Reliant Goes to the Prototyper [HH]

Mad Dog writes:

MatsuMartin, we have a 3-D wax printer at work, I forget exactly at the moment, but I believe it's called a thermojet. Anyways, the machine itself is the size of a refrigerator laid on its side. It was about $50,000, plus the cost of a tech making a visit to make sure the machine is leveled (bad things if its not). The wax material used to actually spit the stuff out is a few thousand (if memory serves), for a paint bucket of material. This is also what is considered a "low-end" machine. It produces items with significant surface texture, more than what I see from Xtreme Hobby's Cold Navy designs, and is more fragile. I imagine the 3-D protoyping they use, and AdAstraGames uses, is significantly more expensive. Maybe some day, but that day is probably a decent ways off at the moment. Also, this is only my opinion with limited exposure to this technology, so maybe I'm misinformed.

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Ken Burnside of Ad Astra Games writes:

Honor Harrington Miniatures

The solid-model render of the Reliant BC goes to the prototyper today or tomorrow - it's done from the renders. The wireframe is from the solid modeller, the two textured ones are from our production artist, Charles Oines.

All the minis will have "bottom mount" holes; we'll be getting clear plastic boxes with flight pegs in them for use in 3-D - but as is, they'll work with all standard minis bases.

All the Honorverse miniatures are done to a consistent 1:18500 scale. We got permission from David Weber to fix a bad math error made early in the series and reconcile the ship dimensions and masses - at 3.2 km and 8.5 million tons, his superdreadnoughts had a density of roughly 0.002; we assigned a standard density of 0.25, and resized them to match their masses with David's approval (future reprints of the series will use our dimensions and include a fronts-piece.)

Here's the table with classes, new dimensions, and miniatures dimensions:

					1:18500 Scale
Class	Mass	Length	Beam	Depth	Length	Width	Height
RMN Falcon DD	70,000	352	42	25	19.0	2.3	1.4
RMN Chanson DD	78,000	365	43	25	19.7	2.3	1.4
PN Bastogne DD	88,000	380	47	27	20.5	2.5	1.5
RMN Prince Consort CA	260,000	497	60	50	26.9	3.2	2.7
RMN Crusader CA	260,000	497	60	50	26.9	3.2	2.7
PN Sword CA	290,000	515	62	52	27.8	3.4	2.8
RMN Courageous CL	88,000	386	40	31	20.9	2.2	1.7
RMN Apollo CL	125,000	434	48	30	23.5	2.6	1.6
PN Brilliance CL	120,000	428	47	30	23.1	2.5	1.6
PN Conqueror CL	145,000	456	50	32	24.6	2.7	1.7
bonus Fearless CL	88,000	386	40	31	20.9	2.2	1.7
RMN Reliant BC	879,000	714	91	81	38.6	4.9	4.4
PN Sultan BC	858,000	706	90	80	38.2	4.9	4.3
RMN Star Knight CA	300,000	520	62	52	28.1	3.4	2.8
PN Mars-B CA	475,000	607	73	61	32.8	3.9	3.3
Merchant, Med	conjectural	1108	183	177	59.9	9.9	9.6
bonus PN Astra AMC	7,600,000	1231	203	197	66.5	11.0	10.6
Merchant, Lg	7,600,000	1231	203	197	66.5	11.0	10.6
Gryphon SD		1480	210	196	80.0	11.4	10.6

Flight Box Dimensions
		1:18500 Scale
	Length	Length	Width	Height
Huge Box	10.5	84.0	36.8	26.3
Very Large Box	9	72.0	31.5	22.5
Large Box	7.5	60.0	26.3	18.8
Medium Box	6	48.0	21.0	15.0
Small Box	4.5	36.0	15.8	11.3

We won't have pricing for minis until we know how they come off the prototyper, and make sure they come off the master mold making process in one piece - when I have that pricing info, I'll pass it on.

Right now, it looks like we'll release two fleet boxes into distribution and keep the singletons as mail order only items, to avoid overloading the channel with SKUs.

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