With the advent of all the fun in rapid protoping around here, I thought I'd have my hand at it and start building a macharius since I like the tanks but don't exactly want to put together a 40k scale one.

here is what I have after a couple of hours of work. I still need to do the sponson and add tracks before moving onto the hull. I'm thinking it will probably need to be split into 4 or five parts for molding and assembly.

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-Vaaish

Nice.

Your rivets need to be .4 mm diameter, .3 mm extrusion. Panels should be at least .3 mm thick.

And when I say "need", I mean "if I were doing it". Your mileage will vary depending upon the 3D printer type that you choose.

I'll keep that in mind, I think I'm good for those rivets given the entire model should probably be 2x the length of a russ and the bolts are noticibly larger than standard rivets to begin with. I'm a little more unsure of layered panels since I can't quite get as accurate measures in blender for that kind of thing, I'll have to make a measuring curve in illustrator and import it to make sure.

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-Vaaish

ok updated and should now be scaled correctly with the panels and rivets being the correct depths. the track is 50mm long so all in all the entire thing should be 55mm or so. thats a little over the length of two hellhounds.

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-Vaaish

It deserves a hug.

How thick/tall are the cleats on the treads?

Did you envision this component as its own mold? If so, the undercuts near the treads should be OK.

Looks mighty impressive

The cool part is that you could actually use many of the parts to make a Gorgon as well.

One thing though: 5.5 cm sounds rather big? Wouldn't that make the finished model about the same size as a Baneblade?

Anyway: Keep up the good work. I can't wait to see more

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Sofa General

Nobody expects the Inquisition!!!
http://theepiclounge.wordpress.com/

Thanks! Well I'm working on estimated measurements and reference photos from forgeworld. Their comparison shot had the Macharius at 2x the length of a leman russ and about 2/3 the length of a baneblade. Since the GW epic hellhound is about the same length as the russ, I just doubled that value for it. I can pretty easily scale everything, but I don't have either the forgeworld or gw baneblades to measure length from.

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-Vaaish

So, you don't have Imperial Armor 5? Maybe the page of measurements call fall onto my scanner sometime soon.

nope, I don't have that one I've been using photos to get the forms right for the track which seems to be working alright for the time being. I've had lots of practice turning a few concept art perspective sketches into full 3d counterparts.

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-Vaaish

man, youre good!

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2+, 2+, no save.

If you were making a 3D model for display purposes, then yeah, it wouldn't matter if you were 25% off in scale (or whatever).

However, modelling for a 3D printer is a different situation. Certain details will vanish or cause bizarre results if you scale below certain thresholds, and discovering those thresholds is a difficult and costly process. Some features will have to be deliberately removed, or exaggerated to get the feel of the model translated to 6mm scale.

I hope I'm not coming off as preachy. I'm just trying to save you an expensive learning curve.

Oh, sorry, not disagreeing with you, I created the track model in illustrator first using it's exact measurements and then imported the splines into blender and extruded to get the object. I also imported the .3mm and .4mm rules I made after you mentioned those thresholds and adjusted panels and rivets to conform to those constraints. Where the approximation came was duplicating the proportions of the shapes needed for the extrusions. Scale in terms of real measurements should be accurate, scale relative to other models might need adjustment.

I missed your other post in there about the treads, yes I envision it as a separate mold. molds for left/right tracks, sponson, turret, and one to two pieces for the hull. The cleats should be .3mm tall and .2mm wide, I don't have it here to check for sure though.

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-Vaaish