April 2021. I was sorely disappointed with the Uniz Slash 2. Having had very good experiences with the so called nfep, I decided to buy a replacement for the Slash 2 the uses nfep by default. That would be the Epax E10. 

The next question would be the what to print as the real test for the printer ? 

I like planes and the Forge World planes are big and expensive and not always easy to build. Challenge accepted.

So what aircraft ? That was surprisingly easy; the largest I could use in one of my armies. That would be one of the Marauder versions. I decided to do a Marauder Destroyer, because of its bristling array of guns.

The model is of course too big to be printed as one part, so it was printed in segments.

I tried segmenting it along the roll-axis in addition to the lateral axis and glue the halves together - which failed, because it would need to much sanding.

Now the segments are cut along the lateral axis only and most of the connection points for supports are hidden "inside" when tucked into the next segment.

The largest part are the wings, which had to be printed separately. 

Of course there are other parts like the cockpit interior, the gun turret, the canopy, missiles, the aft cannon etc.

I tried to print the "glass parts", but the result wasn't good enough. Apply PU Gloss Varnish inside and outside, hinted on a possible solution. But it would take some tests and time to get tolerable results. So I decided to use acrylic glass for the window panes.

I only had some green tinted glass, but that's ok, it's a necessity on that planet where it is stationed.

I decided on a 3 grey colour scheme. AK Panzer Grey and Army Painters Uniform Grey on top and Citadel Grey Seer for the bottom parts. All applied by spray can.

After applying the foundations and metal colours.

There was the question, to wash, to drybrush, to highlight, a combination ?

In the end I decided to highlight the edges only and give a very gentle drybrush.

And that's that:

The model weighs 833 gramms. Wingspan 41cm tip to tip, length 43cm from Autogun-tip to Assaultgun-tip.

The stand is cut from 5mm acrylic glass. It's rather low on intend, as I'm notoriously knocking over high models.

All in all it was a fun project, but working 14 days long every day on the same model is getting a bit long in the tooth.

Understand this is a first design an alpha version. The next model would be easier to build, easier to paint and just better. And it will be, if I ever do a second Marauder.