At the last convention, we had a load of the soviet vehicles out on display, including the t-55 and the T-72. It had been the first time we'd ever got the two out side-by-side and one of my oppos commented that the T-55 was too big, since it was nearly the same size as the T-55.
I went back and did some more research and looked at the length again and checked my model. While it was difficult to get a concensus on the exact meaurements of the T-55, it was definitely should have been smaller. (I think the problem was excasebated by me picking one of the higher lengths for the T-55 and one of the lower for the T-72).
On examiniation of my CAD model to find out why it was wrong, I was pretty sure I flipped a couple of number around when I did the initial scaling; the T-55 was indeed slightly too large on the order of 4% in the linear dimension. As I am pending other jobs today and I had a slot for an hour or two, I have finally gotten around to correcting the models for the T-55 and T-55 Engima (for 144th, anyway).
Given that the change was so small, I was able to modify the model by scaling to 0.96, since a change of this amount did not cut into the wall thinness problems. The MG and the holes and posts in the hull and turret have not been scaled and retained their original size, and the couple of areas (the mudguard, the track thickness and one of the searchlight posts) which were now below the 1mm limit were brought back up to 1mm again.
While I was it, I also took the opportunity to sprue up the T-55; as an older model, it came from before the time Shapeways only charged by material volume. (Given the size of my catalogue, I tend to fix these issues only when I have to do something else, otherwise I'd spend all my time revising the current stuff and not making new ones!)
The two images show the old T-55 (left) the new T-55 (centre) and the T-72, and here you can see the T-55 now looks more appropriately sized (especially on the top-down view).
(You'll have to forgive the sometimes odd colouration on the CAD models, which result partly from the way TurboCAD decides to colour things when you assemble the models and partly because the earlier Russain stuff started off in sci-fi and the red colour scheme has stuck…!)
As as result of both the size decrease and better volume/sprue management, the price has dropped by approximately 30% for the T-55 and 25% T-55 Enigma!
T-55
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T-55 Enigma
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returns to show us how he painted 
