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Just to be clear, I'm not selling these. I feel they cross a line that make them inappropriate to sell, but still acceptable for my own hobby purposes.

A long time ago... I found one of these guys on ebay:


I always thought it was a cool miniature, but despite having fooled around with 40k minis since the wanning days of Rogue Trader, I had never seen this mini before. That was some 10 years ago, and since then I'd wanted to build a squad of these veneralble Mk1 terminators. This came about because I had purchased some of FW pre-heresy space marines and in a short time frame stumbled on this:


While they occaisionally come up on ebay, they tend to go for $35+ which gets a little price prohibative and kinda silly when you consider that I'd then need to cut him up for conversion, in building that squad. So I set about an alternatve. Using my past experiance, I created a digital model and had conversion pieces 3D printed. Here's a mockup I did with a screenshot of some legs and the early digital model.


I got the 3D printed brass back, and had a friend do some casting... they came out ok... but heres the first one assembled and primered. I'll hopefully paint it this weekend...



I'm not in any rush... as I still need to decide if I'll use this for a count-as Grey Knight (a band wagon I'm reluctant to jump on) or Deathwing (for which I'd wait for a new book).

Awesome! When you first told me you were doing these I was skeptical, but they turned out great, hopefully future castings will be better!!

I think it turned out pretty good.
As long as your using it for personal usage, and not selling them, I do not see how anything could be pinned against you. Its not like you are shoving them up on ebay, or selling, etc. Your making your own models, and basically converting for your own gaming. I'm pretty sure that's fine.

Great Idea. Those MK1 Termies look hilarious.

Will keep my eye on this thread. A squad of these painted up will look great.

Surprising that it actually appears to be a bit anatomically correct whilst still maintaining that nice bulkiness the termies have.

Those look pretty awesome. I've never seen the old mk 1 terminators. But, I've read that they more or less fit somewhere inbetween the lines of the mk 4 power armor and current mark of terminator. They look cool. Congrads on the find and the conversion. I'll be keeping tabs on this thread.

I love it when people update old designs!

if you separated out the shoulders you'd have a nice versatile kit

It was really a concession for the sake of cost... making the torso and shoulders as a single piece saved me about $40 over 3D printing them as seperate pieces. The artwork shows them with shoulders that are clearly hollow; the original model however has extra cables and things running into them. If I modeled the cables and made the shoulder pads seperate they shoulders simply wouldn't have enough movement to be useful.

Hot. Fething. Damn.

Interesting! how are you proceeding with the rest of the squad?

Oh wow, nice stuf!! Always loved that old design as well.

WOW!!

Very cool. The arms look like they might be a fraction long, but top work on the torso.

They are just a smidgen.

how much does it generally cost to have something printed 3d?

This MK1, 3D printing and having him made as a bronze master ... just torso with shoulders was ~$60 and another ~$15 for each arm. $15 is kinda the minimum no matter how much smaller the pieces are.

aka_mythos wrote:This MK1, 3D printing and having him made as a bronze master ...

Bronze master? Did you have it printed in a burnable material and do a lost wax type of cast of the bronze?

Yep that's one of the cheaper ways to do it. The printing material in this instance was a type of wax. If you go to shapeways.com which was a different company than what I used they can print in plastics and metal infused plastics, but with them there are other considerations

I what! those would make a great Center Piece for an army.

They are so amazing man! fething awesome.

It's wonderful to see the coolest terminator design given justice. Well done sir. Well done.

now THATS tactical Dreadnaught armor!

yeah,
They look amazing. well done.
have you tried using a terminators arms to see what they look like?

Are you going to modify the legs to make them less idetifiable as standard plastic mk6's?
If you've got the funds you could buy some FW mk6s, they are less messy and you could add the cable down the out side.

but yup yup they look great!
FYI if you type 'mk1 terminator' into google images your terminator is top of the heap.

Panic...

Fantastic!

This thread, if nothing else, proves to me how affordable and accessible building your own custom miniatures would be with some CAD skills and some casting skills.
May have to finally buckle down and start learning CAD.
I already know how to cast.

Let me just point out that 3D printing the torso was about the price of a box of Terminators and then another $50 or so in materials to cast about 25 torsos. I have to keep justifying it to myself so now I have 3 5-man loyalist squads and a couple squads of Chaos terminators. Unless you want clones you have to also be willing to put in the leg work to convert them.

Like the ones Im working on now:

They look mint,lets see em painted up.

 aka_mythos wrote:
Let me just point out that 3D printing the torso was about the price of a box of Terminators and then another $50 or so in materials to cast about 25 torsos. I have to keep justifying it to myself so now I have 3 5-man loyalist squads and a couple squads of Chaos terminators. Unless you want clones you have to also be willing to put in the leg work to convert them.

I'm not saying it's not pricy at all. I'm saying that a person could CAD a miniature that they can't get from anywhere else and end up with minis, while a little more expensive than one could usually get, are completely unique and really impressive because of that.

Also, I might make an argument for Kustom Ork MegaNobz being cheaper if you planned on running a bunch.

Let's say I wanted 20 MegaNobz. $22.25 each! I bet you could break even on something like that.

Probably so... I was just trying to emphasize its not a cake walk, takes effort and the economics are such that it takes a certain volume to justify it. I know you grasp that fact, but I thought I'd qualify your statement for anyone who isn't necessarily familiar.

True. And this is not to mention the man hours involved.
Pay yourself minimum wage on top of it all and it really starts to get crazy.
But this is our hobby right?
All this stuff aside, your models are inspired, and I respect the amount of time, effort, and love you are obviously putting in to them. All in the name of awesome fluff!

Kudos!

Nice!