Friday 27 May 2016

3D printed Sherman Calliope

I previously posted on my Calliope unit where I had bought 3D printed turrets. These turrets were some of the first models CDG made and the the 3D printing gave a very bobbly finish - nice detail but a rough surface. When I was buying all the late war experimental stuff I decided to get some replacements with the whole tank 3D printed. The first batch of purchases came with one Calliope and it lacked detail and so much sprue around the rockets that it was impossible to remove without destroying the model. I was not impressed and cancelled the Calliope orders yet to ship (I was buying as they came up on ebay and they only listed one of a model type at once). They did send me one they had cleaned up to replace the first and it was a different earlier material that took the detail much better and obviously did not shatter in the same way when the sprue was removed - it was not just my clumsiness honest! I know they have changed the material yet again since I last purchased so who knows what the Calliope is like in terms of detail and ease of clean up but

So first the finished model of the latest fully 3D printed Calliope. Overall it actually came up very nicely:





And now with the full unit (I was buying more as the latest FOW book has 5 in a unit):



Comparing to the old ones which use a Takaras M4A3 hull and the CDG turret. The Sherman versions are different, the new one is based on the M4A2 and is very slightly narrower and higher than the Takara model but overall fits in well in terms of scale.


The Calliope turret is much smoother than the earlier ones and the detail on the top of the rockets has printed much better too.






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1 comment:

  1. They look really smart, memories of building old italieri/ESCI kits of these

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