Resin casting update

So I'm putting together a pressure pot for resin casting. The idea is you use air pressure to 'crush' bubbles out of resin and silicon to make more details molds and casts. As I had previously mentioned, resin is a thick material even when it is in it's liquid form it's still quit thick and thus the resin itself can support some weight. When it comes to casting parts, this gives rise to the 'bubble trouble', ie bubbles in the resin ruining the details in the cast part. So by crushing the bubbles out of the resin, and the mold rubber when making a mold, I can in theory correct that problem.

So I did my research, found a good pressure chamber that rated for about 90 PSI, for about $125. Had to buy a coupler for for about $3. Bought a compressor for $190. Needed to add a sealed cap to the chamber. That cost about $2. a $5 roll of Teflon tape to seal up the connections and it looked like I was ready to go. I hooked up the compressor, sealed the chamber and made a test run. I watch the regulator gauge slowly rise. 5 PSI. 7 PSI. 9 PSI. 11 PSI... Suddenly the safety valve pops. I look at the valve and think it might have been caught on the compressor hose. So I empty the chamber, open it, reapply some petro-jelly, seal the chamber, and start the compressor. 2psi. 4psi. 6 psi. 8 psi. 10 psi. 12psi... POP goes the safty valve. Yep, the saftey valve is bad. on a bot that is designed and intended to withstand up to 90 pounds of pressure per square inch... the valve pops at about 12 psi. 

Well balls.

Helbrute update

Okay, so I'm a dumb ass. I did all that work on the helbrute, building the LED circuit, installing the LEDs in the fists, boring out a comparment in a base for the battery, all the work to build up the base... and I totally neglected the fact that the circuit was going to need about 8 volts of power and the dime battery only supplies 3 volts... So... end result: The 4 LED circuit I had been intending to build has been cut back to a single LED in the left power fist.

I'm also going to modify the post of the model to have the left power fist drawn back and the right one cutting across the chest like the Brute's about to swing back against an attacker with it's burning left.
 

But here you can see the finished base and the circuit. I used green stuff to seal off the switch and the junctions in the body. This helps do a couple things.
First it cements the switch in place so that there is no wiggle room.
Second it holds the connects in place so there's no chance of them coming loose later on.

I've spent a lot of time and effort on the base of this model so I'd like to talk about it. Here you can see the dime battery and holder in the base of it. In order to accommodate the battery I attached a large resin rock formation to the base and then went in with a dremel to bore out a depression. This was a very time consumming process particularly because I had to make sure I was doing it in a sealed room, with a good vacuum to catch the shavings and resin dust. In short, I took over my fathers workshop, stuffed a towel under the door jam, hooked up a vacuum that has a hermetic seal on it and put the hose right next to where I was going to be working and then set up a fan behind me to blow the dust into the vacuum hose. Just to be safer I used gloves, a respirator, a mask sealed with petroleum jelly, and head phones. I felt a little like I was wearing a space suit or something.

 

In order to mount the HelBrute on the base I had to build up the rock face with some flater ares for it to stand on. So I used some of the rock facings I've made with extra green stuff over the last few months and attacked them to the resin rock with super glue. Then I went in with plumbers putty and filled in any spaces between  the resin rock and the green stuff rock facings. Once the putty dried I went in with green stuff and put down a layer. I then took several rocks and textured the green stuff with them. Over all I like how it turned out.

 Here you can see the switch under the arm to turn on the fist.

And here you can see the light in the fist.

Team Helbrute update

Well first off the good news. Gotten some interest in the Helbrute thread I posted. Disease on Bolterandchainsword posted an older pic of a Helbrute he was converting to have a power scourge.

It's a nice approach. I'm hoping he'll post newer pics as he explained this was a work in progress.

Next the bad news: I killed my first attempt. See the LEDs I installed run best on 3v of power. The Dime battery I was using provided exactly 3v of power. So no need to install resistors. Well until I went to test the circuit with a 9v battery and promptly blew out all three LEDs. :( So yeah. Bummer.

Now the better news: I don't quit. I ordered a half dozen Helbrute models on Ebay and have managed to get a fair amount of work accomplished on a HelBrute with 2 power fists with red LEDs installed behind the head and in the palms of the fists to represent the flammers.

 

So here you can see the extent of my work on the model thus far. Built and wired the base, though it still needs some green stuff work to fill in gaps. Built the two power fists, and carved up the body. 

I'm going for a sort of "roaring in anger" sort of pose for it, a bit like this:

So I have to reposition the body and arms. The upper torso will be angled back and the power fists will be positioned outward relative to the body.

I'm also installing LEDs into the torso, and in the palms of the fists to get some lighting effects going on with the model.

Here you can see the left power fist with the LED illuminated. I'm also going to install similar LEDs in the torso to provide red illumination around the face.

Now... here's the really annoying part of all this: The fact that I'm incapable of doing a simple easy project. Allow me to explain. Build a Helbrute with a different weapon load. Easy. Pose it in a new way. Okay, bit more of a challange. Install LEDs to light it up. Okay, don't see that too often. Now do all of that on the same model. Okay now we're getting into a challenge. See because the HelBrute is a snap-fit model, a large amount of the detail in it is modeled to accommodate it's pose. Which means in order to change the pose I have to change a lot of details.

The feet are a prime example. I wanted to model the HelBrute with it's toes clutching on the edge of the rockface. So I have to cut off the toes that will be in a different possition, and re-attach them in their possition. But to do that I have to make sure the base will work with the model. Which means building up the base UNDER the model itself. But wait I want to light up the model. So now I have to pass wires out of the base through the model. You see how I'm just compounding the challenge? Yeah. That's where it is.

Go team Helbrute!

So I had a crazy thought a few days ago, about building a bunch of HelBrutes but each converted for the different weapon load outs. There's considerable challenge in this approach, because I wanted to make the conversions from the actual HelBrute model. IE the one out of the Dark Vengeance starter set. Now I will absolutely admit that the HelBrute model is a really great model, as far as snapfit models go. It's got a lot of great details to it, but it's fairly static. There's just not much the model is designed to do. And by 'not much' I mean nothing. The model is designed to be what it is and nothing else.  But then again there in lies the challenge.

So I posted my idea on Bolterandchainsword.com and got a couple responses from folks who were join me on the idea. So I've been working on my HelBrute, armed with twin-power fists with flamers.

 Now myself being who I am it's not like I can JUST build a HelBrute with two power fists and call it a day. No no no. I have to push myself and add something to make it even more challenging. In this case it's electronics. In this case lights. I want to install an led in the palm of each fist and then another LED in the check so that there will be a red glow around the head.

The real challenge so far has been taking the left handed power fist and converting it to a right handed.

Thank you Virginia!

Okay, it seems like Virginia has FINALLY decided to give us spring time whether and with that has come temperatures that permit priming. Now I know this is going to sound a bit odd in relation to my most recent post where I said I'm largely done with Games Workshop products, but I still have a sizable stockpile of 40k miniatures waiting on my shelves to be painted. Many of them have already been built and I do intend to still play from time to time. So that's what I've been doing today, working on my ready stocks:

In this case I'm working on a drop pod and 3 land speeders. You can see the lower frames of the land speeders mounted on the tooth picks with the central computer console for the drop pod on the corner of the Styrofoam block. I only partially assembled the land speeders and mounted them on tooth pick this way purposefully to make painting them easier. Easier in that I can get at the interior details and then assemble. You can see the legs of the marines have been painted all the way down to the ankles.

I ran into one little hickup with the land speeders though and it is a minor one, though worth noting. See I got 2 single Land Speeders, and the Dark Angles Raven Wing battalion box set to get the third. Well the Land Speeder in the Raven Wing box is the older design of land speeders so I've effectively got two different models. It's not a huge problem, but it has created a few minor planning issues. For instance the newer version of the land speeder allows you to build the lower section of the entire Speeder body and then apply the top of the body to that. if you look at the land speeder body on the right you see how the seat backs are attached to the bottom of the speeder, but on the left the seat backs are attached to the top portion. Like I said, not a huge problem just an annoyance.

So far I've only managed to paint the central console on for the drop pod. Nothing terribly note worthy here. But worth the picture.


Now one other thing I've started working on, a new game. Does anyone know the Mobile suit Gundam franchise? Specifically the segment known as the "Universal Century" time line? Well if not here's the brief break down: Mankind has begun to colonize space with the use of space colonies. But after nearly 80 years one group of colonies have declared Independence and launched a war against the Earth Federation. Initially the Space colony had the advantage with the advent of mechanized war machines known as mobile suits but ultimately the Earth Federation caught up and developed their own Mobile suits. That war last about a year and the following series explored the fall out from that war.

Well I'm a big Gundam fan and I was watching the series 08th MS team the other day and it got my mind rolling about the idea of a table top strategy game based on that. Meaning you get a team of between 3 and 7 pilots, outfit them with your selected mobile suit, and then equip the suit with the various weapons and then you and your opponent each attempt to achieve your respective objectives. I figure you can use the 1/144 scale models to represent your mobile suit teams. it'd be a notable investment to get a basic team up and running, but $100 for a medium sized team seems almost non-existent when compared to hundreds of dollars you'd spend getting a 1500 point Space Marine army together.

I don't want to make it a Gundam version of 40k, I intend to make it a bit more complicated than that, but not up to the level of an RPG. Right now it's all in the conceptual stages and the only thing I've managed to accomplish so far is compiling a list of weapons from the first couple series with some rough notes about concepts and ideas that would apply to those weapons.

Things are changing.

Okay, so GW has made a radical change to it's trade partner policies. I won't go into details about what the changes are. There are any number of discussions out there about them. I'm not going to get into discussions about the pros and cones about them. If you haven't heard about them, I suggest you check the MiniWarGamming response video to them.

What does this mean for me? Well it means GW products are basically not my first go-to option for modeling any longer. I'm sorry but the closest options for brick and mortar stores for me are 40 minutes north (2 hours if traffic is even moderately bad) and an hour and ten minutes south of me. I'm sorry. If GW is going to cut out 2/3 of their product line from the non-Gw stores and thus limit me to only online purchasing of them, then I'm going to move on.

So in the coming weeks I'll be looking into other games systems and see what I like. If anyone has any suggestions feel free to post some suggestions in the comments section. I will be upfront and tell you all that I'm not very inclined toward the gaming part of the hobby and am much more inclined toward modeling so the actual models that the company in question produces will be of much greater interest to me then the quality of the rules or gaming systems.

It's interesting how productive nothing can be

So I'm still here and alive. I know it's been a few days. As I'm so fond of saying "Life happens" Though I do have to say, I had this past Thursday off and I managed to do something I have not done in probably five years: nothing. I mean nothing productive. The most productive thing I did all day was get out of bed and shower. I didn't have work, I didn't do any work on my school projects, I didn't have any calls with clients, I didn't work on any models, I didn't work on my movie listings, absolutely nothing. all I did was sit on my butt and play video games. Here's my life lesson of the day folks: Every once in a while, you just have to do nothing. Just like every 3 or 4 months just take a day off from everything. Arrange time off from work, get it on a day you don't have class, in a period where you're not prepping for something, and just do nothing.

But that doesn't mean I haven't been working on stuff the last couple weeks. I'm taking a little break from the Thunderbolt due to finances. I'm not broke but I need to reconsider my spending a little bit. When I went full time at work I immediately applied for benefits. So now I have a 401k, Tuition reimbursement, Health Insurance, Dental Insurance, Vision coverage, a Stock portfolio, and a bunch of other nice little tidbits that come with working 35+ hours a week. So yeah me! Buuuut.... I have to pay for some of those benefits. It's not like crippling huge, but you notice that $90 being take out of your check. Plus I'd like to take a trip out to Arizona and actually meet some folks face to face that I've been talking with online for what seems like ages and eons now.

So have I been sitting idle? Yeah right. I said I took one day off and did nothing. But I'm the living embodiment of  ADHD, I can't sit still and not work on something. So what have I been working on? Well a couple things actually.

First thing, a Nurgle demon prince/Greater daemon. It's the Forge World Mamom model I got from a lot auction on Ebay. I bid $100 on the lot of "40k stuff" and got a Hell Blade fighter, a hand full of Chaos Renegade torsos, the Mamon daemon prince, several auto-cannons, a hand full of lascannons, some Space marine torsos and legs, the top section of a Rhino, and a bunch of other stuff. The Hell Blade was complete and I built it... and I gotta say I dislike the model even more now. I'll go into more detail about it later.

But I also built the Mamon figure. With the exception of one tube the model was complete but it was partially deformed in some spots and left gaps that I just wasn't comfortable with leaving unattended to. So I went at it with the sculpting putties. I used 2 types of putty on the model based on where I was using it. Around the elbow of the club fist, and the neck line I used milliput because those were largely flat areas where if the putty failed to hold it would simply appear to be skin flapping off the muscles. Around the shoulder, and where the tube connects to the arm I used Kneadite (Green stuff) to fill in the gaps. I also rolled out a tube of kneadite to replace the missing tube on the back of the arm. I'm going to go back with some more kneadite and add decay and rot to the tube.

Beyond the Daemon prince I'm still working on some scratch building in the form of a drop pod. As I explained previously, the template I have I think makes a drop pod that is just too small to serve as a transport drop pod, but I do think it's the right size for a death storm drop pod. So that's what I'm gonna try and build this pod as:

 

Here you can see the first wing master I produced in sheet styrene. I'm working on the other four now:

Here you can see the four segments of 2mm thick styrene attached with super glue and held in place with a clamps. This allowed me to take a file to the edges of the parts to make them all match. It's a slow process, cutting through 2mm of styrene is a slow process. And then sanding all the parts down... yeah a bit monotonous.