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KurtLaughlin

IPMS/USA Member
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Everything posted by KurtLaughlin

  1. Ed, if you look at the link in my post above a guy is selling an exhaustively detailed, inside and out, 1/35 tank model *kit* that requires the same or more of the basic skills needed to assemble an injection kit into a *model*. I guess because he is selling it it is "commercially available", so it could legitimately entered in to the armor category. (I'm sure that would cause some consternation when it was discovered that it was a "3-D printed model".) My question would apply to something with the same level of detail but entered by its designer and not offered for sale. KL
  2. Gil, this impression of the process of making a 3-D printed model grossly - by like two orders of magnitude - the amount of effort needed to go from a printed plan to a plastic part. Hopefully that's not the type of thinking behind the NCC's decisions. We're not in Star Trek where you can talk to "the replicator" and get a finished model three minutes later. I really have no interest in 3-D models. I was just reading the Journal over my cereal and started thinking . . . OK, it's not scratchbuilt, fair enough. But isn't there also a rule about no prototype kits or test shots? Yup. . . . So if a guy uses a 3-D printer to create a set of parts with the identical breakdown and parts count of a typical Tamiya kit, assembles those pieces into a complete airplane or tank - trims the sprue, removes the mold marks, glues it up, fills the seams, paints and decals it - he can't enter it into the contest because a) It is specifically excluded from scratchbuilt and b) UNLESS a model is scratchbuilt, it can't be entered unless it is a commercially available kit. I'm not talking about a 3-D version of those 1/288, one-piece recognition models from 75 years ago. I'm thinking of something like this guy's stuff where the kit has as much detail and complexity as a injection molded kit but it's printed instead. I think you can see that it is also much more complex than a resin kit - which is allowed. (An interesting follow-on: What if someone used their 3-D printed parts as masters to make molds and build the exact same model out of resin?) To look at it another way, if Peter Jackson used his resources to create a WNW kit that he never offered for sale, a model made from that kit could never be entered in the show. That seems odd. KL
  3. I got the new Journal yesterday and noted the rule change that (essentially) says that 3-D printed models cannot be entered as scratchbuilt models. However, rule I.4 says "Pre-Production Examples. "Test Shot" or pre-production examples of kits not yet commercially available may not be entered in any national competition for awards" and Rule II.4 says that "Simple conversions may be entered in regular categories. More extensive conversions, however, must be entered in the appropriate conversion category." So, a 3-D printed model is not scratchbuilt, it's not an extensive conversion, it's not a simple conversion, and it's not a "commercially available" kit, so how is it allowed to be entered? KL
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