it will eventually get here... Mine hasn't arrived yet, It shipped from Chino CA, the Anycubic warehouse, shipped by FedEx, after almost 1K miles and a weeks time it arrived at Lodi CA ..... (20 miles down the freeway) {chuckle} Currently is is in Happy Valley OR, and two days late.... I hope it gets here before the next millennium passes.... Your work is impressive my friend, that wheel looks nice, and you printed it in clear, probably gonna be asking questions eventually... I'm a complete 100% newbie to 3D printing.... It's gonna be a trip....

Here are the two instructions, it is plain that they obtained the F-4E by adding new parts for the nose, an extension for the gun section, a new radar fairing and nose tube.... F-4J (pdf) F-4E (pdf) Essentially the same model assembled in the same way with extra parts for the E version....

Just to make sure.... Here is a comparison of the F-4E profile with the FG.1 profile .. (FG.1 is the Royal Navy's F-4C/J) Clearly the nose is 6 feet longer..... (the most noticeable variation, there are others though on close examination.... Probably the best site for detailed scale info on the F-4's various profiles is this.... Wings of Pegasus.... Great site for modeling various aircraft....

Truth of the matter is, these kind of announcements are made from time to time, and never come to fruition..... But I will keep my eye out... every one knows the deficiencies of the Phantom II Models currently out there now, even the vaunted Tamiya Phantom has it's own accuracy issues... (there are a lot of rivet counters out there still) I think you would need 18 or so individual kits to represent the entire design chain... When has that ever happened to any subject? It's what keeps the aftermarket business busy... Most of the time we are lucky to get one or two variations on a subject and are left to our own devices to make them accurate to what we want to put on our shelf...

I know it is, You know it is, Everyone who is familiar with the various F-4 variations know it is brother... You also mentioned it earlier in the thread.... What I was referring to is the Revell F-4E is derived off their earlier F-4J molds.... So the Sparrows are the same molding my friend... That is why they fit like a glove.... I sure wasn't alluding that you didn't know what your talking about... I sincerely apologize if it felt that way....

No problem Dan, it's what we do here... I would go with the info from that discussion as they probably have a thousand times more info than I do.... I know enough to know that there is no definitive info on what the colors were specifically so no one can say your wrong, which one of the authors says himself.... (although he did confirm the BMF and Grey colors on most of the Russian aircraft in Russian service and that the BMF applied was really painted BMF not actual BMF) Also, that although there were rules and specifications for painting one must remember that it was left to the best judgment of the people in the field to mix the paints to get the specified colors..... Which means you can pretty much come up with any color combination if you don't have the specific ratios used... The authors and researchers also covered that issue as well... And I just found another source and has some very grainy shots of a Russian aircraft in Korea sporting a paint job that at least in greytone pattern is similar to the one posted by Popeye..... And that's the problem with postwar, (WWII) soviet aircraft coloration, there just isn't sufficient images commonly available to make color decisions on and B&W greytone is nothing to ever judge colors by without documentation..... I would go the same way it appears you have already decided, from the best info available... Thank you for the link, it's leading to even more info for my archives....

Tamiya's first 1/32nd F-4 was in '95.... Academy just released a new tooling one this year..... It's definitely not a Japanese or Italian product, it felt American in it's assembly... It was like assembling the Revell F-4E without the chin gun..... Wait a sec.... Yep it's a Revell, 1972 new release, F-4J Phantom Kit H-188.... I'll be damned, That's why the '74 F-4E's sparrows fit so well... They are the same kit.... {chuckle} Strange thing is, back then Revell always molded copyrite info inside one of the fuselage halves, I specifically looked for such and it wasn't there...... Someone must have cleaned it off when they took all the parts off the sprues cause it just wasn't there.... Well, now we know.... I built the F-4E way back in the early '80's that's probably why it felt so familiar and went together so easy, I had already built one before... In fact the lack of a chin gun is how I decided it was a "J" model.... My rookie model childhood is coming back to haunt me.....

Thanks Mike, seems like when I'm not really trying everyone thinks it's the bees knees.... It's much appreciated my friend....

I just picked up an Anycubic Mono X at a decent sale price, delivery Thursday... (I hope) From what I'm seeing here looks like the right machine....

Here are some historical schemes..... Second one down is a good historical scheme in which some photographic evidence from the era is available to establish it as a real scheme....

Hi Dan, the basic lowdown on Mig 15 Camo is kind like this... Russian: Overall aluminum, they didn't paint them usually (there are exceptions I know, mostly grey) Chinese: Mostly aluminum in the early years, Green over Grey mid years, (Korean War) and Green/Grey and brown in later years..... Vietnamese: Green & Brown camo... All had Grey undersides except for the BMF birds.... There were many other that flew them and the colorations are all over the spectrum for them... you would have to research, Example: Egyptian would be sand yellow overall Pakistani would be Green & Brown.... (with grey undersides) Generally satellite countries used them as received.... Generally bare metal or grey overall is how they are usually perceived best representing their era which was the '50's.... Your bird specifically looks like a mid life bird to me, (second generation) So in general, putting a BMF on it now would remove all the spectacular work you've already done... Light greyish tones are the ticket in my humble opinion.... That would give you a late 50's early 60's Russian or Chinese bird.... Beautiful job, the almost polish smooth finish you've done to the base coats, the finish should be spectacular....

Hey OC, you gonna cut the grooves between the cobbles? {chuckle} (they were there)

Spent a good bit of my youth working a Vermont dairy milking barn.... No hip waders or gas mask either..... Not a job for the faint of heart.... AND you learn the difference between a shovel and a spade real quick....

It's easy to do on a windows machine, open it in viewer, (Windows native) hit the rotate button, and close it... Nice job on the ship.... looks like it belongs in a museum...

There you go Harley.... Beautiful Model!!! Love the water setting.... She's at Home....

Lessons learned and sometimes re-learned.... I've had a lot of these "boot oneself in the butt" moments in my model building career, they make one a better modeler in the end.... Fantastic recovery my friend....

Ohh Yves, I've already have been second guessing myself..... Lord Mr. Ford, what have I done.... {chuckle}