corrugated wraps

I have seen the future of corrugated body wraps, and they are... printed. Maybe.

Had this in the back of my mind for quite a while. Took ~5 min to work up a cad model, ~5 min to process, and ~20 min to print this very first attempt:




Requires a very carefully aligned printer. The printed backing on this is two layers thick, and is actually more flexible and durable than typical cardstock. It could probably be made a single layer thick. Biggest problem I see at the moment is the texture of the non-corrugated area - it may be possible to sand, or even scrape that area smooth. It should be possible to print many of the surface details in place.

If Glenn at RealSpaceModels wold ever send the Saturn 1 drawings I ordered six months ago, I might try a scale wrap.

Gary

I should also point out that the corrugations shown there are three layers tall, which may actually be a bit too tall proportionally, from what I seem to recall of corrugation dimensions. There is another problem that those corrugations are one noodle wide - so there is the problem that an integer number of noodles may not fit the scale you're looking for.

Gary

So Gary sounds to me like 3-d printed corrugations will have to wait for a few more generations of 3-D printers with much closer tolerances and finer noodel width. Present printed stuff might be ok for Sport flying scale-like models but I wouldn't even consider them for any Scale project.

It still just to easy and Cheap to get corrugations for Plasticstruct, EverGreen or others in various thickness and spacing Styrene sheeting. Nice thought though.