3d Printed 1/180 scale Ohio Class SSBN

[magicstix]

I found a nice 1/180 scale model of an Ohio class SSBN and thought I'd print it out and paint it for an office decoration at work.

She's a beast! Roughly a meter long (~39 inches) and took about a day to print. The hull is 6 separate sections of black PLA, plus the sail and small bits.

She was too big for the spray booth and I had to get a new airbrush because it was taking forever to paint with a 0.3 mm airbrush.

I tried to weather it a bit, but the 0.8 mm airbrush was definitely throwing way too much paint, so it all got washed out.

The draft markings are 1/32" dry transfer decals, which is correct scale for 6 inch tall numbers.

The screw it came with was laughably inaccurate, so I designed a better one in Fusion and resin printed it.

Main complaints about the model are minor inaccuracies (no WLR-9 sharkfins, some hatches look off, no main seawater ports, no sealions sunbathing on top of the reactor compartment, masts are inaccurate and hard to print), and the infuriating missile doors, which have to be threaded with 0.8 mm wire and removing the supports from inside was a mess. All that just so you can have doors that open and don't show anything on the inside.

The painting process was:
- Sanding 180 -> 400 -> 600 -> 800 -> 1000 grain until satisfied.

- Spray with Mr. Surfacer black 1500, sand again with 1000 grain and give a second coat

- White preshading of the black upper hull with burnt sand preshade of the antifouling

- Tamiya hull red for antifouling and Vajello gray-black for the upper hull.

- Ammo by Mig gloss primer spray

- Dry transfer decals for draft markings

- Mr Clear coat ultra matte to finish

- Mr. surfacer 1500 and Tamiya gold for the screw



Sorry for the poor photographic environment. I only got pictures of her while she was drying in the workshop as no photography of her final resting place in the office is allowed.



Preshading


Aft closeups




Full body


After bringing the model in to work, a coworker managed to knock a door off literally before I had finished setting up to start the day and that same coworker had knocked off a sail plane within a couple hours (I guess I don't work with adults). The damage was minor and easily remedied (no actual damage to the parts themselves).

I liked how she turned out, so I designed a fully modernized 688i in the same 1/180 scale and have been working on that for my next large project.

[Aktungbby]

magicstix! nice pics!

[Jonesy]

amazing work.