USS Aventine build

[Trekmanscott, M,Ed.]

I LOVE the design of the Vesta class.



I really enjoyed the Star Trek: Destiny trilogy of novels and the Aventine plays a large role in those books. Mark Rademaker's design is awesome. I have been on a quest to get a model of this ship. The only way to get a good sized model of the Aventine is to get a 3D printed copy.

This year for my birthday my wife bought me a resin 3D printer. After getting the hang of the printer I bought some transparent resin. I got a copy of an Aventine .stl I was very happy to learn that the Aventine in 1/1400 would fit on my print bed.

The print came in 8 parts. The forward saucer, mid saucer, 2 aft pylon sections and each nacelle is in 2 pieces. I was able to get the hull printed in 3 separate prints and the nacelles in 1.

The parts printed beautifully.

My plan is to light this model.

[Bridger]

Looks great, I am looking forward to see this build progress.

PS: What printer and resin are you using?

[SCI-FI]

Wow, very cool -- where did you get the 3D file, and what was the printer?

Keep us posted--
-SF

[Tiberious]

The Aventine is such a sleek and graceful looking ship.
The ripples in the print, are they on the surface or just within it? And how big is she?

Looking good. Would love to see more!

[Trekmanscott, M,Ed.]

Originally Posted by SCI-FI

Wow, very cool -- where did you get the 3D file, and what was the printer?

Keep us posted--
-SF

I bought the file from the artist and I printed the Model on my Elegoo Mars Pro

[Trekmanscott, M,Ed.]

Originally Posted by Tiberious

The Aventine is such a sleek and graceful looking ship.
The ripples in the print, are they on the surface or just within it? And how big is she?

Looking good. Would love to see more!

The ripples are internal

[Trekmanscott, M,Ed.]

Work continued on the Aventine this weekend. I dug a trench in each pylon for wiring. Once the wiring was in place I covered the trench and wiring with Aves fixit putty. Lighting was added to the interior. I used LED strips for the window lighting. 4 3mm LEDs for the Impulse engines and 2 5mm LEDs for the navigational deflector. I also used LED strips and 1 Red and 1 Blue 5mm LED for each warp engine.

I used 5 minute epoxy to glue the 2 aft parts together. I also used 5 minute epoxy to join the 2 saucer parts together. After drilling a hole in the bottom of the model I added a brass rod for the stand. After I connected all of the wire together I glued the saucer to the aft section. After the model set overnight I filled the seams with Aves fixit putty and smoothed them out with a q-tip and 91% IPA. I did this a couple times. I did sand each seam with 400 grit paper. Just to make sure that the seam was gone. I used the same process on each of the Warp Nacelles

With the ship assembled I moved on to masking off the windows. There are a lot of them! I cut Tamiya tape down into 1 mm strips and then cut each strip into 1 mm squares. I used those to mask each window. it took 4 days but I was able to mask off the windows.

With the window masking done I sprayed the glowy bits either with Tamiya clear Red or Blue

[SCI-FI]

Holy Cow - lots of hours in that project already...

*much applause*

-SF

[Tiberious]

Liking it. And much credit for all the tedious masking!

[Trekmanscott, M,Ed.]

Here is a shot of the ship and warp nacelles. I'm a bit further on the nacelles than the ship.

[AdmiralBuck]

Great design! Looking forward to watching this build.

[Trekmanscott, M,Ed.]

Work continues. The ship and nacelles have been coated in black primer to ensure there are no light leaks. Hopefully I get the 1st coat of paint on this weekend.

[Tiberious]

Her crew calls her 'Black Beauty.'

[Trekmanscott, M,Ed.]

Work on the Aventine continues. The first step was a base coat of Model Master Light Gray.


Then I began to lay down masking tape. The Aventine has a complex paint scheme. The in universe explanation is that these panels represent ablative armor, like the Defiant. The paint scheme adds to the look of the design. To help me with that I enlarged the ortho's from the Eaglemoss magazine to 1400 scale and I used those as templates to help lay down the tape.


I am using a mix of Tamiya tape and Automotive pinstriping tape

[SCI-FI]

Awesome work, thanks for the update--

-SF