Rogue Trader Orks for Orktober

Rogue Trader Orks for Orktober?  Well... sort of.

Apologist at the excellent Death of a Rubricist blog has done some great work converting current model plastic Orks back to the look and feel of the old Kev Adams Orks from the early days of Rogue Trader. 

Inspired, I set to work building and sculpting a couple of orks... and then the project languished for quite some time, with the poor boys waiting on various details to be completed.  The bandy legs really were off putting, and as my kid put it the "flipper hand" that most Orks have to hold boltas with is just really terrible. I managed to get them to the point where I was willing to proceed, and then in a burst of inspiration got them painted and based.  

So in addition to sort of a generic RT Ork looks, these two are rough (very rough!) copies of particular poses from the RT ork range, as can be seen below. 

I would like to make enough of these to muster a little squad, but I am not sure I can manage the energy to make it happen.  We will see. 

Next time, back to 15mm?

3d Printed surface tests II

 My results of 3d printer surface testing were a bit disappointing, because the final finish achieved was still rougher than I wanted.  In the comments Heisler suggested that I try fine grit sandpaper and steel wool, so I fired up the printer and produced another sample block.

Since I had five sample positions, I thought that I would have one control, two for black gesso, and two for PVA, so that is what I did. Sanding was done in two steps with sand paper that I had to hand (100 and 220 grit).

1. Bare surface, right out of the printer
2. painted with black gesso and then sanded
3. sanded and then painted with black gesso
4. painted with PVA and then sanded
5. Sanded and then painted with PVA

The whole sample block was then sprayed with off white spray paint, and then given a quick (and sloppy) nuln oil wash. 

Pleasingly, all four of the surfaces are much smoother than my previous attempts, although the hoped for "answer" still eludes me.

3d Printed surface tests

So one of the issues with have a 3d printer is layer lines.  The printer makes models by building layers of plastic, the size of which depends on printer type and printing settings.  For a printer like the Ender 3, layer lines can get under a mm in height, which is small enough that you can not see them from any sort of distance, but you can see them when blown up on the screen, and can feel them a bit with your finger (human fingertips can apparently feel as small as 13nm differences in height). 

So reducing layer lines is something that is worth looking in to a bit, and to that end I produce a small sample, which I treated in various ways to see how it was altered.  I made a test piece with five surfaces, and then sprayed that with a layer of cream spray paint to see how it would look.  I went another step and washed with a coat of Games Workshop's Nuln Oil to see how the finish was for a wash, since I use washes a lot with my figures. 

Initial 3d surface print test with filing and filling

Surfaces are:

1. Raw out of the printer

2. Filed

3. Filed and covered with black gesso

4. Filed and covered with Future

5. Filed and covered with PVA

Sprayed  3d print surface test cream white

Painted with Nuln Oil wash

Honestly, I think the biggest take away is that the surface is easily scratched by filing, and that I need to be more careful there.  This can be seen most clearly on 5, where the filing was very good next to the number, but less good under it.  Number three is similar, but also shows more damage due to scratching since it was harder to reach the middle of the sample.  Since I have two copies of the M5a1 tank, I think I will cover one with gesso, and one with PVA, and then see how the finishes turn out in the end.

 Also evident are the changing conditions locally, since you can see that two of the three pictures are slightly orange from smoky air.  It was actually clean enough to breath for that middle stage!  When of course I was wearing a mask anyway...