Axel's corner

It's that time of the year again. No, I don't mean Christmas, but "Euro Scale Modelling". The yearly modelling event organised by the Dutch branch of the IPMS. For the third year now the event was held at the Expo Houten venue.On Saturday the 23rd of November to be precise. The popularity of this event keeps growing, as I honestly can't remember it being so busy before. The queue outside the event location was telling. Never seen it so long, which can only be a good sign. It would appear scale modelling is not dead yet. Although that has nothing to do with my contributions... Or the lack thereof. Lots of vendors and clubs were present. Because another event was held at the same at the venue, the competition area had been relocated to one of the "regular" halls. Which was a shame, as the lighting in last year's competition area was a lot better. As it was, it was quite dark and as a consequence hard to take some good pictures. The amount ...

Moving on steadily I first studied the instructions and stills from the Casino Royale movie to see if there are differences between (the instructions of) the kit and the real car. Luckily there don't seem to be that many differences. The few I found are listed below. The diffuser and the 2 front lips on the bumper appear to be made of carbon fibre on the production version. In the promotional image for "Casino Royale" it is clear to see that the front lips are made of carbon fibre. For the production version the mounts for the rear view mirrors also seem to be made of carbon fibre. Looking at the image below I'd say Bond's car didn't have this. So the plan is to go for carbon fibre for the diffuser and front lips and follow Tamiya's instructions for the mirror mounts. In the instructions from Tamiya I noticed that the vents in the hood should be painted (semi-gloss) black. But all images I found on the internet and the stills from the movie ...

So. Am I crazy? Starting another kit without finishing at least something? Anything? Well maybe. Why not continue one of the other projects you might wonder? As it is I'm planning to move my workspace from the attic (way too hot during the summer) to the cellar so my "open" projects are tucked away so I don't loose some parts in the move (at least, that's the plan). But I'd still like to do something in the meantime. That's why I decided to go for an out of the box build to keep things a bit simpler... And maybe even finish something for once. So I decided to build the Aston Martin DBS from Tamiya. Everything I need is in the box, even some photo etched parts. As a bit of a James Bond fan I just had to add this kit to my stash when it was released back in 2010. And there it has been lying quietly with the rest of my "projects" until THAT day. And with me taking the kit out of the stash that has actually come. So, what...

The closer I get to the end of this build, the more things seem to go wrong (and the longer it takes for me to work on this one). When cleaning the body, the grille of one of the vents popped out. No problem I thought, just glue it back in. I put the grille on some blu tack, applied a small amount of super glue and slid the grille back in. That was the plan at least. Somehow I managed to brush against the body leaving a nice glue mark on it and to top it all off, the glue had somehow reached the blu tack, dissolving/glueing it to the body/grille. Leaving me with a(nother) fine mess... Nice. In the end I was able to repair this without problems, so everything should be fine. Next up was the rear window. I decided to darken the rear window (using Tamiya X-19 Smoke) although it isn't required in the instructions. In my reference images it apears as if the window on the real car is darkened too. Added bonus is that this will slightly hide the not so stellar detail in the back...

As promised I will present a more in-depth analysis of my first experience with the Anycubic Photon 3D printer. Of course I'd intended this post to follow close on the heels of my previous post, but for some reason it seems 24 hours in a day just isn't enough... First I'd like to talk about the print settings. Anycubic provides a dedicated program to position your parts in and to set the printing settings. Upon opening the program it shows you the boundaries of the printing area, some buttons to the left to manipulate the model(s) and the print settings to the right (showing the last used settings). Positioning of the parts starts with opening a suitable STL file. The part is than positioned onto the bottom grid. With the help of the buttons to the left it is possible to rotate and/or move the part(s) to the desired location. When the parts have the desired position it is now time to decide upon the support structure (to prevent sagging of the part during pr...

...3D printed parts. Way back in 2015 I posted an entry about 3D modelling and printing , a post started because of the need for special wheels for a(nother) project. Fast forward almost three years and it has finally happened. My first 3D printed parts. In this case being the rear wheels of the no. 71 Ferrari F458GT2 that was raced at the 2013 edition of the Le Mans 24 hours race, with (amongst others) Kamui Kobayashi at the wheel. But things have changed a bit. For one, I switched CAD programs. The first version was drawn in SolidWorks. But the final version has been drawn in OnShape (an on-line 3D CAD program). And I haven't used any third party sevice like Shapeways but "just" bought my own 3D printer... But let's start at the beginning: The 3D model. The first model which I made in SolidWorks was rather crude. After upgrading my PC (I'm talking 2016 here), I didn't bother reinstalling SolidWorks and went with OnShape instead. The differences a...