Tamiya 1/32 Spitfire XIVe Conversion (Laminar Flow Design)

[scvrobeson]

What a funky little spaceship for your side project. I like it.  What kit is that from?

 

 

 

Matt 

[Thunnus]

4 hours ago, scvrobeson said:

What a funky little spaceship for your side project. I like it.  What kit is that from?

 

 

 

Matt 

 

It is the Jet VTOL from the Japanese TV show called Ultraman.  I have fond memories of this show because I went from watching Urutoraman in Japan to watching Ultraman on TV in America when my parents emigrated from Okinawa to Virginia.  The kit is a 1/72 scale model made by Hasegawa and came with a 1/24 scale resin figure of the female character named Akiko Fuji.  I just finished the model today.

 

 

 

 

 

It goes into my cabinet with some other Japanese giant robot toys and models.

 

[Citadelgrad]

I remember watching Ultraman as a boy.   Nicely rendered ship.   Smooth paint, but we expect that from you, John.  

[JayW]

Following!  Griffon Spitfire - what a great choice.  Another thing about 3D print parts - the support columns IMO are the Achilles heel of 3D print parts - they leave pock marks on the surface they connect to, and will probably need to be puttied or some other treatment to get them to disappear.  Otherwise - awesome.

[Kagemusha]

Nice project, and the Spitfire ain't bad either, EB-V has the late e cannons.

[Thunnus]

11 hours ago, Citadelgrad said:

I remember watching Ultraman as a boy.   Nicely rendered ship.   Smooth paint, but we expect that from you, John.  

Thanks Bill!  It was a nice break working without documenting every step.  Also, a good learning experience working with metal shades and a glossy finish.

 

 

2 hours ago, JayW said:

Following!  Griffon Spitfire - what a great choice.  Another thing about 3D print parts - the support columns IMO are the Achilles heel of 3D print parts - they leave pock marks on the surface they connect to, and will probably need to be puttied or some other treatment to get them to disappear.  Otherwise - awesome.

Thank you Jay!  Very good to know.  I'll keep an eye out for that.

 

 

1 hour ago, Kagemusha said:

Nice project, and the Spitfire ain't bad either, EB-V has the late e cannons.

Thank you very much!  Happy to know that I won't have to buy another set of cannon barrels!

 

 

22 hours ago, Thunnus said:

Yes Tom, that inquiry about the broken part is me.  So... there were THREE fairings included in this shipment.  The third was a separate re-print that ended up being broken in my set.  Interesting thing is that my broken part is clearly labelled as "L" but he's saying starboard?

Mathieu has clarified his FB post based on my message to him...

 

So if your kit contain this small part, just use it instead of the (correction) PORT (left side) camera fairing present in the cage.

[chaos07]

Looking forward to this build.  I never was a Spitfire fan in earnest, but the Griffon-powered machines do draw my attention though.  You'll certainly end up with a wonderful-looking machine in the end.  

 

Following.  

[Thunnus]

While I get ready for the painting stage on my Border 190A build, I am going to jump back onto the Spitfire project.  And before I even get to the actual Tamiya parts, I want to take a closer look at the Laminar Flow Design conversion parts.  Being my first experience with digitally-printed parts, I was especially curious on how to separate the parts from their interesting "crates".  Let's start with the prop components.  There is something about a five-bladed prop fighter that intrigues me visually and I was really excited to have a chance to model a large scale XIVe.  I followed the instructions which said I sould remove the four crate walls from the base to access the parts.

 

 

The parts are suspended by a myriad of support columns and each support must be cut from the part.  I chose to use a fine razor saw and saw the support columns near the base to, working from outside to the inside.  Because the connections to the parts are very small, some of the braces broke off the part during the sawing process.  I don't know how to prevent this but it didn't seam to affect the parts negatively.

 

 

Once each part was separated from the base, I snipped off each of the supports.  Similar to cutting styrene parts off of a sprue except 10x more connections.  I don't know anything about the digital printing process but as an end user, I see that placement of the supports is important.  Cutting the connections tends to leave either raised stumps or if they've broken instead of being cut, a small divot.  The resin at the connection points is noticeably harder, making the clean-up process more difficult.  In this case, all of the attachment points are on the glue-side of the spinner backplate.

 

 

I noticed slight imperfections on the edge of the spinner.  Not around the entire perimeter but in certain spots only.

 

 

I wasn't sure of the best way to rectify this but I chose to fill the imperfections with black CA glue.

 

 

A really nice touch are the keyed holes for the prop blades.  There is only one way to insert the blades into these holes, ensuring proper orientation and blade angle.

 

 

Here is the prop with the blades temporarily inserted into spinner.  An extra blade is provided.  The scribed detail on the spinner is VERY fine and I think I'm going to need to be careful not too fill in the detail with too much paint.

 

 

The next batch of parts to break out of prison are the tailwheel components.  There were two tiny rods, presumably the actuating rods for the tailwheel doors, that were lost.  Strange because I identified them prior to cutting, paid very particular attention as I cut and they pinged into thin air, one after the other.  No biggie... very easy to replace with stretched sprue.

 

 

Here are the tailwheel parts after cutting and clean-up.  In addition to the one-piece tailwheel well and open doors, two struts and a weighted wheel, LFD provides resin templates for the fuselage cuts necessary to accommodate the assembly.

 

 

This box was the most densely packed and most challenging to deal with.

 

 

After the walls of the crate were removed, I started sawing the supports at the base.  Because each part had multiple rows of support connections, it was difficult to do this in an orderly fashion.  Lots of dust (make sure you wear your mask) and lots of supports breaking off of parts as I was cutting.  See the two tiny rods between the radiators?  I was able to save those!

 

 

Each separated part was thrown into a pile until I was able to free everything from the base.

 

 

Here are the parts after clean-up.  No external or visible scarring from the connection points... kudos to Mathieu for placing them so strategically. Again, we have templates to cut the different hatches.

 

 

The detail on the parts is incredibly fine... trailing edges are paper-thin.  Two types of tail fins are supplied... wide and extra wide!

 

 

The radiator faces have a fine mesh pattern that looks to be too fine to hold a wash or to dry-brush.

 

 

I'm saving the biggest part for last... the big Griffon nose.

 

[monthebiff]

Looks like a really nicely thought out conversion set John, also the quality of the parts seems super smooth with no evidence of the lines you often see from the printing process.

 

Regards. Andy 

[JayW]

Hi John - welcome to the world of 3D printed parts.  Quite the aftermarket kit you have there!  And such a coincidence that you get a spinner with some of the same issues I had doing my own spinner in 1/18 scale for the P-51.  See my new build thread I started.  I was able to avoid the messy aft edge by printing my equivalent piece upside down, leaving me with a mess to deal with on the nose instead.  One must pick one's poison.   As I stated earlier, the Achilles heel of 3D print parts is the many supports.  So extra sharp clippers, and great care is about all you can do.  That and CA or putty....  The good part designer will try to place supports such that the final product is not too marred up.

 

I am encouraged by the thin trailing edges of the rudder.  In my experience, anything less than .015 inch thick or so becomes risky with 3D print, as brittle as the material tends to be.   

 

This looks to be some project.  Following.

[Thunnus]

10 hours ago, monthebiff said:

Looks like a really nicely thought out conversion set John, also the quality of the parts seems super smooth with no evidence of the lines you often see from the printing process.

 

Regards. Andy 

There are very faint lines on some of the parts... I thought they were fingerprints.  But I don't think they'll be visible under a coat of paint.  It's a very nice set with lots of thoughtful touches like keyed attachment points and scribing templates for the hatches.

 

 

5 hours ago, JayW said:

Hi John - welcome to the world of 3D printed parts.  Quite the aftermarket kit you have there!  And such a coincidence that you get a spinner with some of the same issues I had doing my own spinner in 1/18 scale for the P-51.  See my new build thread I started.  I was able to avoid the messy aft edge by printing my equivalent piece upside down, leaving me with a mess to deal with on the nose instead.  One must pick one's poison.   As I stated earlier, the Achilles heel of 3D print parts is the many supports.  So extra sharp clippers, and great care is about all you can do.  That and CA or putty....  The good part designer will try to place supports such that the final product is not too marred up.

 

I am encouraged by the thin trailing edges of the rudder.  In my experience, anything less than .015 inch thick or so becomes risky with 3D print, as brittle as the material tends to be.   

 

This looks to be some project.  Following.

Yes, my first experience using 3D printed parts.  Making them... I guess that is the next frontier but I'm not sure if I'm ready to explore that realm yet.  Is it my imagination or is the resin at the attachment points much harder than the main body of the part?  When scraping these pips off, it feels like I'm dealing with dried CA glue until I get to surface of the part, which feels much softer.

 

Let's free the biggest piece of the set... the Griffon nose.  This time the cage is double-load with attached parts on both ends.

 

 

Again, working from the outside to the middle, the support trees are sawed near the base to free each part.

 

 

Here is the nose piece with the exhaust stubs and chin intake pressed into place after these parts have been cleaned up.

 

 

The opposite base has a lot of small, delicate-looking parts so care must be taken when cutting these free.

 

 

Here are the parts after trimming and sanding.  Lights and the camera assembly are included.

 

 

I don't think I'll be doing a recon version so this camera and circular ports will most likely not be used.

 

 

The lights are comprised of the bulb/reflector and the external mounting ring.  A 4mm clear acetate disk, which I punched and painted in clear red, yellow and green, are sandwiched between the two parts.

 

 

All of the separated resin parts will be bagged for later use.  I'm going to take a look at the Tamiya XVIe kit parts next.  But here is a sneak peak at the resin nose with the prop and and other bits attached temporarily.

 

[geedubelyer]

That looks great!

[Cycling Guy]

I'm waiting for the next order to open up. This looks so good!

[JayW]

Oh my word John - you must be pretty darned pumped with that front end!  

 

I have not experienced the support ends being more brittle than the rest of the parts.  FYI, 3D print parts go through two stages of cure.  One is when the printing is actually being done.   Each layer receives a several second cure to solidify the resin layer into the shape of that layer, allowing the next layer to be cured in top of the previous layer.  But it is not a complete cure.  After the part (and its supports) are finished printing, they are a bit soft and sticky (just a bit).  Then it is cleaned of uncured resin with IPA, allowed to dry, and then it goes into a post-cure under UV light for a couple of minutes, where the finished part is dry and stronger.  It can actually be done by letting the part sit in the sun a while, but I prefer a curing station where there is a rotating table in front of an array of UV light bulbs.  I have one, and it was not very expensive.  I suppose the thinner the part, the more curing it sees.  And the support ends are quite small and thin.  That might be what you are experiencing.

[JayW]

That Griffon is positively bursting out of its engine cowl.  Clearly it needed a large aircraft!