ABS plastic with plastic modelling accessories

I’ve been building plastic models on and off since I was a kid, and very much so as of late, meaning that I have a lot of modelling accessories available at home.

I accidentally broke off one of the screw holes for the BabyNES Raspberry PI case (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:449877) almost instantly due to the bad print quality. Reading around I didn’t find any obvious glues to use except acetone. In fact, I found a whole heap of warnings that the fat plastic would probably be hard to glue etc. Hence, I decided to test Revell Contacta Professional glue (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Revell-39604-Contacta-Professional-Glue/dp/B000KJPUL0) and it worked like a charm from what it looks like!

Since this worked so well, I tried some Italeri putty for plastic models (http://www.model-making.eu/products/Italeri-putty-for-plastic-models-28-ml.html) to cover up the sides which shows a lot of layers and some defects. Except the putty smelling really bad, it tacked on really hard and dried enough in just a few minutes to be sanded down.

Since the above went so well, I went ahead and did some more tests by printing a set of battered barrels (http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:535261) which turned out fairly crappy due to the print quality (mind you, much better than the first BabyNES case). Either way, perfect chance to test what could be done using those modelling tools/supplies. Here’s some before through after shots:

2015-03-14 19.43.32 2015-03-19 21.01.34 2015-03-30 22.52.22 2015-04-11 20.48.44

I think a lot of the plastic modeller materials could be used with ABS and possibly PLA plastics as well, especially where you want to make a structure, and then want to improve the details. There are much better printers out there with much better calibration of course, but these materials combined shows some great promise IMHO.