Pyros Forge mk3.0

[PyroClast-91*]

Guess whos Back? Back again, Pyros Back, tell a Friend. Guess whos back? Guess whos back? Guess whos back? Guess whos back? nah nah nah....

Sorry impromptu Eminem lyrics out of the way long ago in a forum not so far away I was but a humble lurker of the hallowed halls of hobby wonderment but then i couldnt help myself any longer and posted my first thread which led to many conversions and much painting fun and shenanigans. I even entered in a couple ETL's and a few other competitions the names of which i cant for the life of me remember and as it does life for me kept on moving and i like im sure many of you suffer from wicked hobby ADHD like its bad like real bad and my tiny plastic spacemen ended up shelved to see a short resurgence some time around 2018? idk somewhere around there and then when Papa Nurgle came to visit and you would think would have been prime time for some hobby action you would be wrong because i was "lucky" enough to be deemed an essential worker being at the time i was firearms salesman at a local shop which meant no time off and any spare time i had was unfortunately not dedicated to my plastic crack addiction hiding in rubbermaid tubs in my garage. Then Xmas 21' happened and my wonderful wife got me an Elegoo Mars 2 Pro and about 8kg of resin which is basically like someone handing you the keys to a forgeworld so of course like any self respecting nerd would do i set out to print the most ridiculous thing i could figure a way to print which at the time was a lucius pattern warh... Wardoggo Big Stompy Bot which i could never justify actually buying but i mean it was just there on cults 3D just saying "print me pyro print me" and i was like no its wrong IP and all that. and the Stompy Bot was like " but they dont even sell me any more and youre a modeler you dont even play 40k you nerd" and i was like rude but your probly rite. So i downloaded the STL's for that model and you know just a couple others nothing crazy only like 732GBs worth and got to printing.

 

 yes i printed the whole thing besides the pistons in translucent resin and no theres no reason why im painting this monster for sure

 

 

 

. Now I am aware that in our hobby 3D printing is and kind of has been a touchy subject but like the Stompy Bot said i am but a humble modeling nerd ive maybe played 5 games of any sort using any of the thousands of dollars worth of official citadel models ive accumulated since i was teenager slopping testors model paint onto my 3rd edition black templars in short its 99.9999% about the models for me so everything i build is to rule of cool standard and will rarely actually fit proper rules unless theyre the rules for a comp or something. My goal here is to hopefully keep my motivation up too keep the hobby train rolling ive got an aboslutely massive pile of shame from as far back as the betrayal at Calth box and even further not to mention the plate after plate of models i keep adding to said pile cuz i just cant help myself at present the pile is home too lots and lots of Space Marines, Imperial Guard, Grey Knights, Custodes, Sisters of Silence and Battle, Admech, Eldar, Necrons, Orks, Tyranids, Tau, an imperial Knight, a Titan, as well as a growing collection of epic/AT scale models of all the aformentioned factions, but wait theres more you didnt think i'd leave out the Chaosy goodness did you? in the works  are warbands and deamons daemons demons idk i always forget but ive got a little bit of every flavor except for Tzeentch not that i dont have of few STC's with scarabs n such ready to be sliced and summoned forth from the goopy forge.

 torsos and legs for my death corpse of cheese

 

 

 

 ranged and close combat arms

 

 

 

 

 

  Comander Dwayne the Rock Johnson and some nice lady with a big sword with there hotshot friends

 

 this little gem crew included took 6hr 37 min to print fully intact and cost me a whopping $1.27

 

 

 

 You can do so much more than print your models though turns out need a wet palette? print one or three. Need a brush holder? print one of those too.

 

Besides finally getting that titan my mom said i couldnt have when i was 14 (i showed you mom) there was another line of models i always lusted after largely due to there incredible detail and that was the larger scale inquisitor line which was dieing out as i was first coming into the hobby but i always wanted some of those models just for the fun of painting and converting something a bit bigger. Now that can be any model i want i can even do multiple scales of the same sculpt and even print physical censor bars to cover up the bits too naughty for our virtuous hobby halls.

 

 

 

 

 

 Anywho i look forward to getting more perspectives and sharing ideas about this ever changing world of plastic and resin crack any c&c are always greatly appreciated.

 

 

[Grotsmasha]

When my brother got his Ender3 FDM printer, he printed that "Wardog" file as both a tester, and surprise for me. It looks amazing, I can't imagine how good it would look on a resin printer, ad I've been tempted to print one on my Anycubic Mono, but other things keep jumping the queue....

730+gigs of files? I feel you, I had to get an external HDD, my poor little Tablet couldn't handle it.

 

It looks like you have a great many projects there, and I'm looking forward to seeing them progress :tu:

[PyroClast-91*]

@Grotsmasha lol i might have gone a bit crazy once i found the absolute magnitude of free STL file that are out there and to be fair that includes all my sliced files too so lots of duplicates but its safe to say there will never again be a time in my life i dont have something to paint fortunately i recently upgraded my battlestations memory otherwise id have been in trouble. the titan had to be a hell of a test print but i suppose it was much faster on the Ender it took me about a week of running my printer almost non stop to get mine printed but i think it was a worthwhile investment in time since it saved me about $600 and i can and plan to end up with a full maniple like i always dreamed of but my budget wouldnt allow before. 

[Grotsmasha]

The Ender3 (all FDM really) is cheaper but WAAAYYYY slower, he said it was almost a month of non-stop printing

[PyroClast-91*]

@Grotsmasha i think ill end up getting into FDM at some point as it does seem much better suited to things like terrain or printing parts for daily use that type of stuff but as for now im fully addicted to resin like real real bad lol. 

 

One of the many projects my printer has prompted me to start besides my titan legio is ive always wanted a ridiculous guard army like the kind they would feature in the codex art back in the 90's. Problem was unless i started selling real crack there was no way i was gonna afford that much plastic crack but now things have changed drastically not only can i print up vehicles for a buck or two and soldiers for pennies a piece but i found a ton of sculpts that i truly think are superior to the dated ones GW has been pedeling since i was a kid. 

 

One of those awesome models is this centaur i already showed one of, well plan is to have several to act as utility vehicles for pulling the non motorized gun cariages around the battlefield. So after the first one came out quite nicely i started on the next one and all looked well at first.

 

 

And it was until i went to do my post cure and cooked the poor old girl a bit too long 

 

I think i also had the sidewalls far far too thin as i was trying to save as much resin as possible so going forward ive adjusted that

The good news is at least its not a total loss it kinda already looks like it blew up so it looks like this one was meant for basing material or part of the diorama im planning 

 

 

Besides finding awesome sculpts for my infantry there are also tons of awesome options for litteraly every vehicle in the game this sentinel was the first of what will surely be many 

this little guy took 4 hours to print all pieces seen here and took something like 46 grams of resin which cost about $35 a kilo 

 

next up on the printer is some more tanks working up the line doing my small single print support tanks first working up to a couple that look like they will probly rival the titan in time and complexity ive also got some paints on the way to replace some that didnt survive the years my hobby supplies spent in stasis so maybe ill even start painting some stuff.

[PyroClast-91*]

Hi there my names Pyro and im an addict... one hopelessly addicted to resin. On one hand getting this printer may be the greatest thing thats ever happened to my ADD on the other hand its absolutely without question the worst thing thats ever happened to my pile of shame its more like a whole ass garage of shame at this point lol.

Since im starting with what i see as the "scout division that means small lighter vehicles and cavalry"

 

this is one of the downfalls of having a bunch of files and slicing them up and getting them ready for print in batches as your learning. These horses were sliced up before i learned the limitations of how thin i can or should rather print minis i believe these were .80mm thick as i was trying to see just how much resin i could save turns out when you have to reprint your ponies it doesnt save you much lol. The next batch will be in my new standard 1.5 mm which i increase to 2.0 on larger models like vehicles and the like. 

 

Light vehicles means light tanks probly lots of them as im kinda a massive tank nerd and ive found lots of stls that have mixed many of my favorite WW1 and WW2 armored fighting vehicles with the grimdark flavor we all love ive also gotten back into scale armor modeling and want to see how i can apply a lot of the techniques from that hobby to this one. 

 

 

I guess thats a good Segway into the "theme" of this monstrous force I'm working on since the Guard and yes im old and theyll always be IMPERIAL GUARD to me are inspired by real world military forces both historic and modern themes kinda sprinkled throughout i figured what better army to express my love of all things military. So heres my thinking instead of ripping off the death corps background entirely im just gonna rip it off partly the part about them pissing off the imperium so now every citizen of this planet have to serve a term of service fighting for the imperium but in my version the reason they pissed off the imperium is it was once a major forgeworld during the time of the great crusade (werent they all?) but they specialized in building armored fighting vehicles so clearly pretty useful to the imperium. Heresy breaks out and the planet is divided basically in half one side being loyal to horus and all this leading to a massive civil war in which one side gets all nuke happy and the other side in an attempt to save themselves aligned themselves with the forces of chaos which was when the imperium stepped in see they were fine with the world genociding eachother but it was a problem once they start doin it with deamons. Idk the fluff still needs work but basically i want a reason to have a bunch of different patterns of vehicles like that its a huge planet that spent much of its history divided and at war with itself creating multiple distinct warrior groups that end up being combined as a global fighting force giving me the excuse to build whatever i feel like meaning i can build a force inspired by all of my favorite military eras vehicles and uniforms obviously largely focusing on the shovely gas mask bois since WW2 German armor and uniforms are some of my favorite to model. 

 

Hey look i do paint things once in a while lol i had a bunch of "learning experience" prints that were missing feet or other things and these fellows are perfect for testing colors while i was trying to figure out how i want to paint this first group. I also tested out these nifty weathering pencils and im absolutely in love with them and will be ordering the master set on Friday.

 

 

Its seriously amazing how well those pencils work im a big fan of heavy weathering and these are gonna be a game changer if you havent tried them you definitely should. 

 

 

 

 

 Assembly has begun

 

 I also decided that i needed to do some work to build a sentinel comander for my growing fleet of them and i think hes coming along pretty well and hes even got a little gw plastic on him does that make this tournament legal?

 

Did i mention i really love sentinels? 

 

 And how could i pass up having THE FREAKIN ROCK!!! in my army

 

 also this guy with some pigeons for when the vox goes down

 

 had to reprint one of my turrets after a failed attempt to scribe some armor lines experimenting with making these little guys look a bit heavier fortunately thats only a 4 hour problem now it doesnt mean i ruined the whole model.

 

 And finally since i dont really play whats the point of building this army? a diorama thats the plan anyways but every good diorama needs good guys and bad guys  and so i introduce my jumbo bugs from space. One thing i really love is being able to screw with scale so easily for instance these bugs were printed at 120% as ive always thought the official ones were a little on the small side for how terrifying theyre supposed to be and i want some suitably nasty space bugs for this project unfortunately i dont have any standard bugs around to compare but i put a plastic primaris next to this gaunt to give you an idea theres also sever much bigger much nastier bugs in the queue 

 

 

 

[PyroClast-91*]

On the subject of of big nasty bugs i figured since im working on some xenos baddies this swarmlord STL file i found would work nicely just hollow him out and blow him up 120% and we're in business

look at that big cuddly lookin chap yea i think he'll do now i just have to decide how to paint him i was half tempted to do all the bugs in this green resin and use it as some kind of effect like leave claws and talons that translucent green but its litteraly my least favorite resin to work with and once this bottle is gone i wont be buying any more its the standard Voxelab Green it prints ok enough but the prints come out wicked sticky and take FFFOOOOOORRRREEEVVVVVEEEEERRRRRR to clean compared to my favorite Water Washable Ceramic Grey Elegoo which i spray off with water for aprox 30 sec to a min then wash in my wash n cure full of water maybe spiced up with a dash of IPA if im feelin frisky for 15-30 min depending on size and whether or not its hollow then one more quick spray off and theyre ready to cure. With this green garbage ive got the wash and cure filled with 1.5L 70% IPA and .5L of 91% STRAIGHT plus mixed in a half liter of 91% into my garden sprayer i use for washing prints and the process goes 3-4 min spray works best if the sprayer water has been preheated then 30 min bath followed by another liberal spray about half as long as the first then another bath for 30 min leaving to soak for an hour after agitation cycle has finished then one final spray and if the model is hollow it needs another bath plus you better hope you laid out your drain holes in a way that lets you blast out the interior of the model with water and alcohol or when you go to cure your model will bleed all over itself and your cure station and muck up its details and give itself a milky hazy finish kinda like a super glue bath. OH oh i almost forgot how could i forget this garbage also basically welds itself to your print bed i turned down my bottom exposure setting when i noticed at first how hard it was to get off but then kept having issues to the point my bottom layers are only running 10 sec and i still have to chip them off the deck .

As long as your in for all that though it prints decent enough kinda besides the gang of misprints of had running it the last two days lol so for what its worth i definitely do not recomend this resin to anyone its not even that much cheaper than the good stuff so theres really no point elegoo makes a water washable clear green thats isnt quite as bright but its worlds better to work with and since im using it for things i paint it doesnt really matter anyways but i needed to get that rant out of my system. 

 

 

 

 I do really like the bigger bugs i think it really sells the alien horror vibe oh ya back on paint color i got distracted ranting. Ive been tossing around ideas for paint schemes for the bugs and so far the top contenders are painting them to look like the the Arachnids from Starship Troopers (cuz ya know... reasons) mixed with that xenomorph look from alien weird i know i just feel like there are lots of similarities in those franchises and the Nids we know and love not that GW would ever borrow anyone else's IP or anything rite cuz thats naughty. Or if i dont go that route i found this gentleman on Youtube by the name of CatgutPainting who did a phenominal tutorial for some coconut crab inspired nids that i really love the look of and think it would be cool to replicate maybe altering the colors used slightly. Im still open to ideas if anyones got any other xenos species i should check out from other franchises let me know  

 

 

 Since i have indeed been a fan of Starship Troopers i would say even before i got into 40k i mean what kid didnt love a movie about killing giant space bugs where there were that many boob shots in the movie lol i still dont understand the point of the shower scene but 13 year old me appreciated its inclusion. But im getting off track my point was every good military force that fights giant bugs is gonna have at least a handful of warriors who excel at it so this is my first veteran sentinel commander i saw the powerfist and of course thought of Rasczak so he fit the bill perfectly. Then i decided this already up armored sentinel needed some sweet field upgrades so i built some out of Styrene sheet and rod laying some attrocious weld beads with a green stuff and miliput mix my scratch bashing skills are a bit rusty as its been a couple years but its all coming back to me now its just like building a bike er wait thats not it idk either way i think its coming along

 

Thanks for checking out my work if youve got any input suggestions or critiques im always happy to hear them More to come soon.

[PyroClast-91*]

Eventually i get to the paint phase of all these shenanigans... maybe lol anywho no guard army is complete without armor to support the infantry meat grinder so i started with a couple familiar standard imperial designs largely because they were some of the first guard tanks i found in the land of the free STLs and ive always loved the old Russ and the different ways the Chimera has been used but they always lacked something for me being a major tread head myself and lover of all things tracked and armored ive always wanted 40k tanks that more closely embody real world Armored Fighting Vehicles so i started hunting around in the land of the not free STLs and what i found was beyond amazing.

 

This is the First of (many) my GrimPrints pattern tanks the Grim Tiger and what a gorgeous model it is the sculptor is clearly a fan or real world armor as he's managed to blend the styles of real world armor and the 41st millennium flawlessly capturing the iconic lines and features of some of the best tanks ever built (in my ever so humble opinion) while still staying within the scale and style of our favorite plastic wargame.  

Now as beautiful of models as they are im a conversion fiend so i cant ever leave anything save maybe infantry (sometimes) the way i found it so these tanks will and are already undergoing some up armoring and detailing getting them more in line with scale models than with typical wargaming pieces 

 

 

 

Even in the 41st millenium the 88 still slaps just look at that big kitty 

 

And don't think it stops with the tiger i already printed up the GrimPanzer4 which can be built as a Stug and I've got the files sliced for a Jagtiger, Sturmtiger , and Maus. And there's not just German Armor inspired models either there's a Sherman on my printer as i type this and several other American Brittish French and Soviet tanks to come. So heres my head canon The planet my army is from is a Forge world who had an explorator fleet find an old space ship from before even the time of unification and onboard this space ship one of the astronauts had with him a book documenting the armored conflicts of a massive global conflict on some ancient faraway planet this book had detailed schematics and drawings of almost every vehicle used during this conflict making this find the next best thing to a stack of STCs so naturally the techpriests studied every drawing and schematic and did their best to reproduce these warmachines and next thing you know boom ww2 armor on the 41st millennium battlefield. Maybe I'll come up with something better down the road idk im just stoked i found these models and cant wait to build an armored battalion of a wild mix of all my favorite historical fighting vehicles and build some awesome conversions based around some historic tank aces paying homage to some of my favorite battles from history at the very least it should be interesting. Thanks for checking out my work id love to know what you think or if you have any suggestions for cool ways to work ww2 style vehicles into the 40k setting id love to hear them.

[PyroClast-91*]

Alrite update time again ive been a busy little resin addict in the last couple weeks working on my growing armored division i think i also found a better place to host photos so full size and can see things yay!!!

First up we have the OG big cat the Tiger1 is coming along swimmingly so far ive done a bit of bulking out mainly under the turret on this girl plus some weld seams and some details (more printed bits) 

i did print up the sponsons for this particular tank but opted to go without them on the first tiger as i wanted this one to retain the boxy iconic look every  tread head knows and loves they will instead go on one of the tigers to come as i plan to have several eventually once i get enough resin lol.

Next up another icon the classic M4 Sherman or should i say m.41 Sherman for the first of these tanks i wanted something kitted out for infantry pacification so a rotary bolt cannon heavy bolter twin flamers rockets and a stubber for good measure seemed appropriate

My goal with all of these tanks is to really mix the two worlds of traditional scale modeling with the gritty GrimDarkness of the Death Korp which is why all the tanks so far have recovery equipment and various tools as well as copious spent shell casings as i really want to model them as though in the midst of battle since the end goal for all of these is a massive diorama that will act as there home but that they can be removed from should i happen to end up playing a game some day.

Unfortunately all was not sunshine and rainbows printing these tanks credit where its due they are beautiful models clearly done by a passionate designer but some of these presupport files are a tad on the tnin side leading to issues with hulls warping and splitting and some other fittment issues. The worst of these were on the Stug III/ Panzer IV having so many fidly thin bits i had lots of issues with warping but in the end i managed to fill the gaps and get a couple models im happy with.

All of these Grim Prints tanks are modeled so that the hull acts as a storage compartment which you can use for spare magnetized weapon options if you go the magnet route fortunately thats not what im doing so it wasnt a huge issue but the Sug and Panzer4 as mentioned both had to be built with there hulls solid to get them to quit bowing and flexing in bad ways. After finding this i started doing some closer looking at the files included in these STLs and they had both presupported and unsupported versions and it turns out the unsupported versions also have not yet been hollowed out meaning you can hollow them out in your slicer and set the wall thickness to your liking so as nice as the presupports are going forward ive just been playing it safe and doing the work myself and it seems to be turning out better copies.

I Wanted this little Panzer to be my designated flamethrower tank cuz i mean you gotta have at least one rite? it also gave me a good way to cover up some of the print flaws by slapping extra armor all over it. Sadly this covers up a lot of the gorgeous details on the model but theyll be visible on future versions hopefully.

THE STUGGG one of my favorite tanks and so far the one i had the biggest headache with this little guy came out so warped and cracked he almost ended up in the to be made into terrain bin (something i highly recomend if you 3d print save  your failed models they often make great basing material or terrain pieces as blown up busted tanks tend to look pretty convincing as blown up busted tanks)

I think even with all the problems she gave me im pretty proud of how this build has turned out and im glad i just kept pushing it also prepared me for what was next to come.

DAS MAUS!!!!!!! so since im a modeling masochist i was like i need to find a tank that takes a whole kilo of resin to print that should be fun and exciting rite? 

Well actually it was this thing is gorgeous its definitely a departure from its namesake but the real one is kinda just one giant box with a gun. That said i think the folks that sculpted this beast hit the nail on the head you can clearly tell what its meant to be but it also very clearly has been updated for futuristic interstellar tank warfare. And since it was already the biggest of the tanks i got to print so far i was like hey i should probly make it a bit bigger so i bulked out the inner hull with styrene sheet which will hopefully also help keep this monster stable if the resin starts actin screwy down the track as ive noticed it tends to do sometimes.

One of the best things about a tank this size is all that real-estate for details like tank tools track jacks extra fuel tanks all that good stuff.

And this monster of a print almost went off without a hitch everything was looking perfect and the last of 8 print plates was running printing up that massive turret which finished after 8 hours using roughly 100ml of resin and wouldn't you know it had a massive gaping hole in the top thanks to a print artefact on the FEP sheet 

 

Oh that little artefact it turns out it turned into a hole causing resin to leak onto my lcd meaning i also got to replace that for the first time and what fun that was. Fortunately i had a spare LCD screen and ordered another as i think its handy to have a backup at all times and they only run about 30-40 bucks on amazon. So after all that fun i wasnt about to trash this monster of a turret so that left me only one thing to do grab the razor saw and gorrillaput and put those body work skills to the test.

Honestly i think it went pretty well i dont know that Maco will be calling me any time soon but im pretty confident once detailing is finished and ive got some paint on this behemoth nobody will be any the wiser. Anywho im rapidly approaching ready to prime and paint on several of these so i guess now i need to settle on a paint scheme so i can actually do that whole part lol Thanks for checking out my work if you have any input suggestions questions or critique i always love to hear them.

 

[Domhnall]

Liking the troopers with the pulse rifle (from Aliens film) inspired weapons