Fat Brian

Well, tonight the top came off. I decided to go with the more difficult chop where you cut the roof into quarters. I like the look better, the new roof is wider which plays up how low it is and the rear window doesn't slant as much and I don't really care for the fastback look on this car. The first cut I made was across the roof width wise at the door line on the B pillars. Next was the lengthwise cut. Here the roof is quartered and the B posts have been removed, the A and C postd have been cut down about six scale inches. Here is the roof tacked in place with tape, you can see how much will need to be filled. This is the new roof profile, it still needs some fine tuning and I need to decide what to do with the B posts. I also removed the drip rails from the roof side and the chrome strip from the top of the doors.

I have to agree that a big part of the fun of monster trucks in the sound and all electric just won't be the same. But, in my crazier moments I am thinking about putting a Cummins 4bt in my SC300 so what do I know?

It will be interesting to see if they actually compete with the battery truck or if it's just a concept build. The runs are so short and the trucks are mandated to weigh a minimum of 10,000 pounds so carrying 36 giant batteries isn't really a big deal. I hope they don't try to use this vehicle to promote electric cars, the two really aren't remotely comparable.

Wow, now I have to buy another one for a period custom, dang.

I'm not worried about winning, trying to build for shows ruins the fun for me, I just wanted to know what the general rule is. I can inderstand not valuing a purchased resin kit as much as a scratch build but designing the kit in 3d still takes a good deal of skill and it's a shame that it may not be valued appropriately.

The 3d printing thread took an interesting turn when it was opined that contest judges should take into account if a certain build has 3d printed parts and make deductions from said model if another build is of equal quality and impact but scrtach built. My question is, is it standard judging practice to favor scratchbuilding over purchased aftermarket parts? If three models are of equal quality and one has scratch built parts, one has aftermarket resin parts, and one is 3d printed does the scratchbuilt car win simply because it was scratchbuilt? What if the 3d printed model was designed by the builder who is showing it, is their creativity worth less than the builder who did the work by hand?

If I buy a pre costomized body from Jimmy Flintstone how is that any different than having it printed out? I still didn't contribute anything to the body other than painting it. I would say a person who desings and prints their own parts has more invested in them than someone who buys precustomized parts and just assembles them. This is exactly what I was talking about, what is the purpose in this gradation of who is a real builder and who isn't?

It could be a couple of things. Maybe there was some flash on the opposite side that is making it sit higher, or maybe some paint build up is not letting the suspension seat squarely. I would gently take the front suspension assembly off and check all of the mounting surfaces to make sure they are flash free and there is not any excessive paint build up, also check the mounting points on the chassis for the same things. Also, if the tires don't roll make sure that the opposite side tire doesn't have anything like a burr from the tire web on the bottom that would make it taller than the other side.

I=disappoint Oh well, I'll be home soon and check out the wifes tatas.

I love the stance and those Pegasus big and littles look great.

Do we currently put purchased resin bodies in a different category? I've never seen it done. Just because you can print it out doesn't mean it will totally paint and assemble it's self. Yes, the builder will have less invested in some areas but if they desingned the parts themselves they will have increased skills in another area. I hope that this technology won't lead to a whole "You didn't really build that, you're not a true modeler" bunch of mess. We all except for the very few super talented and ambitious among us start from a kit at some point, I mean they are very few totally DIY 100% scratchbuilders out there.

I have some 442 motors to choose from but I also have a ZR-1 motor that may find its way in here.

I am really excited about this technology, I guess since I do both sides of it, working with 3d models and building plastic ones. I just see how incredible it would be to make a 3d model of anything you want and be able to have it in plastic in whatever scale you like. If a builder isn't confident in their plastic working skills or is trying a technique for the first time they could do in the computer and make sure it's perfect before committing the final design to plastic. For instance, I'm going to chop the new 50 Olds but I'm stalling because I'm not exactly sure of how I want to go about it to get the look I want. If it was a 3d file I could work with it and modify it until I'm happy and then print out the finshed product ready to hit the paint booth. What if you could print out the tube chassis of a drag car or the rollcage to a stock car and it would be one piece and straight and all the tubes would actually be round and with no impossible to clean seams everywhere. It will effect builders differently, some may not have much contact with it for a long time, while others will jump on it right away. Some people prefer to really chop up parts and let the plastic dust fly but some will prefer to do some things on the computer and start with ready to go parts. In the beginning you will able to choose your exposure to it, kind of like resin parts now. Some builders embrace the stuff and really use a lot of it and some have never and will never use it all. It is your personal choice and that won't change any time soon.

Wow, my wife is going to hate that, but she does always say she wishes she had some help around the house.

Realistically we are probably 3-5 years away from having a home unit that can reproduce parts of sufficient qualty to make it worth the investment for the average builder. Still, 3-5 years away from a technology that will fundementally change our hobby is pretty significant. This could do what the rewritable cd and mp3 player did to the music industry if the model companies are not ready and willing to adopt different busniess models. So right now the texture is a little rough, if the resolution of the printers multiplies at the same rate as that of digital cameras it should double every six to twelve months. In a few years the texture should be more like that of flat primer than sand, something very workable especially for one off custom kits. Only the outside of the body and any chrome parts need to be super smooth, everything else would probably benefit from having some texture to it.

I added the frenched headlight bezels tonight, I will putty them up and smooth them out later. I made the slightly angled, I wanted to see how it looks and if it doesn't work I can always sand them flat.

The stake truck is not even easily converted into the 53 truck shown. The front axle needs to be moved forward, the wheels are wrong, the chassis is most likely too long, the fuel tanks are wrong, among other things. It would be so much work they might as well just start fresh, especially since they will lose the ability to ever reissue the cab over C-600 like the W900A to T600A debacle.

Monogram already made a 69 Coronet 440+6, AMT was making the 68 Road Runner, 69 GTX, and 70 Super Bee, Monogram did a 70 GTX and Road Runner. The 68-70 B body market was pretty crowded while they already had a good tooling for a 67 GTX that was easily converted.

Why would they do that, how could they be so stupid? Stuff like this creates a fecal storm when there doesn't have to be one.

The C600 has been out a few times with a box, I guess it will be a reissue of one of these kits.

Daniel Gallioux casts the dual square lights with the chrome surround, they are about 3 or 4 bucks a pair, using them on this hood would make it a late production Mexican A model.

This may put the kit manufacturers completely out of business but it won't matter because we can do everything they do at home. Instead of buying a kit we will buy a file like from iTunes and print out a copy. If it really catches on I can imagine instead of mailing parts to Chrometech you email them your pieces and they print them, plate them , and mail them back to you. As for clear parts it would be very easy to make and print a model buck of the windows that could be used to vac or heat form them. It will be different but better in so many ways, imagine going to model shows and not seeing the same kits over and over again. You will be able to build whatever you want with as much or as little of the work done in the computer as you like.

You have a car because of a movie but you aren't sure what car is actaully in the movie? That's like having a Wayne's World Pinto, Back to the Future Chevette, or a Mad Max Holden Commodore.

The models will most likely have to be designed for printing since most 3d models don't need to represent material thickness. Models made now are a framework of wires holding micron thick faces that represent a structure. If an attempt was made to print one the parts would be paper thin and far too fragile to work with. Bridging that gap will take reworking most models to represent not only the appreance of the original but also to have enough rigidity to be able to work with it. Here are some basics about 3d models to aid in this discussion somewhat. In the pics below the the views on the upper left, lower left, and lower right all show the wireframe model from a differnt angle. The upper right window shows the model with the faces in place and painted with the texture that will give them their color. Faces make up the surface of the model and the wireframe gives them their shape. Faces do not have any thickness or mass to them. Think about building a cube from the thinnest possible styrene strips and wrapping it in clear plastic wrap, the cube will have a shape but it will be hollow and not have enough density to work with. Another aspect of faces in that they are only visible from one side, if you were to paint the outside of your cube you can clearly see the faces from the outside but if you were inside the cube and the faces behaved like 3d model faces and not plastic wrap the colored faces would be invisible. See how they behave in the pic below showing the inside of the model above. To give the appearance of mass the guys on the site I was modeling trucks for developed what we called "fiberglassing", where we would take the outside model and turn it inside out to create an inside surface and then add it back into the outside model to make a body shell. The pic below illustrates this technique, it now looks like the body has mass or density. It appears to exist in 3d since it has an inside and outside but it would still not be printable because it still doesn't have any thickness, it's basically the front and back of the same sheet of paper. More advanced 3d models and most of what you find available on the web have their interiors built in such a away as to be truly 3d but they still would have the same material thickness issues as the pics above. The models will have to be made with an inside and outside surface and in a way that tells the printer that the area between those surfaces needs to be solid. Newer 3d programs are beginning to have this ability, a lot of this really depends on how the software is programed. Here is an model I made for the inside of a truck cab to give it more depth, some areas are just reversed faces to represent sheet metal and others I built out deeper to give the appearance of interior panels inside the cab.