The Little World

The new art of 3-D printing is flooding into the scale modelling world like a bottle of cement tipped over onto the cutting mat.

If you move fast, you can rescue your kit from it…any delay will see you stuck to the workbench.

Well, not that exactly…but you cannot ignore the new technology now that it has passed its first hesitant infancy. The crude shapes of seven years ago plagued with a myriad of horizontal lines have given way to near-perfect models in all scales; parts, conversion kits, and full-scale productions. If you can find detailed pictures of some subject you can make it.

There are simple machines as well as complex industrial ones, but they all need adequate information and careful setup to produce the products. Firms sell computer files that instruct the printers, as well as the basic resins and ribbons that become the shapes.that makes 3D.

What they cannot sell you is the 4th D…the dimension of time. The production of the models on the machine’s platen seems to be going well, but it is so slow that you wonder if it will ever be competed. Hours are not uncommon and I suspect days may be needed for some items. Contemplating home production means a good deal more than just switching a ” duplicator ” on and lifting the hatch when the bell dings. This is not a Calvin and Hobbes business.
All the more reason to welcome a small firm that is sympathetic to scale modellers…we saw the Three Mates at the recent WASMex show and they had a fascinating variety of items they’d made. They are not shy about turning out large pieces, either. I suspect the bigger models can be a little easier to lay out.

The technology would also seem perfect for fantasy and science fiction modelling since the shapes can be more imaginative than those of the more conventional divisions.