Par for the course, the tests didn’t print. That’s 8 or so prints, 4 of which just test prints, in a row that haven’t printed. I’m thoroughly stumped.
Do not let us speak of darker days: let us speak rather of sterner days. These are not dark days; these are great days — the greatest days our country has ever lived; and we must all thank God that we have been allowed, each of us according to our stations, to play a part in making these days memorable in the history of our race.
Winston Churchill
October 29, 1941
Harrow School
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Now, in addition the AK-74, I just finished an AK-74M with folding polymer stock. I won’t be putting this one up on the shop just yet. Not until I figure out what I’ve been doing wrong with my prints. I think I’ve narrowed it down somewhat, either the height that the build platform lifts up after each exposure or the size of the support attachments points at the model. I’ve changed both of these to greater values so hopefully they work. Not a very scientific approach but hey, I want this thing running properly again.
Also, not much progress on the LTAS yesterday. I changed the position of a couple of parts, the left side of the dash facing the door was straightened and brought in to clear the way for a grab handle and door parts. Today was the AK-74.
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Nice! There are number of AK-74 variants deployed in Ukraine, with different stocks, optics, supressors. Perhaps something worth pursuing?
Mario
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It looks like I finally fixed the issue and I can print again. As I set up various models to print, I’ll adjust them to make them printable now.
Yeah! I’ll be looking into the various options and seeing what I can model. I don’t plan on modeling the more outrageous or one-off custom variants that I’ve seen occasionally but the more commonly used equipment I definitely will be doing.
Also something really neat I think. M203 leaf sights. Raised and lowered.
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Well after a few days of an unexpected, unplanned, unwanted, but needed break I finally got the printer back up and running. Prints will unfortunately now take significantly longer; the M16s are now up to around 16 hours instead of only 8-10 hours, but I’ll play around with the times to see if I can bring them back down somewhat. Hopefully by late Spring when the temps are warmer here in New York, I can use shorter times. But now for something completely different.
Here the first real print that actually worked for the past 2 or 3 weeks. A couple of models failed but by the time I remembered to take a picture, I already separated them. Success in my book is failure rate under 25%. This one was 16% so only 4 things failed.
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A short announcement:
Today I have something coming in the mail that should greatly help with my CAD modeling. No, it’s not a new mouse or computer screen but it’s a pretty big deal. More info to come in the coming days.
If anyone has any suggestions for me I’ll gladly hear them. Feeling a bit lonely in here it seems. I’m not too familiar with Russian/Soviet optics and military firearm accessories so if anyone has any specific request for the -74 I’d be happy to hear them. I’ve found a few websites online but I’m not entirely sure what equipment is currently used by Russia and Ukraine on the battlefield.
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Ok boys and girls. I do believe the MICH 2002 helmet is good to go! Take a look-see and tell me what you think!
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that looks 
.
Mike, so what’s the surprise? I have a guess - 3D scanner?
Of course! Should help with some getting more complex geometries like cameras or helmets.
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I knew it! 
Looking forward to seeing what you can come up with it.
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it looks great; stick one of those behind the SINCGARs on a Humvee or on the weapon’s Station. for added realism.
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So far it’s been a good learning experience. I worked in a dental lab for all of a week a few years ago on their dental scanners so I have some previous applicable experience on the software side of things. It’s more so getting used to the scanner itself and its quirks.
Mike this is more of a CAD design question than a modeling question: Why do these images appear in some sort of reverse perspective? I understand an icometric drawing that has no perspective projection but these really look like the object is getting bigger the further away it is from the viewer.
Also when in the open position the camera box body should be completely hollow. In reality there is actually a window thru to the back.
So this is an isometric view. Normally, we see an object with converging perspective lines, where all lines, if extended forever, would converge at a single point in finite space. In 3D CAD, you can switch between various “perspective” views and an isometric view. With isometric views, the true shape of an object is shown with no perspective distortion. Parallel lines are shown as parallel and don’t converge at any single point. It’s kind of similar to what happens with a long telephoto lens. As you get further from the subject, and the focal length gets longer, the foreground and background start to compress together. Isometric projection can lead to some illusions like what you pointed out. But it’s just because our brains are not used to seeing in isometric projection. We expect lines to converge at some point so when we see lines not converge, it can confuse our subconscious.
Example: here’s the perspective view. Note the view cube in the top right corner.
and here’s the isometric view. The view on the view cube hasn’t changed but the perspective shift is significant.
And yes, I’m working on more of the body before working on the interior of the camera body. Because of the way the printer works, when I make the bellows, I still need the camera body to be solid. I can’t have any empty voids in the model or liquid resin will accumulate in them and could prevent the model from printing successfully at best or there would be liquid resin in the model after it prints that can’t be cured at worst.
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Well in the many years before CAD ever existed I was, for a short while a draftsman so as I said, I know what an isometric drawing is. However to my eye your CAD drawings looked almost like some sort of reverse perspective where the object was getting LARGER the further away it got.
So nice that today one can just hit a button and change from perspective view to isometric!