The Ship Model Forum

Indeed, a friend who has been laboring away on a Battleship on which he served, and is a skilled draftsman, has commissioned PE parts from his drawings, unique to his ship. In photography we sometimes differentiate between a print produced by a photographer and one done in a lab. Ansel Adams once compared the print to the performance of a musical piece. In the negative and soup days this was certainly true, today with digital printing less so. Though I print most of my "stuff" myself, I do hire labs to make those large prints that are beyond the size capability of my equipment.

Cheers: T

If it's a one-off for only yourself, whether it's PE, or 3D, then that can be "scratch-built". But if your selected parts have been mass-produced then it's "conversion".

The Old Masters did grind their pigments, but mainly not because the choose to do so (actually the chore of the apprentice painters), but rather they could't just walk into a shop to get paints of sufficient quality.

We can't mine our own metals, drill oil wells to get the crude oil for our plastics or rear our own pigs for the bristles for our brushes. Somewhere up the value chain we have to stop and all artists and artisans at all time did and obtained their materials and tools from specialised trades.

3D-printing is an additive manufacturing techniques, while turning, milling or etching would be substractive techniques. I think the 'line' is, where the skills of an individual craftsman comes into play. In 3D-printing or CNC-machining the computer controls the movement of the tools, no skills needed. However, the skills come into play, when it is about designing the files that control these tools or designing the masks for photo-etching. Here the interpretation of the modeller and his CAD-skills plus his knowledge of machine behaviour are the key to success.

Whether you have the files printed at a commercial printer or on your own 3D-printer, whether you have your own CNC-mill or your own etchning set-up is pretty irrelevant, as these are purely mechanical processes. The decision, whether to farm it out or do this mechanical step yourself depends on practicalities, your financial resources, and also the desired quality - many 'consumer' systems simply cannot deliver the same quality as large commercial ones.

Can you paint your scratchbuilt model with purchased paint or should you grind your own pigments? Rhetorical question, my point is there is a line somewhere and we're each going to put that line in a different place. It is OK with me where ever any of you want to put your lines.

I am of the opinion that if you do the 3D design then print it out thru Shapeways or whomever then that is scratchbuilt

Certainly 3D printing offers many possibilities in model creation. The question thrown out is use of contracted photo etch and 3D printed items actually scratch building?

Very interesting Michel - I am working on a 1/48 scale Sumner class destroyer and and wondering if this could be used instead of etch for some details - e.g., torpedo mounts & gun directors, portholes. Thanks for this.
Best
Paul

I wanted to share this post with you on 3D printer usage while scratch building but the size restrictions on pictures here made this impossible.
You are welcome to visit my imodeler page.

http://imodeler.com/groups/scratch-buil ... -printing/

Best, michel.