I’ve been busy with some work things and writing up some Necromunda stuff (especially as I’m playing more this weekend). But, after a few chats (as well as thinking about possible future plans) I decided it was time to do some more experimenting with the 3d printer.
My Mars Pro has a printing volume of 120x68x155mm which is plenty big enough for printing people. On the other hand, 28mm vehicles in my preferred scale (1:50) are pretty chunky, especially once you go above light vehicles. This can really limit your options for printing – half the fun of modern warfare is occasionally rolling out the big toys, such as Main Battle Tanks. They aren’t really needed, most of the battles in 28mm are infantry vs infantry but if you’re playing fictional conflicts with more conventional warfare, they are a nice treat that takes some specific tactics to keep running.
As for playing around, I decided to go into my collection of models from Guaro3d and try printing the hull of a Turkish Atlay tank. This is a type I’ll be using in ChargeReal for the most modern MBT from the Kingdom of Bazistan – something a little different to the Russian/Tsarist T-Series tanks and more able to stand up to things like Challenger 2 and Leopard 2. This was my first attempt using the auto-supports (using the heavy setting to hold that amount of weight in place) and using the suggested method of printing it vertically I picked up from the Spectre Discord.
Costing about £6 of resin (including supports which managed to come away pretty quickly) and taking 15 hours, this thing is great. I messed up on some of the supports (hence the diagonal lines across the texture on the side). I’m honestly super impressed the printer managed to produce this – there was plenty of nervously looking at the printer as it went along.
In addition, it’s interesting to see just the size of the more modern designs. The Atlay (and the K2 Black Panther MBT it’s based off) is impressive, a vehicle that is a similar size (although different dimensions) to the Challenger 2, while significantly larger than the older Russian designs.
This difference is something I really wanted to play up – in the ChargeReal setting, the T62 (alongside other older designs with local modificaitons) is used by the Northern part of the Bazi Empire (also referred to as the Emirate of Bazi) while the Kingdom uses the newer Atlay. They two currently work alongside each other but if there was to be some kind of crisis in the Empire, then the older T62s might have to work on their tricks to defeat the more modern tanks.
Next up is printing the turret. Again, it was too big to print horizontally. Worse, the gun barrel was too long to print in one piece with the turret, so I had to do a little trimming to get ready for prep. This is going to be another 10 hours of printing, so fingers crossed it works out and maybe I’ll have the tank ready tomorrow ready for a quick inspection.