papercraft LEGO set 6592 Weekend Cottage WIP; the problem(s) with parts from plastic transparancies

Although it's called 'papercraft', I've used different materials before, like 'metallic' / 'mirror' sheets, even some glow-in-the-dark sheets (it turned out to sticker sheets when I received them after ordering them 😝 but it still worked) and of course plastic transparancies. 😊

I've had a little more time this week to work on making the instructions and figuring out a nice way to organize the templates and everything for the release of my papercraft LEGO set 6592 Weekend Cottage!

Most papercraft LEGO Bricks aren't too difficult to assemble really, since they're basically just a bunch of rectangles and cylinders of course, and paper is really easy to work with, folding and gluing it together.

The transparant parts however can be a bit tricky. Before, I used printable transparancies, so I could print color onto the sheet just like a 'normal' papercraft part. And since I did the cutting by hand, I could VERY gently score the fold lines with as little pressure as I liked.

This time though, I was able to find some colored transparancies in the color(s) I wanted, so I didn't have to print the Transparant Yellow pieces that you need to make the lights of the Cottage! 💡😀

When using a cutting machine like the Silhouette Cameo 4 though, you REALLY have to be careful scoring the parts and then folding them along the scored lines... I used the lowest settings (cut depth 1 and pressure 1) and still sometimes it went too deep and then when I tried to fold the parts the plastic sheet would snap along the 'scored' fold line...

There's not much to do about that, since plastic isn't really suited to be scored like paper is... But an alternative would be to change to solid / continuous lines to dashed lines; that way there will always be some parts of the lines that won't get cut / snapped, while the (partially) 'scored' line will guide you folding it in the right place and in a straight line! 🙂

The next problem of using transparant, plastic sheets to make papercraft parts is gluing them together; gluing together paper is easy and it's easy to find glue that can glue paper, but for gluing plastic sheets, you would really need some special glue, and usually those kinds of glue either:

• Just won't work very well if the part is under tension (like gluing cones or cylinders, that naturally want to pull apart);
• Or it will work SO well, that you don't have time to move around the pieces anymore to fix a small misalignment for example if you didn't align them perfectly as soon as you put them together...

So good glues for plastic sheets like that are difficult to find, and/or pretty expensive...

So in the past, I used doublesided tape for putting transparant, plastic parts together. It takes some extra time and effort, because basically you have to apply the doublesided tape to the gluing tabs, then usually cut it to match the gluing tabs (which takes extra work if there all a lot of small tabs like on cylinders...), then remove the backing and then carefully align the part to 'glue' to be attached to the gluing tabs.

With the tape I've been using so far though, especially when there really was a lot of tension in the parts, the parts would still come apart a bit too easily... 😐

But for this project, I tried a different kind of doublesided tape: Crafter's Companion Red Liner Tape! 😀

It's really a lot stronger than the tape I used before, and despite it looking red, that's just the backing of the tape that you peel off. The tape itself is actual crystal clear so you hardly see it when the part is assembled! It works really well, and if you're able to get it, I really recommend it for this kind of thing! 😊

And now, back to finishing the templates and instructions for the release of the papercraft LEGO Weekend Cottage. 😉

Stay tuned!

Game Boy Advance IPS LCD, rechargeable battery pack mod and EZ-Flash Omega cartridge

And now, for something completely different! 😊

I didn't make a whole lot of progress on finishing up the release for my papercraft LEGO set 6592 Weekend Cottage, because 1) it's been a *very* busy week (as usual lately...) and 2) I spent yesterday building the Game Boy Advance I always wanted! :)

Now let's get one thing straight: I absolutely  LOVE 💝 my original GBA Glacier! And it has tons of awesome games! But man, that screen... (and man, that battery life... 🔋🔋)

I knew from the internet that people had been modding their GBAs with backlit LCD screens, new shells and rechargeable battery packs for exactly these reasons!

Now I didn't want to harm my original GBA Glacier, so I bought a different, second-hand GBA to serve as a donor for the motherboard that you need.

And being from the Netherlands, I was happy to finally find an EU store that had all the parts that I would in stock need (RetroReiZ in Germany, which started carrying all the products from RetroSix just in 2021! 😀)

• Backlit IPS LCD screen (FunnyPlaying V2 version)
• A new shell and buttons (a clear, pre-trimmed shell (if you use an original shell, you have to trim the inside a bit yourself to fit the new screen) with transparant black buttons and black rubber pads)
• A glass protective lens (instead of the original plastic one)
• A rechargeable battery pack (CleanJuice version, with a USB-C connection
• A replacement battery cover with pre-cut slot for the USB-C charging connection (clear to match the rest of the shell)

So yeah; this is not really an inexpensive mod to do... 💰 😅

But installation went alright I guess; soldering the three wires (to be able to adjust the brightness of the new LCD screen) was the trickiest part (well I don't have the best soldering iron to be honest... 😊).

With the special made, pre-trimmed shells, apparantly you don't need the plastic brackets you normally need to center the LCD screen anymore?

So I was expecting everything to fit perfectly, but for some reason I had to trim quite some of the doublesided tape that holds the screen in place...? It turned out fine with the screen perfectly centered though.

A tip too: the new small screws that are included seem easily stripped, but an easy way to prevent that is to use the CORRECT size screwdriver; I actually bought a new set that said specifically they were for Nintendo and / or GBA screws but they really seemed at least a size too small...?

It took longer than I anticipated (mainly because of the soldering) but I am very happy with it! And with the clear shell and transparant black buttons, I think my new GBA it looks pretty cool! 🎮😎

And man, that screen compared to the original one makes it really worth it! 😃

As an extra bonus for myself, I also decided to get an EZ-Flash Omega cartridge from the Dutch shop Rinku Retro. 🙂

This allows you to load all your Game Boy, Game Boy Color and Game Boy Advance (and even NES!) games onto a micro SD card (get a fast one though!) which you can then place into the EZ Flash Omega to use in your real Game Boy Advance.

In fact, apparantly you can literally fit every GB, GBC, GBA and NES game ever made onto one 16 GB SD card for use with the EZ-Flash Omega! 😃

Then on startup, you can just select which of your games you want to play and you don't have to swap cartridges every time you want to play a different game! 🙂

Unfortunately, your computer probably doesn't have a GBA cartridge slot to transfer the games from the Game Boy cartridges to the micro SD card... But with the Retrode 2 cartridge dumper and its GBx plugin from the German online store DragonBox, you can do just that! (unfortunately, DragonBox undrstandably usually doesn't have a large stock of this specialized device and the Retrode 2 is often sold out, but every now and then they'll have a new batch made) 😊

At one point I was fortunate enough to snatch one of the Retrode 2 so I could dump my own ROMs, which I actually often played through an emulator instead of my GBA...

But now I can play them on my actual 'ultimate' Game Boy Advance without any hassle! 😊

Next week: papercraft again! 😁

free papercraft Takizawa City buildings

If you liked Brother's NEXCO highway or railway papercrafts, or the cute papercraft marina harbor town kit with generic buildings, you'll love this papercraft town kit with real buildings from Tazikawa City in the same style!

There are schools, shops, train stations and of course the City Hall and community complex, but also a garbage disposal center and water prufication plant! (I especially like the gas tank shaped like a watermelon 🍉😊)

The paper buildings are based on real structures! 😀 The watermelon is a gas storage tank for the Sawamurakaju Orchards made to look a little nicer in the surroundings. 😉

Download + build your own free papercraft Takizawa City buildings (by Takizawa City Hall Planning and General Affairs Department Planning Policy Division):

https://www.city.takizawa.iwate.jp/admin/keiei/townkit.html

 

free papercraft Airbus helicopters

June 9th is the 160th day of a regular year, and Airbus decided to declare it #H160day after the H160 helicopter the make! 🚁

...but of course, every day is Build Your Own Free Papercraft Airbus Helicopter Day, and there are a lot more than just the H160! 😀

Download + build your own free papercraft Airbus helicopters (by Airbus): https://www.airbus.com/helicopters/activities-at-home.html

free papercraft Disney California Adventure Park Avengers Campus

It's still a bit strange to see comic superheroes like Iron Man, Thor, Captain America and so on next to Disney Princess like Snow White, Belle... 😊

Download + build your own free papercraft Disney California Adventure Park Avengers Campus (by Disney Parks Blog):

https://disneyparks.disney.go.com/blog/2021/06/assemble-your-paper-disney-paper-parks-celebrates-the-grand-opening-of-avengers-campus-at-disney-california-adventure-park/

papercraft LEGO set 6592 Weekend Cottage WIP

It took about half an hour before somebody guessed that what was in the box? were 256 studs that are part of a new LEGO papercraft that I'm working on.

Well, new... I've actually been working on this project for quite a while now; but especially with big projects like this, I like to do smaller ones on the side so I have something to finish while I am still doing the tedious work on the big project. 😊

And boy, is this a big project...

It's such a *big* project actually, that I'm only making half of it now (the house part) and I'm saving the little garden with the barbecue for a later time.

And even then, it's such a BIG project, that I actually decided to get myself a Silhouette Cameo cutting machine to do the cutting! 😀

There are just so many repetitive cuts (just think of the 256 identical papercraft studs in the box alone...!) that it was really worth it. It also made it really easy to just make 'blank' bricks and cut them out of different colored paper.

I actually used 160 gsm paper instead of 200 gsm this time, because I could get it in a variety of colors that I needed, and I even found some good colored transparancies and I even used some sticker paper for the cute little sticker on the roof window! 😊

As you can see I already finished all the bricks and complete the Weekend Cottage, but I want to organize everything properly before I release it.

After modelling the bricks in SketchUp, tidying them up in Metasequoia and unfolding them in Pepakura Designer like I always do for my papercraft LEGO minifigs as well, this time I exported the templates as *.dxf files so I could organize the sheets in AutoCAD LT.

So far, that's what I did once before for my Royal Netherlands Navy Walruss-class submarine, that I also printed/cut from colored (black) paper. The difference is that this time, I organized all the fold and cut lines (and explanatory text that you won't actually have to cut) in separate layers and colors so I could easily assign the appropriate cutting actions to them in the Silhouette Studio.

(I upgraded to the pretty expensive Silhouette Studio Designer Edition, because if I imported a *.dxf or *.pdf file in the Standard Edition, it would loose the layer information that I worked so hard on... 😆)

• THE LAYERS AND THEIR CUTTING ORDER:
• 01_MountainFold -  blue  lines; I gave the mountain folds and valley folds different colors so that if you can check with the PDF file which way you should fold the pieces. These lines should be scored, NOT cut all the way through the paper!
• 02_Valleyfold -  magenta  lines; You can switch these with the mountain fold lines, because the scoring order doesn't really matter (but again, change the settings on your cutting machine so it does NOT cut all the way through the paper!)
• 03_CutFirst -  red  lines; There are a lot of slits and holes that need to be cut from the papercraft bricks. Even though you should have a sticky cutting mat, I like to do this before cutting the parts loose from the paper to avoid them shifting on me.
• 04_CutSecond -  Black  lines; Once you've cut all the slits and holes, you can have the cutting machine cut the parts loose from the paper.
• 05_DontCutDontFold -  green  lines; these are just explanatory notes, and you can turn off this layer in Silhouette Studio so they don't get cut.
  

I managed to keep most of the parts on A4 sheets (except the 2 x 8 Sloped Bricks and the 16 x 16 Baseplate) while keeping the same scale as my papercraft minifigs.

(I won't redo my papercraft minifigs as vector or cut files though, because at this point it's just much easier and faster for my workflow on those to just work with the files I already have of them...!)

Now I stall want to organize everything nicely, and then I'll put the bricks on my papercraft webpage with all my other free papercrafts as usual. 😉

Stay tuned!

(small print): I found that especially the 1 x 6 papercraft LEGO Bricks are quite tricky to 'build' with. On the underside of LEGO bricks are tubes/pins that align the brick with the studs on top of other bricks. On the paper version though, those tubes/pin are flexible, and they move around a bit, making it difficult to align all five tubes/pins on the underside of the 1 x 6 bricks with the studs of another brick at the same time... It *is* possible if you're patient and don't loose your temper, but alternatively you can choose to leave them out from the start. The 1 x 2 and 1 x 3 Bricks and the plates worked fine for me, but don't forget that it's all just flexible paper in the end and the paper Bricks won't go together as easily as real ones! 😉

"What's in the box??" A papercraft teaser.

So after 26 years, we finally get to see "what's in the box??" 📦

But it will be a little longer to find out what this papercraft teaser is about exactly...

Stay tuned!

cute free papercraft Jugendrotkreuz ambulance

I always joke about how many papercraft fire trucks and ambulances you can download for free from Japanese websites, but there may be just as many on German sites! 🚑

- and this Red Cross ambulance is at least as cute as many Japanese ones. 😊

Download + build your own cute free papercraft ambulance (by Jugendrotkreuz Kreisverband Mannheim):

https://www.drk-mannheim.de/angebote/kinder-jugend-und-familie/jugendrotkreuz/kreatives.html

(note: click the "Bastelbogen-DRK-RTW.pdf 4 MB" link just below the papercraft picture on the Jugendrotkreuz Kreisverband Mannheim website) 

free papercraft HENSEL Fahrzeugbau fire trucks

Fire trucks are usually not specially designed from scratch, but built by truck builders based on existing undercarriages; and always of those for heavy-duty vehicles like Iveco, Mercedes-Benz and Scania trucks of course! 🚚🚒😀

Download + build your own free papercraft fire trucks (by HENSEL Fahrzeugbau):

https://www.hensel-fahrzeugbau.de/aktuelles/spielsachen/

free papercraft BerlinBioCube

Once it will be completed in 2023, the BerlinBioCube will provide 8,000 square meters of modern office and laboratory space to startup companies in the bio- and medical technology field! 🏢💉

Download + build your own free papercraft BerlinBioCube (by Campus Berlin-Buch):

https://www.campusberlinbuch.de/de/downloads

(note: click the "Download PDF" link under "Bastelbogen BerlinBioCube" next to the "Berlin-Buch" brochure at the bottom of the "Campus Berlin-Buch" download pages)