I’m looking for a little help from the 3D printing crowd.
My next project is ICM’s 1/48 MH-6J Little Bird, and I want to build it loaded and ready to go, with two pilots in the cockpit and four Special Forces operators sitting on the external benches.
The photo below is from ICM’s 1/35 kit, and it’s pretty much exactly what I’m trying to accomplish—just in 1/48.
The problem is that I can’t find anybody making these figures in 1/48. I’ve found some similar figures in 1/35 and some 28mm/3D-print versions, but nothing specifically intended for the 1/48 ICM kit.
I’m pretty new to the 3D-printing side of the hobby, so I’m wondering if anyone here knows of suitable STL files that could be scaled to 1/48, or perhaps knows how difficult it would be to modify existing modern Special Forces figures into these seated poses.
Basically, I need six figures: two seated pilots and four operators sitting on the external benches with their legs hanging down.
And @Rotor_George I’m looking in your direction too. You managed to design a figure of me barfing on an amusement park ride, so I’m thinking four Special Forces guys sitting on a bench can’t be completely out of the question.
Anybody have any ideas? This seems like exactly the sort of problem 3D printing ought to be able to solve.
3D printing can easily solve the problem. If the file is available in 1/35, it can be scaled down to 1/48. I’ve done that a few times with printing. The trick is finding the file. In that respect all I can do is suggest that you look on places like the Thingverse and Cults3D to start your search.
Good catch George. I hadn’t even noticed the blade droop in that photo because I was so focused on the figures.
I’ll definitely be chasing down lots of reference photos before I get too far into this one. Since you’re pretty much my go-to helicopter expert around here, do you have any good Little Bird references you’d recommend I look at?
This is the kit I’m going to be building, so if you know of anything specific to this version that I should be watching out for, I’m all ears.
I’ve got four or five helicopters in the build schedule, so I have a feeling this won’t be the last time I’m picking your brain.
That would be great, George. If you get a chance to look through what you have and find anything that might be useful, I’d definitely appreciate it.
And “it’s not a Chinook” gives me a pretty good idea of how much droop we’re talking about.
In the not-too-distant future I’ll be building something that’s not quite a Chinook, but close—a 1/48 CH-46. I’ll definitely be paying attention to the rotor droop on that one too.
Wow, Gino, that’s pretty much exactly what I’m trying to do, just in 1/48! That looks great.
What figures did you use for yours? I’m assuming those weren’t included with the kit.
And thank you for the figure size chart. That’s going to be really helpful when I start figuring out how to scale these STL files correctly. This whole 3D-printing thing is brand new territory for me, so I’m learning as I go.
Now I just need to find someone who can print them for me. Anybody have a good source?
Well, that’s interesting timing! I just spent $21 on the STL files for the six figures we found.
Still, that’s really good to know. Since this Little Bird is next in my build queue, I probably won’t wait around for the ICM crew set, but I’ll definitely keep an eye on it. If it shows up before I get too far into the build, I may end up with two options.
Really difficult if you do not have a printer. You have to know which printer will be used first, then you put your stl file into a Slicer (a program which converts your file into a workable-file for the specific printer). Here it can be scaled, turned, moved, copied etc.
In this scale, even 1/16 figures, you get best results with a resin printer, a filament printer is not really suitable for this task (look at the printed figures in the link you bought them from)!
But first you have the problem now how to take the files to the person who can print them for you …
I missed this earlier. No, the figures did not come with the kit. The MH-6J is a modified Dragon 1/35 AH-6J with the old Cobra Company MH-6J conversion set. The pilots are from the MRC/Academy OH-58D. The four operators were cobbled together from different Dragon modern figure sets and lots of putty.
This is not an issue either. You can send the files via email, drop box, thumb drive, google drives, etc. They transfer like any other file type. Once the printer person has them, he can manipulate them as needed.
Thanks, this is great information. I’m starting from zero with 3D printing, so I’m learning as I go.
I have actually already resized the STL files to what should be 1/48 scale. We didn’t know the original scale of the figures, so we used the helmet/headgear dimensions as a reference and resized the actual STL geometry from there. I’ve got a pilot and an operator set aside as test prints so I can check their size against the MH-6 before printing the whole group.
So it sounds like what I really need now is someone with a good resin printer who can take a look at the files, make sure they’ll slice and support properly, and print those two test figures for me.
Thanks again for helping me figure out this part of the process. This is all completely new territory for me.
Thanks for coming back to this. I was wondering if there was a figure set out there that I had somehow missed, but now I understand why I couldn’t find one!
That’s some impressive work putting those four operators together from different figure sets. They look like they were made for the aircraft. Hopefully my 3D-printing experiment will get me to something similar in 1/48 without requiring quite that much surgery.
I’m hoping to find someone local, I play Pickleball with a guy that has a 3D on demand business. If not, as you say, the files are small and can easily be moved around.
It is a complex topic, but if you took the first steps it is not as difficult as it seems at the beginning. I am still learning though. I can imagine diving into 3D printing without a printer in front to practice is even more challenging!
If you can not find a person who print the figures for you, I can do it, no problem at all - I even bought the files myself. But shipping from Germany is quite time consuming and expensive. Additional I have no idea of how all this customs stuff works these days …
That’s a very generous offer, thank you! And it’s interesting that you bought the same files.
I’ve actually been working with ChatGPT to figure out the scaling, and we discovered something a little strange. The six STL files weren’t exported at a consistent scale. Some of them have wildly different dimensions, so we’ve been working through them individually and getting everything normalized to 1/48.
We’ve already created a corrected test pair—one pilot and one operator—with the idea of printing those first and checking the fit in the ICM kit before doing all six.
I’d be happy to send you the resized files if you’d like to try printing them. It would save you some of the work messing around with the scaling, and even if you don’t end up shipping the prints to me, it would be really useful to see how they come out and whether the sizing looks right once they’re actually printed.
If I can’t find somebody closer to home to print them, I may very well take you up on your offer.
