Well I finally got around to finishing it. In a way, it’s a good thing it took soo long. I know soo much more about vacforming, built a bigger table, have a full sized shop, etc. Anywho, here are some pics!
Here you can see the riser line in the plastic. You get a nice clean line to cut on by raising the buck up on slightly larger boards:
Each piece is pulled on a 24"x24" sheet of .060 styrene
Trying to get a full pack put together here in the next week or two. I’ll post pics once it’s done!
Are you going to do all the pulls as white or are you able to do a black plastic? Or a grey maybe? I’m just think about weathering either natural or forced.
So I’ve gone with the white HIPS (high impact polystyrene) for a few reasons. It pulls the sharpest details in .060, it’s the most affordable, it’s very forgiving & easy to work with. I may try a black ABS run, but I’ll need to see what the cost increase will be and how well the details pull.
As far a scratching and weathering goes, if you prep your shell right there shouldn’t be much of an issue. Properly priming with a plastic specific primer, doing several light coats of your color, and then topcoating with a chip resistant clear ( like varathane “heavy use formula” polyurethane) you should be good.
Here are some shots of the texturing and paint on the shell. We used the orange peel spray wall texture as the base, regular grey primer for the scratched areas, and a plastic paint & primer in satin black for the final color.
Well I finaly got a whole pack completed! Almost everything is made in house, including the vac-formed/resin cast hybrid wand. Several of the detail pieces were 3d printed from tgoacher’s files on thingaverse ( http://www.thingiverse.com/tgoacher/about ) then modified, molded and cast. I bulit the light and sounds from over the counter boards, and will post how those were made in a bit. Anyways, tell me what you think!
I’m in the process of reinforcing mine with fiberglass, and have some feedback: the styrene is nice and thick, and the webbing is minimal and clear. There is a nice clean line where the styrene “lip” is so your know where to trim. It did crack in a few places, which is normal for styrene (it’s kind of brittle by nature) but it’s easy to see where and bondo/fiberglass. I’m extremely happy with the detail and the cost, highly recommended!
