peteski

Someone mentioned this "helpful" hint some years back. I tried and never again!!! When peeling the stuff off your model, it leaves tiny pieces of adhesive behind.

If the tolerances are close enough, that might be an option. Iit will likely work well for larger images, but if you have for example bunch of small yellow letters to be applied to a dark colored model, it will be quite a challenge to get them cut out accurately, then evenly apply them to the model, one by one.

It is not that easy. If someone did take over the business, they would also have to be as fastidious and quality oriented as Don was to produce those fine castings everybody is pining for. You could have some hack take the business over and make shoddy castings with bunch of pinholes and other flaws. Who would want to buy those. From what I see around me, fastidious people are hard to come by nowadays.

Standard printers use translucent Cyan, Magenta, and Yellow inks for printing color images. For true color rendition they rely on the inks being applied over white background (paper). Decals printed on clear film will be translucent when applied to a non-white surface. They will almost disappear on very dark surfaces. Of course, you can print on white decal film, but then you have to trim the images really carefully or the white film will show up on the model. Alps MD (MicroDry) series of printers can print white ink and they can print colors over the white ink areas. (in overlay mode). That is really the only printer that can truly print good opaque color decals. Of course it is out of production, and if you can find a used one, it will be very expensive. There are also some color laser printers available which can print white (the black toner is replaced with white), but they are also pricey.

I suspected as much, but it is still amazing feat of engineering to me. The liquid plastic feed rate has to be just right so the right amounts of the colored plastic do not overflow into where the other color will be injected.

I remember it well. I also remember that evening how quiet the sky was with no airplanes flying anywhere. It was eerie. As far as remembering goes, there are 18 year old young adults who weren't even born when 9/11 happened. They can't remember, but should be reminded.

Still irks me. Understanding what you are using and how it works makes for a better modeler. I'm just trying to teach. Same like when people call water-based paints "Acrylics", even though there are organic-solvent based acrylic lacquers and enamels.

From what I understand, the shutdown is temporary - they will be available once he reopens for business. I have seen several cottage-industries (usually 1-man operations) temporarily shutdown due to some reason. Personal issues, sickness, temporary unavailability of raw materials, etc. It happens. But obviously he can still put some of his spare time onto designing the artwork.

We live in very silly times.

Why people keep calling it wax?! Future (or whatever the latest iteration is called) is a floor finish. Waxes have no thickness - this is a clear coat which has some body to it. If you have something else you are using now to add a gloss to your models, it is also likely not a wax, but some sort of a clear coat.

I believe that the info on Swanny's site is still current (from 2015). Worth a read and look! http://www.swannysmodels.com/TheCompleteFuture.html

What I find really amazing is the Gundam figure kits where injection molded parts have multiple colors on the same part! Not painted - it is colored plastic.

There have been few threads where I abstained from commenting out of fear that my comments might be negatively received.

Last Saturday, at my club's meeting, my friend brought one of their aircraft kits. The quality of resin castings is amazing! And they are as thin (and sturdy) as injection molded kits. The instructions are also really well done.

I have never had a chance to work with Adobe Illustrator, but from I have learned, Corel Draw is very similar (of course there are differences in how to accomplish the same thing in each program). Corel Photo Paint (which is included in the Corel Suite of programs) is somewhat similar to Photoshop (a bitmap editor, with some vector functionality). I use very old versions (10 and 12) where 19 is the newest version, but even those older versions have more than enough functionality for my needs. I'm not sure if there will ever be a consumer-grade (and price) printed which will come close in capabilities to what Alps MicroDry printers do. Most home printer users really have no need for white inks or overlays. A cheap ink jet printer is quite sufficient for them. The Alps printer was just an anomaly, and it failed to penetrate the consumer printer market. While it is ideal for hobbyists or small cottage industry decal companies, it was very slow and cumbersome to use. What might develop is same thing that is happening in 3D printing. You design your item and a company like Shapeways (which had the expensive 3D printers) will print it out for you for a fee. I foresee decal companies which will accept your artwork and print a decal for you (using their expensive printers which are capable of printing opaque ink decals). Actually, there already are several custom decal companies which will print decals (usually on ALps printers) using your artwork. But it is so much nicer if I can do this in my own workshop.

You can participate in this forum for free, and you can upload photos to the forum for free. No need for paid photo hosting solution for me. Plus, as a bonus, the photos in my posts will never show up as missing (due to a 3rd part photo hosting problem, or me canceling the subscription). My photos will show up in my posts for as long as the forum is up. Can't ask for anything more.

If you haven't followed this thread: If your message had the words s e l e c t and f r o m (without the spaces of course) within the text, that would give you the 404 error. It is a bug (feature?) in the forum software. Or maybe you accidentally discovered another combination of different words which triggers the dreaded 404 error.

Nail polishes are pretty much all lacquers (which are fairly hot). I would put them in the same category as automotive touch-up paints. Yes, lacquer thinner works well with them.

I wouldn't use it, and don't recommend it. Compared to white LEDs, it has much shorter usable life, it is nowhere as bright as LEDs, and it requires high voltage (the last point is not really bad, but I rather deal with 5 or 12V than 100V AC). LED strips also run quite cool (unlike the old incandescent rope lights). Electroluminescent material was all the rage in the late '80s and '90s (before white LEDs became widely available). I used it back then,and it was good at that time, but I'll never go that route again. That is not to say that it is totally useless. Far from it. If one needs a thin and very evenly illuminated area, which doesn't need to be very bright, the EL material is perfect. Like Joe said, perfect for some ScFi models. But I just wouldn't use for illuminating a display case, where I would want a brighter light source.

I use the same technique, but I use stainless steel hypodermic tubing. It has very thin (scale thickness) walls, and it has a very realistic sheen. I bought my supply of tubing long time ago from Small Parts Inc. They got bought out and butchered by Amazon, but if you Google "hypodermic tubing" you should find some places to get it from.

How about nano-bots which will travel in your bloodstream, performing medical procedures?

Who will fix the repair robots which repair the repair robots, which fix the repair robots?

Great story D.W. "Mole hair interior"? I never heard of that one. Are you sure it was not mohair? Like the fabric used for the old fashion teddy bears?

Yes, LED strip lights. Micro Mark sells them, but a huge variety is available on eBay and Amazon, much cheaper. Many come with a wall-wart power supply. I used those in my photo tent.

Unfortunately that is the reality. The were never really cheap, but since they very discontinued, they fetch high prices on eBay. Also a warning: these printers have very delicate print head which can get damaged. The result is thin lines of missing ink in the printout. They are also rather delicate and unless packaged properly, can get easily damaged in shipping. The ones offered on eBay might have defective print head, and/or be improperly packed for shipping. I participate in Yahoo Alps group and see my share of horror stories about defective heads or shipping damage. One source that is trustworthy is Elephant Rocket in Japan (don't mind the funny name). But their website (um, it actually is a blog) is a real pain to deal with. But when they refurb those printers for sale, they have the ability to replace the print head and recalibrate the printer properly. They also properly package the printers for shipping. This makes the price rather high (plus shipping cost is quite high). The prnter models you want are 5500, 5000, or 1300 and 1000. The others are ok, but lack some features. Alps also doesn't deal well with with color gradients, but they can't be beat for solid color graphics (and of course the capability to lay down a coat of white ink under color layers makes them really handy).