Painting Makerbotted Figures

Pikachu

The first model I painted was my B-17 Flying Fortress. In that post I said I tried a cheap airbrush with a propellant can and it didn’t work. That model was largely hand painted.

But I haven’t stopped experimenting. For Christmas I got an Airbrush Depot TC-20T compress and SB84 airbrush. The compress is very nice. It’s not all that loud and having the tank means that it doesn’t have to run constantly. I’m always worried about annoying my downstairs neighbors, so that’s a serious plus.

As for the airbrush, I though it was pretty good. While it was a huge step up from the external mix piece of plastic junk I tried before, it was tough to clean. It also needed quite a bit of air to spray paint. I generally used the brush with the nozzle open all the way to get enough paint. This may be because it’s a side-loading airbrush. A month or two ago I was reassembling it after cleaning, and broke the nozzle when I overtightened it. I was going to buy a new one when I found that an Iwata wouldn’t cost too much more (I thought they were all $250+).

So I bought an Iwata-Medea Eclipse HP CS. As soon as I tried the Eclipse I knew what a huge difference there was. I knew people online liked them, but wow. It’s top-loading, and that makes it MUCH easier to clean. Pulling the lever back all the way to release the maximum amount of paint just drenches things, which is fantastic. The SB might as well have been an on-off device. A side effect of all this is that it doesn’t need as much air. When you have it in your hand, it’s easy to tell how much higher the manufacturing standards are. Add a quick disconnect and life is much easier.

So with my new tools I’ve been having a ton of fun painting models that I printed out with my Makerbot. Besides the Pikachu above, I’ve painted Alot, Piccolo, a Stegosaurus, a Cyberman, Bender, Purple Tentacle, and various pet monsters by Andreas.

I’ve figured out quite a bit while doing it. Preparing the model well before putting the primer on makes a big difference. It’s so easy for the paint to flake off afterwards, something you can see on Bender. Another problem I’ve had is paint colors. I’ve been using Createx opaque paint and mixing the colors myself. This has been fun but I quickly learned a lesson: mix more than you need and save it. With Bender and each of the pet monsters, I ended up having to repaint large portions of the model because I needed to put the base color back on and couldn’t match it closely enough.

I’ve found that Testor’s gray primer works great, and you can buy straight liquid so you can airbrush it on. For sealing the finished models I tried a few things before I found Testor’s Dullcote. It smells horrible, and I worry that I’m going to damage my airbrush with it. Next time, I think I’ll just buy the little spray cans instead. But unlike some of the other clear coats I found, it doesn’t change the colors making everything look less saturated and more boring.

I didn’t really have a use for my Makerbot when I bought it, but I think I may have found it. Since I’m close to getting to getting Jetty’s accelerated firmware fully calibrated, I’m looking forward to printing larger objects without it taking as long. My mistake the first few times? When you up the speed, you must up the flow rate. I kept forgetting to do that, which is why the extruder wasn’t putting out nearly enough plastic.