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For a good long while now, I've been wanting a 1/40ish scale MWO Huntsman model. As of a couple days ago, that want has been realized. Somewhat. There is a lot of work to do, and as I do so, I'll be updating this thread with WIP shots.
This being my first 3D printed anything, I had no idea what special steps were going to be needed to prep it, how well it would take paint, etc. However, years of prior tabletop gaming experience should give me a pretty full basis when it comes to modification and paint, with any gaps in that knowledge base filled with good old fashioned research and one experimental part. Still going to be a bit of a learning experience for me, however.
Evidently, the build took about 50 hours to print out of PLA, and arrived with all the parts I requested. As expected, print lines were all over the place, even though it was printed with a fairly shallow layer depth. I had requested it be printed at 150% scale to the original files in an attempt to get it as close to 1/40 as possible without exponentially breaking my bank. In the end, the mech came out, from feet to tip of AMS, approx 7.75" in height. Damned near exactly 1/40.
Given I need to paint each part individually, and each part would need some pre-paint prep, anyways, I did a dry fit, but kept things loose. This particular build will only need glue to hold the front of the hand attached to the back of the hand, as it was designed with ball and socket joints at most major locations. In other words, when it's done, she'll actually be pose-able, should I wish to.
So far, the most of the work I could get done was sand her and remove some of the residual support material. Every part has been sanded to reduce the print lines which, honestly, were surprisingly shallow to begin with. Once I get her primed in a base coat, the paint should do the rest of the smoothing just perfectly. In addition, since I will be making her look similar to the in game model below, I had to get an extra hand printed expressly to destroy it.
I chopped the laser barrels off the third hand, and reduced their length to 9 mm so as to mimic the "pistol" configuration I expressly omnipod mixed and matched for in the game model. The barrels will just barely peak out of the cowl, which is exactly what I want. They will need to be glued and gaps filled with epoxy. In addition, being able to tear up a hand let me play with the print. Learn more about it. Seems it is almost like a honeycomb inside. It's also fairly sensitive to heat, as even cutting it too quickly temporarily turned the PLA into a rubber like consistency.
I'm currently waiting on a scriber tool, as the 3D print file didn't have all of the in-game armor panels. I won't be recreating all of those, but I will be adding more detail to the aft jump jet tubes, as well as the cheek and shoulder panels. Some lines on some of the larger actuator caps could also use a cleaning up with the scriber. Once that is done, I'll fill in the LRM5 ports in the upper right torso with epoxy, and sand it flush to the plastic. There is no room for LRM in my Huntsmen!
Next step after that will be a proper cleaning with soap, water, and a toothbrush. Just to clean out any dust and residue from the surface. Once dried, she'll get properly primed. Several thin coats instead of one gloppy mess is important, here, since I don't want to lose any details.
I'll be updating this thread once the parts I need to continue the build get here. In the mean time, lacking any bananas, have some Necrons for scale!
Edited by Pariah Devalis, 05 November 2018 - 01:17 PM.
