Most of the descent parts are printed in black. That way the three foil colors; gold, rose gold and silver can be applied and no painting is required. For the main body there are four 6x3mm magnets that are glued in. These will hold the ascent stage in place. I am adding them now so I can foil over them and they will disappear. You can also see that I have started the tedious foiling process.
For the main leg struts I ran a 5/64" drill through the holes and ran an exacto knife over all of it like a cabinet scrapper to make sure the joints are smooth and there is nothing to snag the foil.
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Continuing to foil. It is going to take weeks. The bottom was foiled yesterday with a rose gold. The glue is still not dry. Ask me how I know… Fortunately when foil is accidentally smudged off it is a simple matter of adding more foil. Drying will take about 4 or 5 days. Today I removed the tape and glued on the engine bottom plate. The bottom plate would be more accurate to foil with a silver foil but I chose to simply print it in silver. The engine nozzle is temporarily set in place for the picture.
The foiling process will be 1) tape off area, 2) brush on light layer of glue, 3) apply foil and tamp down with brush, 4) after a day or two remove tape and check if more foil needs to be added, 5) wait another 2 or 3 days before continuing. Here is the top and bottom of one of the legs. Half the bottom and the corresponding lip is black so after adding tape, the exposed portion was glued and foiled. There is still excess overlapping foil that will be lightly brushed off tomorrow before removing the tape.
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The tape has been removed and the foil “brushed” to remove the excess. The main strut still needs to be foiled in a silver foil.
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Continuing to foil.
And as I descend into foiling madness… flakes of foil get everywhere. Two of the big sections of the ascent stage have been printed. I chose to print them in silver and paint the black panels a flat black.
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The interior of the center section, ascent stage is complete. I used a bone white for the side panels and a white for the other two pieces plus the silver round cover for the ascent engine.
Here you can see the engine nozzle and more of the painting. The magnets are in place.
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The descent stage is foiled and the legs are on! There is glittery foil all over the room but it was worth it. Still need to add the decals, the ladder/landing plus the deflectors which will wait until the ascent stage is complete so they can be lined up.
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And here is the flag and the United States decal in place.
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Wow! What glue are you using that takes a week to dry?
Quite the impressive and ambitious project!
The glue looks to be a thin white glue, it came with the foil pack along with a brush to pick up and dab the foil onto the glued surface. My guess is the metal foil is not breathable so drying time is ridiculous. I was really surprised the next day to find the foil smudged off and the glue was still tacky. I added more foil and waited, and waited. The foiling is worth it. The model would not be the same without the foil.
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The tricky part of 3D printing is how to get the best looking parts which sometimes involves slicing and gluing. The sides that do not print well are the sides that are supported by supports. For the ascent front end I chose to print it as a complete part with supports holding up the inside. Here is the inside, not very smooth.
To make this look good I decided to print thin plates that contain details. Here are some of the inside plates having been printed.
And here are those plates plus the upper center console glued in place. Before gluing the plates I cut out some acetate windows and glued those in place. Now for the side parts…
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And here is the inside with side parts.
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The thrusters printed up will with the small nozzle. Those and the egress platform and ladder are on.
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The deflectors are on. That completes the descent stage. The rendezvous radar is on. Only three more antennas to go…
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The last part is the docking target. Since it has a thin plate with black and white I chose to print this and not attempt painting it. There are two multi-color print techniques I use with a single print head printer. The horizontal color change is the easiest. This one required printing two parts, one next to the other. In the slicer I sliced the black parts and saved those for printing. Using the small 0.25mm nozzle I set the first layer height to 0.15 and the remaining layers to 0.10mm. The black parts are 0.25mm thick. With the black parts still in the slicer I then brought in the white part and set that in place directly over the black parts. When you are sure the white parts are positioned exactly (no daylight between the parts), highlight and remove the black parts. Now you can slice and save the white parts. If your slicer has elephant foot compensation, you should turn that off so the parts melt together. Here is an image in the slicer with both black (orange) and white (green).
On the printer start by printing the black parts.
Remove any nozzle cleaning artifacts, change to a white filament, but DO NOT remove the black parts. Leave those in place. Now print the white parts over the black parts. You should end up with something like this.
Now the parts can be removed and glued to the model. You should end up with something like this.
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The other final detail was the ends of the VHF antennas (2). I used a really small black wire that I use for wire wrapping chips.
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And here is the completed model. I will post when the parts are available. Need to create an assembly document first.
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If you would like to build one of these, I have published the parts for free at Apollo Lunar Module by bglasford1 | Download free STL model | Printables.com along with all the other 3D models I have created.
