Monday, February 9, 2009

Modeling with Inkjet

This is the lunch shed at Hull-Oakes. It is between the chiploading station and the railshed, so it falls within my modeling zone.
I was going to build it from scratch using a polystyrene sheet, but then I thought, "man, I wish I could just print it out". O.K., maybe I can. If I could just straighten out the perspective (or just take a square-on photo to start with), I'd be set ...

A little photoshoping (or free Gimp 2.6 in this case), some calculations on scaling, and a small wood frame and presto!

The door, which is about 6.5 ft tall in real life, is less than a half inch in scale. Notice the detail in the window! The sign on the door says, "No Smoking!". How is that for realism? Nasty habit anyway, especially if you are eating. The roof was also printed. It still needs to be "weathered", which would be rusted in this case.

Here it is with the rail shed, the other piece I've been working on. The roof is printed on cardstock, but the rest is balsa painted to look 50 years old. The lumber load on the rail car is also balsa, painted to look like fresh-cut doug fir. I had made one using inkjet, but it didn't quite look real enough.

2 comments:

Eldon and Janeil Olsen said...

Absolutely amazing.

Anonymous said...

Would a 3-D printer take the fun out of it? How far out are we on those? (I realized you may not be allowed to say). I think you models look pretty dang patedo (my word verification word). -Carl