Month: July 2025

Kormoran, German WW2 Auxiliary Cruiser, Recognition Style Model 3D printed in 1/500 Scale – Completed

July 30, 2025

OK, “Completed” may not be the right word, this model is definitely completed but while building it, I discovered my Kormoran design and any future assemblies of it, will benefit greatly from a few changes, more on that in just a bit. Here’s a Wikipedia link: German Auxiliary Cruiser Kormoran, if you’re not familiar with her impressive history it’s definitely worth a read.

The images above are basically of a beta build. The top 6 are of the completed model, the lower three are of the assembled, unpainted ship and two shots of the Ender 3 Pro FDM hull parts. There are no decent pictures of the resin print outs. If you’ve read my Nuremburg post, you may recall I’d discovered what seemed to be a dead spot on my Elegoo Saturn. I needed to rearrange, re-support and re-slice, Nuremburg’s parts in ChituBox to avoid it, in order to get perfect prints. Well… I’d already had Kormoran’s resin parts arranged, supported, sliced and ready to go… So I rolled the dice… and lost, a couple times. Of course it was the superstructure that was over the dead spot and it failed. I ended up just printing two superstructure only parts on either side of the build plate, avoiding the Saturn’s now confirmed center dead spot, both printed perfectly.

Between failed prints and the final superstructure print, I had all the parts needed (and then some) to complete this model.

But as mention above change is need, The torpedo bays in the FDM parts were a bear to get the supports out of, I ended up considerably damaging the hull around the openings doing so – that’s changed to now have separate roof pieces. The amidship gun covers needed reworking as did the bow deck cover over the forward guns. The mast and wench parts were a bear to assemble, they’ve been changed to what I hope is an easier to work with design, and many, many, other small tweaks.

All that said and flaws aside, I do like the looks of her and think this beta build shows potential.

Nuremberg, German WW2 Light Cruiser, Recognition Style Model 3D printed in 1/500 Scale – Completed

July 28, 2025

Almost everything about my Nuremberg (Nürnberg) model was easy and fast, which was extremely fortunate as it was the first model I’d printed all summer! Hard to believe the last project I’d finished was the Arizona 1917 conversion just over a year ago… time flies. Nuremberg fits into my growing collection of German WW2 recognition style ships perfectly. I’ve quite the grouping now and am having fun kicking around ideas for a display box. No doubt I’ll end up going with the standard grey exterior, light blue interior, wooden box with removable shelves to mimic the original recognition sets but it’s fun to dream.

Below are pictures of the printed parts and the initial assembly.

You may notice 3 float planes were printed. This was due to the extremely fine/weak struts that attach the pontoons to the plane’s fuselage. I figured I might need more than one chance at removing the plane from its supports in one piece. The Ender 3 Pro banged out the FDM hull parts perfectly in one go. The Elegoo Saturn however had an odd print failure on the large superstructure piece. The failure happened in a similar way to the many fails I’d had with the replacement deck part for the Revell Arizona 1917 conversion project. Even more incriminating, Nuremberg’s superstructure piece was sitting at the same spot on the build plate where the Arizona’s failures happened. As nothing appeared to be stuck to the vat film, on a hunch, I just shuffled the parts around in Chitubox, avoiding about a 1″x1″ area in the middle of the plate, re-sliced and reprinted, Success! Next time I drain the vat I’ll check the LCD screen and vat film for issues but after not using my printers for over a year I feel I got off easy. I didn’t even need to re-level anything!