hello and welcome to my 3D printed E-11 Blaster build.
After printing and building the excellent models by "the5thhorseman" I thought I'd go back in time, a long long time ago, and make the original blaster from the first movie which was part IV. Actually I'm not quite sure which model of the E-11 blaster this is but hopefully someone can point me in the right direction.
I don't know who made the original 3D model but this version below is the reworked model by "rayabear" and can be downloaded from www.thingiverse.com
So the first thing I did was print it all out. This took a while, not nearly as long as the break between episode V1 and I, but long enough for me to think it would never finish printing. I'm using a Prusa i3 printer which is a bit basic and has a few flaws but it's good enough for me at the moment as I can fix the faults with files, sandpaper, filler, swearing and lots of diet coke.
Below is all the parts printed out. It's about now that you realise that it might have taken a while to print but it's going to take even longer to put together unless you don't do any post printing work.
I've cheated in this picture as I've actually joined the 3 barrel parts together as I'm a bit impatient at times. I used a wooden peg to join the front two parts together and this was glued inside the barrel in side the barrel shroud. This was to give it a bit of extra strength. The rear part is only glued and if thos proves to be to weak I'll get rid of the working bolt and glue to bolt in place giving extra strength to the rear of the barrel.
Obviously there are lots of parts here so the best course of action for me is to split it into groups and work my way through them. For me this will be:
Outer barrel
folding stock
pistol grip
magazine
top rail and scope
counter
any bits left over.
So on with the barrel.
Once the glue had dried, joining the barrel parts together, it ws time to break out the large file.
The idea is to smooth out the parts as much as possible and using the big file cuts through the plastic in no time at all. Once the barrel looks a bit better it's time for the sandpaper and smaller file.
I'm hard to get rid of all the errors as can be seen below:
so it's time to break out the filler and cover the whole thing in P.38 filler (or any car filler really).
Once the filler has set it's time for the files and sandpaper again and after a while it started to look like this.
When it starts to look like this I break out the can of spray filler primer and give it a good spray. This fills in any small holes, scratches, etc and also highlights any areas that need extra filler.
While I was waiting for the filler and primer to dry I worked on some of the other barrel parts and in some case I used a product called XTC 3D to smooth the parts after a quick sand. I'm still not 100% happy with XTC but it's better than some of the normal off the shelf epoxy's I've tried.
Some of the smaller parts had filler, paint filler and then more filler applied to get them looking right.
So after all that I'm now at the stage where I can start to assemble some of the barrel.
This will be a slightly longer project than normal as I'm off to the States next week so that will put a hold on things until I get back. Next stage is to finish the parts to complete the barrel and then move onto the folding stock.