With an eye to my planned Megablitz game at COW, I wanted to expand my British desert armoured car collection. I've already got a QRF Marmon Herrington Mk II, so I fancied something similar but different.
And here is an absolutely gorgeous Battlefield 3D resin Marmon Herrington Mark III. A fascinating vehicle as it mounts a Boys ATR and no less than two Vickers guns, one as a coax!
This is a joy to 'assemble' as there isn't any assembly. The hull and turret are just single piece prints, so no sticking on wheels, MGs to get knocked off or anything like that. What a lovely model and not a striation in sight. It even has the correct treads printed on the tyres.
My only slight anxiety is the relatively thin ATR gun barrel, but if it gets snapped off I can always replace it with wire I suppose.
Like so many 'box' armoured cars, it has lots of nice sharp edges to take a drybrush. I thought about adding some stowage but it is quite a busy vehicles already with its spare wheel, various tools and all sorts of things seemingly welded to the hull.
I did this in three tone Caunter (dark green over grey over sand) to join my early desert armoured car fleet. The desert sand basecoat got an inkwash, then a heavy drybrush of desert sand again, then I did the camo, pinwashed around some of the highlights, and did an overall drybrush of pale sand. It looks suitably battered an dusty I think.
Here it is next to my QRF Mk II. If a picture speaks a 1000 words, I think this clearly demonstrates why traditional manufacturers are in big trouble in the face of the 3D print revolution. The QRF one is a nice enough model, but it is pretty crude in comparison to the print, and it has lots of fiddly bits which needed sticking together. Getting the wheels to stick on the QRF one was particularly nightmarish.
Having seen the B3D one though, it looks like I need to adjust the direction of the turret mounted Vickers on the QRF one.
Nice model. I have to agree, I'd rather get a complete vehicle that just needs a bit of paint than mess about gluing fiddly parts to my fingers etc
ReplyDeleteThank you. I'm quite happy to put models together as long as they are actually designed with assembly in mind (like plastic kits). Many metal and resin offerings just offer you a pile of random bits with no locating lugs or lugs which don't fit or are in the wrong place. Much cursing then ensues!
DeleteVery nice Martin!
ReplyDeleteMy 1:76 and 1:72 Marmon Herrington armoured cars are awaiting assembly after the tanks.
There were a lot of them in Operation Crusader; KDG (1 sqn in Tobruck - received a sqn from one of the SA regts), 2x SA Armoured Car regts, 2x SA Recce Btns. 11 Hussars had received Humbers, but the rest were "Monkey Harris". Most were Mk2, but 6SA was wholly MK3 IIRC. However, some sources suggest there was a mix of Mk2 and Mk3 in the SA units. There's a photo showing one of each from the same unit at Halfaya.
Stowage; apparently the MH were festooned as the crews discovered it helped improve armour protection!
3D. Yes, it's a game changer with the caveat that we don't know how well the plastic and especially UV resin holds up over time.....more concerning is the frequency with which a lot of firms come and go...
Neil
Thank Neil. I've always like the MH series of armoured cars and as I mainly seem to do 1941 era desert (despite my best efforts to tackle Gazala and the various Alameins), they seem most appropriate for 41.
DeleteI agree about the longevity of the models being an unknown, although my experience of resin castings is that they are pretty robust - I've got loads of ancient old Hovels resin buildings and I had fleets of Frontline 20mm resin stuff which lasted OK for a couple of decades.
My only sadness is it makes to so much easier to buy the 'correct' vehicles instead of bodging stuff up from conversions. I'm not sure I'd know how to go about converting a huge lump of 3D printed resin apart from adding some extra stowage or whatever. I'm happiest modelling in plastic, although I have done conversions on metal models too in the last, some quite extensive.
Nifty model and nice paint job! For some periods, especially those featuring vehicles, 3D printing definitely looks the way forward. Are you printing these models yourself or buying them? If so, from where?
ReplyDeleteThank you, although I've had enough of doing Caunter for now, it is quite hard to do and takes me ages. No I'm not printing these myself, they are al done by a company called Battlefield 3D who are have licenses from a range of STL suppliers and also do their own stuff. I've tried lots of different manufacturers and B3D come out tops for cost and quality, you just have a to wait a while for the to print the stuff.
DeleteThe big downside with 3D printing is the wait. It is relatively easy to spin metal moulds to produce what is ordered quickly. I remember in the good old days when the Minifigs factory was in Southampton if you went to the shop and they didn’t have enough in stock of what you wanted someone would pop into the factory and cast them up for you. The figures were still warm when you got them!
ReplyDeleteYes, the process is inherently slow. Even slower if you have the muck around trimming off all the supports. One great joy of the better quality prints is that you don't need to do that.
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