Brumbaer / 3D Printing / Thunderbolt
 

September 2019. In our Club is a guy who loves 40k, but he is the only real 40k fan in our Club. I played a bit of 40k in the early 2000s, but developed a hearty dislike over time. When Apocalypse came out I gave in and told him I see what I can find and if it is enough we have a test game. Surprisingly enough I found enough for a 200+ points battle provided I painted some of my "paint at some place in time"  stock. Even than I would be lacking air support,  so I decided to do a Thunderbolt model. The decision was eased by the fact that Forge Worlds Epic (6mm scale) Thunderbold is one of my favourite models.

So I looked for some reference material. While I found lots of pictures, hard data like dimensions were nearly impossible to get. So there was some guessing involved.

Because of the size I would use my FDM printer for that project. Later it showed that it is not good enough for some parts and I printed them with my Resin printer.

The biggest uncertainty was whether I would be able to live with the surface pattern, which you can't prevent when using a FDM printer. You can reduce it or even get rid of it, but you will have to invest lots of efforts to do so. Something I was not prepared to do.

That's what it looks like in Cinema 4D.

My printer couldn't print that in one single print, so I divided the model in sections. Cinema 4D support this in a way, so no hassle at that front.

I needed three version to get a result I was content with. The shape of the Hull changed, but mostly parts were printed in different orientations or replaced with Resin parts.

This is a partwise assembly the green parts are made from resin. Note the cockpit interior which slides into the hull. What's not shown here I cut some 1mm acrylic glass to complete the canopy.

I used a filler-primer for cars to prime the model. This reduced the layer-lines, but didn't get rid of them.

As the primer was grey I decided to use a "Navy" colour scheme of light gray and some accents in red and yellow.

 The stand is cut from 5mm acrylic glass. The markings on the wing were done with the help of masking foil. That was my first try using it and I was quite content with the result.

In total I build 4.5 models. I only kept the last two which were of the final version.

 

For those interested that's the complete army I used in that Apocalypse game.

All Talarn models - the sand coloured ones - are 20 years old. The others are form this year. The other infantry are the guardswomen you will find described somewhere else on this page.