15mm WWII Americans for 'O' Group

I purchased these figures on Ebay recently to complete my US infantry for 'O' Group.  My collection is primarily based, and was originally intended for Flames of War. In Flames of War a US platoon is the force shown: seven infantry stands and a small base bazooka team. For 'O' group this is two three-stand platoons, an extra infantry team and a bazooka support section, usually deployed in two or three section teams. 

 

These came fairly well painted. I did some touch-ups due to damage in shipping, added some additional details to the helmets and webbing and gave the bases a spruce up with static grass to hide some questionable basing choices. 

 

 

I'll count these only as 'purchased 15mm figures'. The touch-up work wasn't significant enough to warrant credit on my annual totals. 

First .STL Files Created - Markers for 'O' Group

There are .STL files for 'O' Group markers available for sale, but they appear to be made for resin filament 3D printers. Because of this the markings on them seem a bit 'chunky' to me for 15mm figures. Since I have a resin printer, I thought I'd take this as an opportunity to spend some time learning Fusion 360 and design some for resin 3D printers. 

This is the suppression/pinning tracking triangle that is unique to 'O' Group. I've sized it so it will not only work with large and medium bases, but also small bases (not shown). 

My printer can print twenty (20) of these at a time, directly on the build plate. I've finally dialed in the printer well enough that 'elephant foot' isn't much of an issue for things such as these. 

 

 

 

Order and Company Order markers are also just now finished. I'll continue on the rest of the lesser-used markers later this week. I'll count this as one 'terrain/misc' created.

28mm Finnish Sturmi Assault Gun

I 3D printed this Finnish Sturmi assault gun from the excellent STL files sold by Night Sky Miniatures. Their files are complete and can do any version of the Finnish version of the Stug III. It comes with the gun magnetized so you can use both guns on the same hull, but also this provides for much safer transportation of the model with the gun removed. 

 

I started with the cement-reinforced hull with logs and the early war welded gun mantlet. I'll likely also do a pig-snouted version with extra tracks on the lower glacis. Lovely model all around.

 

 

 

 During the painting I dropped this on the cement floor of the shop and obliterated the MG shield and gun. I loaded the mesh up into Fusion 360 and pulled out just the geometry for these pieces and re-printed and attached and painted these replacement parts as well as repairing various other damage. You can hardly tell that I botched it!

I'll count this as another painted 28mm vehicle in my annual painting totals.

28mm 3D Printed 'Finnish' 1936 Ford Flatbed Half-Track Truck

Another 3-D printed vehicle for my 28mm Continuation War / Lapland War Finnish army. This will be used as another un-armored, un-armed transport for my Finnish army. It can either transport troops, or tow a larger weapon such as an anti-tank gun or an artillery piece.

These were also used by the Canadians during World War II. Similar to the Finnish, they had the weather and terrain to make these a useful civilian vehicle before the war. Pressing them into military service was a fairly small step. There still exists one example in a Canadian museum.
 

I'm quite fond of this model as it prints in both the wheeled and half-tracked version as a single-piece print. All I have to do is clean off the support 'sprues' and start painting. It's a solid print, so it costs about $3.50 in resin to print, but that extra resin also gives it the weight of a commercial cast resin vehicle. I appreciate this as most of my collection is made up of such models. This will add one 28mm vehicle to this year's painting totals. 

 

28mm 3D Printed 'Finnish' 1936 Ford Flatbed Truck

Prior to the 1939 Winter War, Finland used primarily Ford trucks for civilian use having no speak-able automotive industry of their own. When the Winter War broke out, a large number of these were pressed into military service as a necessity. This model represents one such vehicle.

This was printed on my Elagoo Saturn 2 3D printer. This was a wonderful model to work with. It printed entirely in a single piece, fully assembled. I broke it off the supports, did minimal clean up with a knife and sanding stick and primed it up.

Since I used OD green colored primer, painting was relatively easy with a quick dry brush to highlight panel lines, picked out the tires, windows and metal bits, and gave it a panel wash and a European dust wash. After both washes, some of the details were a bit muddled, so I did a few touch-ups. Decals were applied prior to the final washes. All total, maybe 90 minutes total 3-D print clean-up and painting time.

This will count as one 28mm vehicle in my annual painting totals. I enjoyed this enough, and I could use a second truck for my Finnish since they didn't use APCs, so I might print a second one. The 3D printer started to earn it's cost back with this model. This cost me about $4.00 worth of resin. A similar quality commercial offering would be over $30.00