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peteski

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Posts posted by peteski

  1. Thanks for the info Greg. What brand or type of acrylic lacquer?

     

    Just out of curiosity, if you have small pane of (clean) glass or small mirror handy, could you place them down flat on a table and put few drops of water on them and let it evaporate naturally.  Do you see spots or rings left on the glass or mirror?  If yes then it sounds like your town water has lots of minerals dissolved in it.  If you used distilled water it should leave no spots behind.  You can buy distilled water in gallon size in pharmacies or in many grocery stores (supermarkets).

  2. ... but when I tried to delete the rest of your quote my posting window reverted back to your entire post. Man, this technology krap is effed up. :angry:

    If you revert back aren't you where you just were, not where you want to revert to?  This one is one of my peeves. :P

  3. well, i never bought into that, anyway. somebody is always trying to sell something.

     

    there's another forum which has animated emoti, emiti, whatever-icons, and some threads consist of nothing but replies with them. for a group, here, which eschews "text - spelling", it seems odd to resort to these things.

    Emoticons (or now we also have emojis - thank Japanese culture for this really cutesy stuff)  have been around for a long time.

    The above Wiki link has a good explanation as to why they are used:

    As social media has become widespread, emoticons have played a significant role in communication through technology, and some devices have provided stylized pictures that do not use punctuation. They offer another range of "tone" and feeling through texting that portrays specific emotions through facial gestures while in the midst of text-based cyber communication.

    I also think of emoticons as shortcuts. While you could convey your thoughts purely through words, using emoticons is much easier and faster.  As for the current use you can thank early computer geeks for them. The original emoticons go way back to the days of dial-up bulletin boards where they were written the old-fashioned way using ASCII characters like :-) . Of course as computers got more powerful, cutesy graphics replaced the ASCII text emoticons. That's progress for you. :D

    Even if you dislike those smiley things, I highly recommend that you read the Wikipedia entry I linked to at the beginning of my reply: you might just learn some very interesting things. :)

     

    But as with everything else, there are serious emoticon abusers out there: those who end each sentence with an emoticon, or those who just spew lines full of them across the message like this:

    :D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D:D

    Like it or not, this is the new way of computer-text-based conversations. You don't have to like them or use them. :P

  4. Model.  There is one very visible clue (at least to me).  But the modeling and photography are superb.

    I have also seen Michael Smith's work in the past. I recognized his work right away. But what to me gives it away is the chain-link fence. It doesn't look like real chin-link pattern but more like veil material.  chain-link has square openings where this stuff is more like a parallelogram.

  5. My reference photos show four switches on the right side of the dash, not three... so I was going to sand the dash face smooth anyway and scratchbuild the four switches. But still, ejector pin marks on the face side of the dash is inexcusable.

    16_zpsai3i8s9t.jpg

    This to me looks like a perfect candidate for a natural-brushed-metal dash.  I would sand the plastic dash smooth then take some real aluminum duct tape (not the cheap stuff). Use something like 400 or 600 grit wet/dry paper (before you apply it to the dash) and using same-direction strokes make it look like brushed aluminum.  Then stick the tape onto the dash and trim it.  It will look just like the 1:1 in the photo above.

  6. There are more than a dozen parts trees, molded in black, red, dark gray, light gray, brown, and a satin chrome look. Absolutely no flash whatsoever... I've rarely seen a more cleanly molded kit. Even the various thin linkages have no mold misalignment... they are perfectly round, with no mold seam line to clean up. Every kit should be molded this well.

    Most Tamiya kits I have ever worked with are like that. :)

    This looks to be a fun build!

  7. And I expected pics of the sticks being discussed here (not the finely buffed model body)! ;)

    On a serious note, most of those sanding/polishing things can also be purchased at beauty shops which cater to the hair and nail salons. While probably not as cheap as Walmart, they are still cheaper than the hobby shop versions.  Those stores also carry acrylic nail resins and hardener. That stuff can be used to make small castings or for non-shrinking body filler. But the hardener is fairly aggressive and it might craze some styrene.

  8. I wash my in-progress models probably way too often and I have never ran into this problem.  Very interesting. Did you just let the water droplets naturally evaporate from the model or did you towel-dry or use compress air to try to dry the body after washing?

    Also, what type/brand of paint did you use on that model.

     

    Barkeeper's Friend is a mild abrasive, so you are correct.  And it didn't leave any residue which . . . needed to be rinsed off? ;)

  9. Is it affordable? I can not tell from their home page on the link you gave us?

    If you click on each material featured on hat page, it will give you detailed information (including cost and the printing process) about each material.  But metals are printed at much lower resolution than the resins, so their usefulness for small scale models is limited.

  10.  

    One last thing. I'm curious about what the guy in the last video said about doing 3-D printing in metal in the near future. Plastic is one thing. Other materials is another interesting step forward. Printing things on a molecular level, arranging atoms, could really change things. I wonder how far away that is? And how that will change the world? Again, pretty exciting.

    Shapweays can print your designs in several different metals. That technology is already within hobbyist's reach. http://www.shapeways.com/materials/

  11. Just don't ask any recent high-school graduates to make change from a dollar. ;)

    Yeah! You should see the expression on the face of a teenage cashier when the total is something like $4.48 and I give them $5.03 (or even better, $5.53)!  They look at me like I have three heads (and I only have two). :D

  12. Well, I can see Snake45's point about future being an inferior top clear coat for model cars. While Future results in a decent glossy finish, it can't be sanded and polished like standard clear lacquers or enamels. Many modelers strive for a mirror-like glossy finish. They get there by first building up a thicker layer of clear, then spend hours sanding and polishing it until it shines like glass.  You can't build up a thick coat of Future and then sand/polish it to the same level of shine as you can with other clears.

  13. Looks like in this example the decal was applied over flat paint. So, it was barely stuck to the surface, making the removal easy. Most modelers apply decals over glossy surface while also using decal-setting solution. Those are almost impossible to remove. Also there are different thickness of decal film (depending on the manufacturer). The thicker ones woudl be easier to remove than the thin ones.

  14.  

    Seriously, I'd love someone to make white-metal mirrors with a built-in mounting rod that would go in a drilled hole. Now THAT arrangement might be durable enough for me to worry about putting them on.

    Do it yourself. Simply drill a hole in the mirror stem and glue in a piece of brass rod.  0.010" rod is a good size (for 1:24 or 1:43 cars).  I always pin the side mirrors to my models. I pin most of the small parts which are designed to be glued to the surface.

  15. I don't think that the small producers of cast resin parts or kits need to buy a 3D printer. There are several companies which offer high-end 3D printing services. As long as they are provided with the appropriate 3D drawing, the can print the item which then can be used as a master for resin or metal casting.

    There are several kit producers which do this already. I have a recent Tameo kit of a 1:43 F1 car and many of the white metal castings have very faint striations on them (indicating that the master was 3D printed on a high resolution printer).  Showcase Miniatures vehicle models also have metal-cast parts which under magnification show some faint artifacts of 3D printed master.

  16. With all this talk about autonomous cars all communicating with each other or cloud computing power, nobody has raised the possibility of hackers breaking into the car's computer systems or into the entire inter-car communication system and creating havoc (maybe even causing accidents).  If we look into any current computer devices, they are all prone to hacking - even the super-secure government network. The problem to me seems that the size of the software (in millions of lines of code) has become way too complex to manage properly.  There are many people or entities creating various pieces of the code and then someone else integrates them together (or uses set of libraries from another source). This is just ripe for back doors or vulnerabilities.  I don't want someone hacking into my self-driving car's computer and forcing it to slam into a bridge abutment at 60 MPH!

    Even now (remember Toyota's self-acceleration bug?) cars have buggy software for their non-autonomous systems. Imagine a system 100 times more complex. . .

  17. What I do is not using runners to cast rubber tires. I have a mold that is two halves. Pour liquid flexible resin on the both sides of the mold, and then carefully join the halves. Usually, some resin will "bleed" out on the sides, and lot's of air bubbles also come out this way. 

    Until now I had no problems with air bubbles on the tires. 

    Interesting - thanks for the tip.  So the liquid rubber is more viscous than typical liquid resin (so it doesn't just pour out of the mold half when you tilt the molds to join them together)?

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