peteski

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. . .

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)?

WOW! How you you avoid air bubbles trapped in the mold? Especially in the ridges of the tread.

Silly question: is the airbrush really clean? The chrome paint needs to go on almost dry - that is why they recommend very low pressure and spraying close to the model. When I do it, when the paint first hits the model it looks like matte aluminum, then as it dries, the little metallic platelets align with the surface of the model and it becomes "chromey" looking. You can actually see it turn into chrome finish right in front of your eyes.

Very impressive! Even the surface finish looks perfect - not too rough and not too shiny. It looks like rubber. Do you pressure-cast? BTW, tires have tread, not thread - easy mistake to make.

Could the bottle of the chrome paint have simply gone bad? I have had Polished Brass go bad where it started clumping no matter how hard I shook or mixed the paint the clumps would not dissipate. Are you keeping the airbrush nozzle open wide enough for the metal flakes to go through it?

Maybe their attitude is related to the customer's attitude? Just speculating . . .

The shape is very familiar, but obviously it is not that car.

That is an unfortunate result of this global economy. Here in the Northeast we have the stink bugs and even more destructive longhorn beetles. Both came from Asia.

That '62 Chrysler 300 interior looks more like Testors tan color (from the small bottles) than the darker leather color

1) like others said - til it is as viscous as 2% milk. I never really make a note of the proportions. 2) It shouldn't - it has a fairly mild solvent. 3) The smell is probably mostly Isopropyl Alcohol. Like most others have mentioned, I say stick with its dedicated thinner - don't cheapen out and use substitutes.

LOL, isn't it just amazing? It is all H0 scale (it started as a train layout which grew and grew). I wouldn't call it a diorama - it is more like a huge model train layout, or maybe a better name would be an "exhibit". It is also not just a guy - it is a team of dozens of people who work on this exhibit full time building and maintaining it. There is an entire Youtube channel devoted to this exhibit. They even show behind the scenes stuff (how it all works). it also generates revenue (you have to pay admission). Official website: http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/ and Youtube: https://www.youtube.com/user/MiWuLaTV

Very well done! What surprises me is that even in large scale like 1:12 they molded the rear quarter window louvers as a solid pieces. I have couple of 1:24 ESCI kits of those cars and I'm planning on making those louvers as see-through pieces with 3-D printed parts (once I figure out how to design them).

I have a partially built one I picked up for much less than $85. I assume you need a set of its rear wheels to use as fronts? If you promise to post some in-progress photos of your modeling I think those wheels can find its way to you. PM me.

That is exactly what I was going to say. Over the years there were many different formulations of polystyrene and dyes used to tint it. Plus, different companies use different sources for their raw materials. Next are dozens of different paint brands which modelers use (and those paints can have different chemical composition). So what Snake proved was that the red dye in the plastic piece he painted and the paint he used did not react. But that is a very small sample of what is out there.

The Demise of Alps printers has been greatly exaggerated. There are still many Alps printers out there chugging along (including mine). If you go to http://robdebie.home.xs4all.nl/models/decals.htm and then scroll down to the section titled Custom decal companies you will find several customer decal makers. That list is fairly up to date. But remember that simply scanning a decal as a bitmap and then putting it in a PDF or another vector file format will not magically turn the scan it into a vector graphic format.

If they don't stock it at your local friendly hardware store, then can custom order it for you.

At home I have an old Akai component system stereo from 1980s: 2 cassette decks, CD player, equalizer, receiver and a timer. I also have DC player in my car (2006 Scion xB - same car as Toyota bB). I don't have any portable DC units but I really have no need of one of those.

Yes it is almost 49 C! It is getting a bit toasty in some parts USA this Summer. Some say this is global warming, others call it global climate change. Some think it is a natural cycle, others that humans contributed to the warming. Yet others say that it is just some random occurrence. Then there are also those who just stick their heads in the sand. You choose which you believe.

That is a classic Zeppelin! It is good to know that I'm not the only person in the world who still buys and prefers CDs to MP3 downloads.

Eh, those are weak! I get the "good: stuff, IPA99 at a local True Value hardware store (in the paint thinners section). It is 99% IPA and sold in gallon containers. Not very expensive either. Works even better than the others and still just as safe on Polystyrene or ABS.

I think I get what you are asking (but it wasn't obvious). Unpainted plastic looks like . . . unpainted plastic. If you are ok with that, then leave it bare. but f you want the plastic parts to look like the material original car parts are made of (usually metal, either bare or painted), then you paint the plastic parts too. Having said that, I have seen some good looking models which had unpainted bodies (they were just polished). But that only works on certain colors (often the lighter color plastic bodues are somewhat translucent and they will look "plasticky", even when polished).

This is not something that irked me specifically today, but I just thought of it. Some people's emails have a very annoying tag on the end. Things like "This was sent from my Verizon 4G smart phone", "This was sent from my super iPhone5", "This was sent from my wonderful Apple iPad", or similar. I really don't give a rat's-a$$ what device you are sending your email from! To me this is just gloating about how much of a technology-whore you are. Oooooh, I have a wonderful iPad! Fine, you can sit on it! All I care about is the meaningful contents of your email - I don't need to know how you sent it. Peteski This was sent from my supercalifragilisticexpialidocious Dell Optiplex, Win XP SP3, Seamonkey 2.33.1

It's easy: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Caller_ID_spoofing

You could get even better light distribution using white-color walls (not aluminum foil). It seems sort of counter-intuitive, but it works.