1968 Mustang GT two door hardtop

[MrObsessive]

I've 3D printed the '68 Mustang coupe before and showed it here, this time around however I did a considerable amount of editing the original file, and also got a hold of some nice wheel files to go with it. For those of you that don't like FB, I had posted it there and they're still talking about it!

The printable file which can be found on Cults3D.com, was intended as an open door model, which for me is no big deal as I can fabricate hinges and door jambs for models. I thought it would be interesting to try a closed door car, but this time make it so that the door and trunk shut lines are much more visible as they were all but invisible when I tried this before, and I thought the shut lines were way too shallow. So working in Blender, I heavily edited the doors and trunk so that there was some "depth" to the shut lines, and also put a "lip" or "flange" around the three sides of the doors/trunk so that they could mesh with the inside vertices/faces in the body, and not get lost during printing. The results turned out very well, and it's another car that for whatever reason, the model makers won't touch.

I've got a bunch of pics to show, along with some Shelby mag wheels files that I converted from a video game file and made those printable. There's also a set of GT wheels I printed, which are part of the original .obj files of the car which I have.

The first set of wheels to my sight I thought could have been a little better defined. I would do these wheels again as you'll see in the pics below, after some heavy editing of the files.

I've got a 1960 Studebaker Lark two door hardtop conversion (I converted it from a four door sedan file), that I just finished up, and the hardtop doors I ran with the Mustang hood (which turned out bad-----explanation a little later, they came out pretty good, albeit the trim is a bit faint.

This was attempt number 1 with the hood, I did do some changes to the hood so it wouldn't be quite so wide after it's printed, but it came out badly which is interesting, as I had ran the file just last week for my Mustang CS and there was no issue.

I got the Shelby Mag wheels off of a video game file car (Forza Horizon) which were actually part of a '68 Barracuda, which is an EXCELLENT file BTW, and one definitely worth printing sometime. I knew that Ford used this same wheel for their car, so I converted the files to be printable, and while they don't look bad, I thought they could have turned out better.

My first edit was to get rid of the peak or "point" in the center of the hub. If some sort of decal or PE is to go in the center, that peak would be annoying. The wheel on the right is where you can see the peak was flattened.

I know that in order for the wheels to be printable, the object itself has to be fully "closed" with no open areas which will lead to trouble with printing. I went around the entire circumference of the back of the wheel, and closed everything off.  This was after I narrowed the wheel itself to be more of wheel cover which the 1:1 car actually had.

I tried again with the next printing, and the results were much, MUCH better and cleaner.

The GT wheels also were problematic. The original file has some sort of hub against the back of the wheel, and it was trapping resin. I thought I better edit out the hub and try these again, as trapped resin will be troublesome weeks or months down the road. You can see here where the back of wheel wasn't quite printing correctly which told me the hub was an issue. One could put in drain holes, but that still doesn't solve the issue that the hub should be printing solid to begin with.

The second set of wheels after the hub was edited out. The liquid you see is water as I literally was taking pics not long after the IPA took off the excess resin, washed, cured, and were still a bit wet.

The GT wheels fitted in a set of AMT's parts pack redlines. I scaled the wheels to be somewhere around 17mm so that they would fit in the bead of the tire properly, and not slip through. Much cleaner appearing this time compared to the first run.

The same with the Shelby mags.........around 17mm so they would fit in the tires. The PE emblem I have is a bit small for the hub. This would be better suited if a snake decal could be made to fit inside the hub.

The following are pics of the car now off the build plate, washed up and cured.........

From my .obj files, I did convert, scale and edit in the side "vent" which the original printable file doesn't have, and I also added rocker panel trim.

Side support marks are very easily sanded down, and are NECESSARY to keep the print as steady as possible to prevent print shift, and distorted side panels.

As can be seen, the trunk shut lines are much better defined.

I put my Green Hornet I'm working on against the print body. If AMT's body is on the mark for 1/25, I'd say my scaling came out darn near perfect. BTW, the Green Hornet is on the downside of getting done. BMF, and fitting of the glass is all that's needed and then it's final assembly. I printed the hood again just this morning-----I took pics but they're on my phone. It came out perfect, and the issue was another part I edited in that I wanted to print with that. This was the upper grille section, but after the second attempt which failed, I edited the file again and took off the grille section and printed it as its own part. Both printed great, and that solves that issue with the hood.

I've had comments about what do I do with all the cars I print......I respond back to them that my intention isn't always to build a particular car at once after I print it. I may print the car as I just happen to like that particular car. Same with a model kit. We buy kits not with the intention of always building it, we just happen to like that car.

Thanks for reading this very long post!  

[vamach1]

Thanks for the very details Ed post and the problems you encounter and how you overcame them.

[cobraman]

It's amazing what can be done with that equipment.

[kymdlr]

This is some amazing work sir. Ive never dealt with 3D printing but its amazing to see so many things that can be done with it.