Stug Production in Progress

The Maybach plants are cranking up their production of the Quad Stug Aus F.  They hope to start shipping finished units to the blighter front in 2 weeks.  There have been delays with the Porsche suspension and quality control issues but a Blighter Motor Works plant has been retooled to assist with the pneumatic control systems which should help avoid further delays.

Stug is Done!

I made a casting of the complete Quad Stug toy.  I still have a few bugs to work out with the molds but all in all it's done!  I'm pretty happy with how it came out.  Here are some pics of the final as well as some works in progress.

Ready to pour the 2nd half of the body mold.

Mold walls and clay laid in for pouring the 1st half of the leg molds.

the 1st parts of the lef molds have been cast.

Pulling apart the molds after the 2nd half of the leg molds have cured.

The entire Quad Stug with legs attached.

Prepping the Quad Stug

Today I'm sanding and prepping the Quad Stug.  I'm going to see if I can't get the molds done this weekend and start casting next week.  This toy has been waiting to be made long enough.

Scaled allied grunt rolling out!

I finished  a mold for the new allied grunt figure and made a casting. This figure is in scale to the vert tank and the quad stug.  It looks really nice.  The detail was meant for this scale and it really comes through.  I also got some tips on finishing the 3D print from Ralph Nese and that has made a real difference.  The character is smooth and really tight.

 The plan is to make a bunch of these to have for NYCC.  Maybe in an exclusive color and packaging.  I'll be walking around comicon friday and saturday.  I'm hoping to run into people so I can show them the latest work I have.  A rivetwars t-shirt is in the works so you can look for that :)

Allied Grunt Prototype are in!

I just received the prints for the Allied Grunt.  I decided to make one toy at the scale of the vert tank and a second "hero model" in a bigger scale.  I just thought it'd be cool to have a larger figure.  Here are some pics I took of the models.  I hope to make molds by this weekend and maybe have some for sale next week.  Let me know what you think.

Mean Green!

Playing around with some colors.  Fun stuff.  Hopefully soon I'll have some of these up for sale in the store.

So far things are good but I've had some air bubbles and I think it's because the resin is setting up too quickly.  This doesn't really give me time to get the pressure pot up to a high enough PSI to squeeze the bubbles out.  I just ordered some new resin that takes twice as long to set.  That should give me some better results.

I made some toys!

So tonight I finally had some time to cast some toys.  I had a chance to make two castings.  The resin cures way faster than I would have thought.  On the first one I barely got it into the mold before it started to harden.  On the second casting I was much faster but even with the pressure pot I had a few bubbles, most notably on the upper machine gun tip.  But it's a learning process and I hope each will be a little nicer.  And I finally got to use my grinder to smooth off the bases.

My 3D prints have come in!

They just came in the mail and I took some pictures.  This is so exciting.  Next will be making a mold and then casting some resin toys!  Take a look at all the detail.  Just amazing.

Ventilation!

I was pretty scared of playing with resin in my basement.  With casting toys and painting stuff, I had nightmares of these noxious green fumes wafting up throughout the house making everyone sick.  But now I don't need to worry.  I installed a blower in my work area.  It's connected with a straight run of ducting to a dryer vent outside the house. The blower I got moves 265cfm of air so it's pretty beefy.  It'll exchange the air in a 1200 cubic foot room in under 5 minutes.  Nice!  Next I may build a hood out of cardboard to direct the flow but I'll see how it works.

  

Making Toys! Pressure Pot

I now have a pressure pot.  It's just a big pot that you can put under pressure for when you make a casting in rubber or cast resin.  It's needed to squeeze out all the air bubbles.  Mine is a modified paint pot.  I just sealed all the holes and hook it up to a compressor!  One step closer to making my own toys.  And my 3D print should be coming some day soon.  Check out the octobertoys.com forum, it's where I'm learning how to do this stuff :)

Model of Grunt W.I.P.

I got a first pass of the grunt done.  I REALLY like how this feels.  Boxy and squat but kind of cute.  This looks like it'd make a great toy.  I had to put a couple of them in a scene with the tank.

Making a toy?

I got some more work done on the vertical tank model and decided to submit it to a website that makes prototypes.  The model will be made of a high detail plastic and the final should only be about 55mm tall.  I hope it looks good.

Going through this process has me really excited about the world of Rivet.  I can imagine scale character, aircraft, more vehicles and much more.  I've started drafting some story ideas.  It'll probably start with some images with a short story written about them.