I owed a favour to a friend who told me many times how he was a T-55 Tanker in the early 90’s in Poland and I knew he wanted a model of a tank he rode back then (he was a driver) - so I decided to build one for him. The thing is it was a very special variant - Polish T-55AM Merida. In the 80’s Polish decided to modernise some of their huge fleet of T-55s instead of buying new T-72s to save some money. So they installed a laser rangefinder, a crosswind sensor, a digital computer and automatic smoke grenade launchers on them - and massively up-armored them. The resulting vehicle was called “Merida”. The up-armor kit was developed in the USSR, but the other goodies were products of Polish industry.
Funny thing - one of those tanks, in running condition is located in Las Vegas - part of the Battlefield Vegas collection.
OK, I started with this kit:
It has all of the necessary up-armor parts, but lacks all of the crucial “hi-tech” goodies, like the Polish laser rangefinder, Polish smoke grenades and so on. That’s where modern technology comes in - I decided to design the necessary parts and 3D print them.
What a very nice thing to do for your friend. Turned out great. 3d printing is changing the hobby. I’ll have to jump in at some point. Nice job - hard to believe it’s 1/72
This will give you an idea about a basic price. While there are many different materials, the pricing differs wildly, too. Did you know you can 3D print in silver or gold? I made a pair of silver earrings for my woman using this service. Of course it will be a little more expensive than model parts
For model parts you mostly use stuff called Smoothest Frosted Ultra Detail (FUD). If you wanto to print out something using this material you have to pay about 10$ plus shipping. This buys you all of the handling, cleaning up and processing plus a bit of material that’s enough for quite a few detail parts. At some point, when you make your model bigger the material cost will break this 10$ barrier, they will start charging for extra material and then it will start getting expensive. Best thing to do is to download a 3D model of what you have in mind to get an instant quote.
Tojo72 - thanks a lot!
Bill - that’s a very nice thing to read from you! As a thank you I took this photo especially for you:
Thaks for the photos! Both are great models! As I said, you are a great modeler! Perhaps you could add the 1/72 Revell Leopard 1A5 to the collection of Cold War era armor. [:)]
Looks great Pawel! The T-55 is a sharp looking tank and you did a great job on her. Great job on the weathering - I too honest would have thought she was 1/35th if you hadn’t told us. [ht]
