Babylon 5 Station 3D printed with Ender Neo 3

Welcome to the printing and painting of Babylon 5 Space Station. This is one of the most important sci-fi series of the century, ideated by J. M. Straczynski. The model is no longer available on the european market, so I decided to print it.

I found the SLT long time ago on www.thingiverse.com but the original file that I downloaded (the one separate in parts is no longer available. Now there is only the complete build. Here is the link: https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4379259. Then I found the stand too https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:5192076 that I used just extending a little the base.

I left the scale unchanged because it was already sufficiently big for my needs. In the end the complete model was long around 40 cm. I printed with ABS. I already explained why I use ABS for models.

I Always consider that for 3D printed models you have a long work of refining the print with filers and various sanding with different grits. The model will never come out perfect (unless you have a super expensive professional printer or you use resin printers) but this is what my Creality Ender Neo 3 can do and it’s enough for me.

After the print and the adjustments I proceeded with an acetone bath for all the parts. I explained the procedure in other 3D prints description, but basically it’s done to create stronger bonds between the layers and to smooth the surface.

I added some additional parts because I realized that we had some flaps to be added to the main section (front) but they were not present in the SLTs available, so I decided to do them with Blender and print them. I added steel pins to be able to attach them and for increased stability. I did the same for the Solar Sections (explained below).

This is the final result before any coat.

Then I proceeded with a general light grey coat as primer and then a slightly more dark grey. For the tail I used a light sand brown. I painted black the recessed parts of the upper section and then I proceeded to paint some of the connection parts in sand brown (and then updated to metallic brass. You can see the Solar panel sections assembled and glued together. I had to make drills and connect them with steel pins in order to have more strength. I added some additional U-shaped sections to have the necessary width.

I proceeded with painting the relevant blue sections of the Station with a light shade of blue and a lot of masking, before starting to work on the decals..

About the decals this is very important. It’s basically impossible to paint all the details in a so big station at this scale. The original model had some decals for it, plus I found additional decals for the sections that were not covered by the original decals. I downloaded pictures of the decals available and I worked on them with Coreldraw in order to be able to print them on decal sheets. The painful part was to take all the measurements and to adapt them to my model, so a lot of caliper measurements, printing, cutting, verification of what done and adjustments. In the end I created these 2 pages but I still had to cut something down when applying the decals to the model, mostly for the curved parts, however I have to say that the result was satisfying.

Before starting to apply the decals I added the reservoir fuels that did not came out from the print (they were very tiny) so I did them myself with Blender and attached to the upper section following screenshots of the station from the TV series. After that I proceeded slowly applying the decals and fixing them with Decal Fix from AMMO to be sure to not do disasters while playing with the model. You can se some of the steps here.

Then I painted the base and I added a longer base under to give more stability. A new coat of gloss transparent paint and I proceeded with some washing using oil paints and mineral oil. I used some blue for the rear parts and the flaps and the standard black for all the rest.

And finally the model is finished. Here are a few view. The solar sections are not glued (for transportation issues) but are in place fixed with stainless steel pins. By the way I added not only the main but also another one in the middle of the first 2 solar panels that is connected directly on the main hull to give more stability and to avoid that the sections would tilt on the outside.