peteski

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).

Alps MicroDry printers can do all sorts of tricks as far as multiple ink layering, keeping the paper in perfect alignment. They also print white and metallic colors in spot color mode. Perfect for making decals. Unfortunately they have been out of production for several years, but there are still plenty of people using them (me included). These printers aren't perfect, but are the best there is for hobbyists and cottage inductry decal manufacturers. The consumer grade color laser printers (like Micro Mark sells at a huge markup) have very limited capabilities. They can only send the paper through the paper path once, so they can only apply the color toners in the order they are installed in the print path. As far as graphic software, I have been using the Corel Draw suite for decades. It is similar to Adobe Illustrator and Photoshop, but less expensive.

I sure hope that someone (hopefully professionally) will be recording a video of this once-in-a-lifetime for posterity.

If every physically and mentally fit human being is capable of doing something "more satisfying", then great. But I have feeling that not all humans fit that mold. Plus , I much rather speak to a human operator when I call some company, rather than going through a large tree of stupid "artificial intelligence" computer menus. Give me a human being please! Only the time will tell how this new paradigm works out.

I think that the last couple examples have strayed a bit too far afield from the original subject: weird *CARS*.

Yes, but it is very shortsighted (by those greedy executives replacing humans with robots). If we make humans obsolete, nobody will be buying the products those robots manufacture. Plus, who will fix them if they break.

Neah, remember that kids already live in a virtual reality world full of electronic gadgets and AI (and with their noses in their smart-devices). They'll think that seeing robots is quite normal. It is the old fogies like us who will have nightmares.

You must have uses one of the naughty words forum censors. The world has lost another funny lady. We all aren't getting any younger.

It might have something to do with the way your monitor is adjusted (like picture brightness). Of course, once you know what to look for, you cannot unsee things to verify whether brightness setting makes a difference.

Interesting. Makes sense (but regardless, not something that should be tagged in a text message window, and especially causing the forum software to puke out 404 error). IIRC, the other forum has problems with things like "(print", or something like that - not just bare words. Poor coding if you ask me.

I suspected all along that some combinations of text in posts was interpreted as code. This problem never existed in the days of simple BBSs using plain text. I frequent another online forum (using different forum software) and they have similar problem.