Mazda 1500 (Luce)

I'm doing a model of each car i've ever owned. There are a few cars that are simply not available in model form. One of those was my first car, a 1969 Mazda 1500 SS, which i owned in 1988. It was a beater that my father bought for me for $400 and i drove it for a few years before crashing into a tree and writing it off. ah the memories.

Normally when i can't get a particular model, i'll modify an existing styrene kit with body filler, like i did for my Mazda 1200 Wagon.
Now that i have a 3D printer, i can print anything i want...

except that i needed a 3D mesh of that to be able to print.

So while i've dabbled a bit in 3D Studio Max, i'm not great with it. Fortunately Autodesk have made it available for students.
I've been working on this mesh for quite some time. i meshed it over photos of the car that i found online. I did a few parts separate to make printing and building easier.

with that at a barely usable quality, i did a test print and made some adjustments to the tolerances and fix errors. I printed the body in two parts and the roof separate, along with the headlights and grille, some basic suspension and some wheels (which i split into tire and rim).

DSCF8377 by aus_mus, on Flickr


Temporarily tacked things together to get a better idea of how they look

DSCF8379 by aus_mus, on Flickr


DSCF8381 by aus_mus, on Flickr

Wow !!

WOW indeed!! This is really cool. Keen to see this progress.