The Model Stash

Hi, Everyone! I have a Pumpkin Masters Ultimate Carve & Display Kit that I purchased a few years back.  I never used it for Halloween purposes, but I always intended to use the battery powered rotating display base for any built models that I wanted to photograph or record video of.  Originally, I used a large plastic plate on top of the base so that I could fit larger objects, but eventually lost the plate.  With a 3D printer, however, I decided to make my own custom fitted display top. I designed up the top in Autodesk Fusion 360.  It is a quick and simple design being 270 mm (10.63 inches) in diameter, 3mm thick, and having rounded lower edges. The 3D print was done in PLA on my Artillery Sidewinder X1 FDM printer.  It came out with no issues. The Pumpkin Masters base requires two C batteries.  However, I usually don't have that size battery, so I 3D printed a set of AA-to-C battery adapters. The AA batteries slide in the adapters from the bottom and...

 Hi, Everyone! Over the years, I've accumulated a small stack of 3.5-inch hard disk drives that I always had intentions of performing deep data wipes on or destroying.  I never get around to them, though, so they just sit around.  Recently, I thought about how I could re-purpose those drives so that they wouldn't end up being yet another bunch of discarded wasteful tech. One of the nicer parts of a hard disk drive are the data disc "platters."  There are usually one or more of these platters in each drive, with each one being fairly rigid and having a nice smooth mirror finish.  People have re-purposed them into things such as the face of small clocks and combined multiples of them to use as hanging decorations.  For me, I decided to use them as part of a custom model display base. I came up with a 3D printed four piece design.  There is an outer shell with a rounded edge at the top.  An inner shell - which can house a small bit of electronics and...

Hi, Everyone! I created some 3D printable Star Trek: TOS emblems that would work great for attaching to model kit display bases. Below are the proof prints that were made with my Artillery Sidewinder X1. TOS Starfleet Emblem (printed at 0.1 layer height)... TOS Klingon Empire Emblem (printed at 0.2 layer height)... TOS Romulan Star Empire Emblem (printed at 0.1 layer height)... They still need to be processed a bit and then primed and painted, but otherwise I think they came out looking pretty good. :)

Hi, Everyone! My wife loves the Jurassic Park franchise, so I thought I would make her a velociraptor killing claw, much like the one Alan Grant had in the first Jurassic Park movie.      First, I downloaded a claw STL file for 3D printing from the Thingiverse repository site ( https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:3585364 ).  I used Overture black PLA filament and printed using my Artillery Sidewinder X1.  The print came out very nicely, but had the typically visible layer lines so I used Liquitex Modeling Paste to hide those lines and to provide a texture similar to fossilized bone. When I was satisfied with the sanded finish, I laid down multiple coats of grey primer.  After that, I airbrushed thinned down black craft acrylic paint.  Once dried, I went over the model with Krylon UV-resistant clear matte acrylic coating spray.  Finally, I gave the textured areas some subtle weathering using earth tone chalk pastels. Check out the pictures below. I...

Hi, Everyone! I started a project to make a more accurate deflector dish assembly for the AMT / ERTL / Round 2 1:650 TOS U.S.S. Enterprise model kit. Back in the early 1970s, AMT changed the tooling of their 1:650 U.S.S. Enterprise model.  Although the kit itself from its original 1966 tooling had its accuracy problems, the changes made in the early 1970s created even more issues.  One of the issues was the deflector dish assembly: The housing was changed / simplified where the outside wall was raised higher, the inner three stepped rings were all made the same height as the outside wall, and the three "extrusions" from the secondary hull were added. The dish assembly was changed from an overly large dish with an equally overly long stem to a detail-less pie pan looking dish with a shortened stem.   When the Smithsonian put together the team for the 2016 TOS Enterprise 11-foot filming miniature restoration project, Gary Kerr - Star Trek historian and filming miniature ...