3D Printed planes

 Although I swore I wouldn't paint any 15mm desert planes, Tims generous contributions of free stuff meant I actually had a substantial collection of British and Italian 1/144th scale planes, and having added a 1/144th Bf 109, I thought I might as well go the whole hog and get some more German planes.

I was actually putting in an order to Hannants for something else anyway, so I could have bought another Zvezda Stuka, but I really wanted a 1/144th Ju 88 (mine are either 1/300th or 1/200th) and I couldn't find an affordable Ju 88 at all. I'd noticed BPM do a range of 3D printed aircraft and as I was also ordering some stuff from them as well, I thought I'd give them a go.

And here they are, 3D printed Ju 87 and Ju 88. Done in desert camo to join my expanding 1/144th desert air forces. They are fairly basic wargaming models, but good enough. They are quite large pieces so striations are visible but they sanded down OK. Both planes come printed in two halves (one half of the fuselage, plus a wing etc etc), with some extra bits too. They stuck together fine though, and the join line was fairly unobtrusive and could be sanded once dry.

The Ju 87 has lovely raised supports on the cockpit canopy, which made if very easy to paint them in after doing the perspex dark blue. You can see the tail is slightly on the thick side, a result of the two halves being stuck together. Obviously they don't come with propellers, although I usually snap those off anyway, before other people do it for me by accident.

You can see the join line more on the underside, I didn't bother sanding this down as much. The wheel farings come in two halves each (why?). They stick together OK, but have no locating pins, you just have to bond them to a flat area on the base of the wing. This took me a few attempts with layers of UHU and superglue but they stuck on firmly in the end. I suppose I could have drilled in a support rod, but didn't. 

The Ju 88 is similar in construction, you can see the thickness of the tail more here. Again, the raised cockpit detail made it very easy to paint the window struts.

On this model the engines each come in two halves, but have a much bigger flat area to stick to than the Stuka wheels. It  also has this odd hole in the bottom of the fuselage. I just drilled further into it for the flight stand.

I did them both in desert camo schemes lifted from my 'Axis Aircraft of WW2 book'. They both have a dark sand base, the Ju 87 is stippled in red/brown camo and the Ju 88 is stippled in green camo (actually a unit based in Sicily). They got the North Africa white recognition bands and wing tip undersides.

Unlike kits, they don't come with any decals, and I ran out of crosses part way through - I thought I had more in stock. Fortunately I was going to Hammerheasd anyway, so I picked up a pack of I94 German 1/100 or 1/144th scale decals. These had a nice range of crosses as well as some tail swastikas, which you don't get with Zvezda kits. The Ju 88 got a swastika which would make Hitler proud, while the Ju 87 is a bit more understated. 

I think these are fine for what I intended, but in general I think I'll stick to kits for this sort of thing for now, they are decent gaming pieces though.