3D PRINTED ship "kits" flooding market

[domer94]

so being an ebay "troller" throughout the day ... i usually running through to see if any rare or exciting kits pop up... usually in the very limited commercial merchant vessel genre. what i do notice are many many 3d printed ships in everything from 1/700 to 1/200 giant aircraft carriers. there are some other cool subjects out there... but seems more and more. i finally buckled and bought a 1/200 PLAN type 072 landing ship.. which is an unusual subject. it wasnt ridiculously expensive , but not cheap either. it arrived , as i expected , no instructions (i figure i will have to go by photo research) and in 3 main hull pieces. the part count isnt horrible, but what i notice is the texture from the printing medium which it seems like the major parts will need some serious smoothing out before assembly. so i imagine there are a bunch of burgeoning entrepreneurs in china 3d printing everything they can get their hands on... many of the pictures look like they are done in an apartment. that being said , i was wondering what fellow modellers see in this trend and if anybody else has dipped their toe. i personally dont want a "kit" where everything is done for you... thats just an exercise in painting. i chose this one because it looks like there is plenty of room for detail work. there is enough 1/200 details available separately to make a decent model

 

[BarleyBop]

Nice.
When getting back into modeling, I got drawn initially to resin and more recently to 3D printed vehicle kits, mostly out of Europe, for similar reasons.
They offered out of the ordinary subjects, even if some were pretty crude. No matter, I think of them more as basic starting points to which I can add more details, get creative with scratch, and build interesting 'kits' without starting from zero.
I do agree though that 3D surfaces can be challenging to clean up, with support dimples and 'topographical' contour lines in spots.
Hopefully, as printers and processes improve, and better tech becomes affordable to cottage industries and enthusiasts, quality will improve, and there will be even more options for me to choose from!

 

[the Baron]

There are a lot of 3D-printed ship models in 1/1200 scale, too. The ones I see are from Red China. I think the company name is S&S, but it's hard to tell from the content of the auctions. They make other subjects, too. I have a 1/72 scale M2A1 medium tank (forerunner to the Lee) in progress. It's my first 3D printed kit, and it's been a good opportunity to work with a 3d-printed kit. Coming back to the topic of ships: I have their 1/1200 USS Arizona kit, which is fairly intricate, so the practice helps. I'm going to convert her to her sister ship, the Pennsylvania.

 

[domer94]

There are a lot of 3D-printed ship models in 1/1200 scale, too. The ones I see are from Red China. I think the company name is S&S, but it's hard to tell from the content of the auctions. They make other subjects, too. I have a 1/72 scale M2A1 medium tank (forerunner to the Lee) in progress. It's my first 3D printed kit, and it's been a good opportunity to work with a 3d-printed kit. Coming back to the topic of ships: I have their 1/1200 USS Arizona kit, which is fairly intricate, so the practice helps. I'm going to convert her to her sister ship, the Pennsylvania.

1/1200... im reaching for my glasses already! i would be scared cutting that out of the moulding (i forgot what you call that.. my daughter knows). let me know if you have a thread going with that kit.. wil be interested to see how folks are dealing with the challenges

 

[the Baron]

Yeah, it's by far the most intricately detailed 1/1200 scale ship kit I've ever seen. The kits I've built for a "wargame model" collection are from Life-Like/Pyro, ESCI, Airfix, and Eaglewall in the UK. They're detailed as you might expect for kits developed in the '50s and '60s. As far as US battleships go, the selection is either the North Carolinas or the Iowas. So when I saw the Arizona, I had to buy it.

There's not too much to do with a model that small, but sometimes I experiment. This is the USS Yorktown in her prewar livery, with an attempt at Grumman F3Fs on the flight deck:



The kit is currently in the Revell catalog, but it goes back to ESCI, and originally to an Italian company called Casadio. I have fun with them.

 

[domer94]

very nice. thats whole other talent there. on the opposite spectrum.. check these out that some folks are putting out there from their apartments.. 1/200 ark royal and a french carrier. i think the wife would definitely give me the side eye if i started clearing a shelf for that ark royal. these look tempting, but for that price , in the $500 range, it leaves A LOT of detail work to be handled by the modeller which would add another 200 least with the aftermarket doodads. so for now, ill be a spectator. i would imagine these guys are scanning smaller kits and just upscaling them in the machine.... there will be an airfix copyright lawyer raising an eyebrow soon...

 

[ChrisR]

Thanks for creating this post Domer94. This is a subject I've been contemplating broaching on a number of FB groups as of late for the same reasons you stated…
I had dropped out of the ship modeling world for a couple of yrs due to medical issues and having fits with creating water bases. But I've watched 3DWild explode on to the scene with beautiful kits. Expensive, but from what friends and others who have built them have said, worth the expense. I will never be sold on the "joint/joints" and the need to become a body specialist to make those seems disappear, but that's a personal hangup…
My bigger issue is with the "cheap" kits flooding the market. And let me explain my stance on this a little bit deeper. I am a fan of traditional resin, and I'm aware some have allergies to it as well as the health risks it poses when sanding. There are many ways to mitigate the dusts but very few to do anything for those with allergies, that I know of. That said, I still prefer the traditional resin kits. What I do like is using 3D to make the smaller parts, the ones that end up with tons of flash or have been made in soft metal, just not a fan of the metal. And I'm a glutton for punishment, so I like PE I've also enjoyed all the subjects those manufactures gave us in resin, the smaller ships, the "little" navies that no plastic manufacturer was going to drop $500k into R&D to give us that kit. Those guys are Craftsman who worked hard to make the Masters, the molds, the instructions, maybe even guys like you and me did test run builds to check fit and finish issues.
World of Warships created the Blitz of new models we are seeing in both plastic and 3D. S&S has jumped on that bandwagon. And THAT is a company I have HUGE issues with. While I commend them for the inniatative(sp?)with this, I cannot overlook that this company started off pirating so many kits from those Craftsman. And, with the backing of their Govt, they are trying to flood the market with cheaply produced kits in an attempt to corner all sales and force the established companies out.
Trust me, I get wanting to save $£€, I'm on a fixed income myself now. There is a certain allure to seeing a kit at 1/2 the price but at the same time, I think we need to look beyond the bottom line.
And it's more than just that, as someone else said, how much do you want to get out of the kit? These 3D printed kits have very little assembly. Lots of cleanup, lots of "layering/splicing lines" to sand/prime/sand/prime, if that excites you… or just Grip it and Rip it! But after all that savings, you're most likely dropping money into extras anyway…
This turned into a much longer reply then I had planned. And I could continue to expand on it. But I'm sure yall have better things to do then wear your eyes out.
Just my take, for what it's worth…

 

[the Baron]

This is my eBay search for 1/1200 ship model kits:

https://www.ebay.com/sch/i.html?_nk...queen+-titanic+-fantasy&_sacat=1188&_svsrch=1

I hope you're all able to access the search results. If you scroll down to the first auctions that show "Miniature Factory" across the top of the thumbnail, those are the kits I'm talking about. When domer referred to kits flooding the market, these are the auctions I thought of. But you can scroll through the results and see what I'm talking about with the variety of subjects that maker puts out. The Arizona kit I bought is in and among those kits, but I'll take some pics of the parts in the box, too.