Make a mini me
With his Land Rover immortalised in 1:43 scale, Land Rover Owner International’s Assistant Editor Mark Saville had to get himself scanned and 3D-printed to match…
Sitting still for 90 seconds isn’t too difficult, but not talking for that long is a hefty challenge for me – especially when I’m deeply involved in what’s going on around me, which was perching on a caravan step in a small studio in Shrewsbury and miming the act of using my impact gun to remove invisible wheel nuts. Still, it was my idea to ask Alan Buttler of Modelu to produce a 1:43 scale figure of me to match the recently released 1:43 Oxford Diecast ( oxforddiecast.co.uk) model of my Series I Land Rover (43LAN188024). Perfect for a layout! A Facebook friend had tipped me off about Modelu’s extraordinary services, so I couldn’t wait to find out more about them. Being 3D-scanned is an entirely new experience for me. I’ve decided on trying out three different poses – two sitting and one standing. I’m wearing my overalls, rigger boots and gloves and, holding my battery-powered impact gun, I assume the position. This particular type of scanner works via
an ipad – it’s clipped onto the back, and uses an infrared laser to determine the distance of the subject from the unit. “It’s relatively low-res in scanning terms. I think it’s accurate to about a centimetre, but because everything I make is no bigger than a few inches tall, that’s okay,” explains Alan. “The original scans are 1:1 actual size and then scaled down in the computer program to whatever is needed. “I can print in full colour; the scanner has a laser and a camera that’s taking small photographs [at the same time] and it texturemaps the mesh [the 3D map] afterwards.
“A typical order is going to be locomotive crew; people like to be scanned to appear on their ‘00’ gauge model layouts,” says Alan. “The figures go out unpainted but I can get the figures painted, based on the colour scan. “Traditionally, railway model figures were made in wax and then cast in whitemetal, so when we came along with these 3D-scanned and printed figures it was a transformation. I believe I was the first person in the world to do it within the railway model scene.’ Alan has three digital light projector printers. The one he’s using today is the latest generation, but they all work in a similar way – 3D-printing works in slices.
“You choose the thickness depending on how much detail you want,” explains Alan. “I choose 50 microns, which is about the thickness of finer human hair. If you were to look at each of those slices in plan view, they’re like a silhouette of the slice.” The printers have a special LED light projector screen – not a laser – which projects through a special glass window in the resin bath into the light-sensitive resin. At the start of the process, the build table is lowered down into the resin to within 50 microns of the surface of the glass. After each slice is printed, the table moves upwards by 50 microns. Eventually, the whole figure is completed. The time it takes varies depending on the number of figures or items being printed and what scale they are – the bigger scales use proportionally thicker slices. So, what stops the resin sticking to the glass window? It has a unique membrane that absorbs oxygen from the atmosphere; this makes it non-stick. However, the membrane needs to be re-oxygenated after every hour, to ‘recharge’ its non-stickiness. The newly printed figures enjoy a ten-minute bath in an ultrasonic cleaner to remove any residual uncured resin, followed by ten minutes in the ultraviolet light cabinet to cure them. After a final inal trim, they are then either painted or sent to the customer. Alan’s amazing cottage industry began about five years ago as a hobby, obby, when he was making a detailed diorama of a railway ailway works. “That led me towards 3D-printing because you couldn’t buy a lot ot of the machinery and equipment, and I wanted to do it quite accurately. When I was researching the building, I met a couple of the men who worked there in the 1950s and recorded lots of their stories. I thought it would be nice to have them in the model and tell their story.” Alan’s reputation has spread far and wide in the railway modelling scene and he regularly takes his kit to shows, where he scans folk ‘live’. I’m delighted with the figures that Alan has made of me. If you’re weird enough to want copies of me, or any of the other incredible figures and detailed railwayrelated items that he’s created, have a browse at www.modelu3d.co.uk