Kitbashing Old Printer Cartridges

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

I actually made an attempt at kitbashing back in the 80's when I was just a kid.  I owned a dot matrix printer that used ribbon cartridges.  Apparently, I got the bright idea to make starships out of a pair of them.

The end result was two interesting designs that had a tiny bit of Millennium Falcon feel to them with thier rotating radar dishes.  The white model was built for my Space Battleship Yamato collection, while the grey model had been built for my Star Trek universe.  The initial models were never painted and in some cases, they received some major overhauls in the last 4 years.


Chances are, if you love older space based sci-fi, you have probably seen some sort of kitbashed starship.  Kitbashing has been around for a long time and provides model builders a way to heavily modify a ship to fulfill thier needs.  In some cases, the model builder will even use normal household items.  These next two ships are just such a build where I used old spent dot matrix ribbon cartridges to create a new style of starship.

Viper I
Space Battleship Yamato Universe

Gamilas - SMITE Ship

Unknown Scale Kitbash

 

 

 

 

In-Universe Notes:

After the war of 2199, Gamilas and Terra entered into a cooperative state where technologies on both sides were shared and advanced.  Viper I was the result of a combined technology venture where an Earth ship was built with the S.M.I.T.E. technology.

S.M.I.T.E. is an acronym, which, in Terran, stands for Space Matter Instantaneous Transportation Equipment. The first official documented use of S.M.I.T.E 's was during the campaign against the Terran ship Yamato, and was used to create a warp field which could instantaneously warp attack planes and bombers from the vicinity of the host carriers into an active battle zone, This resulted in the complete surprise of the enemy.  This tactic worked rather well until the prototype was destroyed in battle.

This equipment continued to be used in military applications for the next several years.  Eventually though, as trade routes began to open up for Gamilas, another use was found, and that was in the speedy transport of cargo down to planet surfaces.

Viper I is a heavily armed cargo transport ship in the service of the E.D.F/Gamilas joint task forces.  She is used to quickly transport cargo into a combat zone, unload her cargo into space and then use S.M.I.T.E. to teleport the cargo to its final destination.

Real World Notes:

I built this ship back in the 1980's, when it became clear that there was no small scale model of Drommel's little white S.M.I.T.E. ship.

It was than that I decided to make my own using an old dot matrix printer ribbon cartridge, a Bic pen cap and some aircraft parts. The radar dish and the underbelly gun used to rotate but after years of neglect, I needed to glue them down permanently. For years, this model was the stock black color of the cartridge and it wasn't until around 2014 that I finally gave her a much deserved coat of paint and detailing.

For the second ship I built, we will need to change universes...

Photo Credit: NASA

Salvage One

Star Trek Universe

Junker Class (Freighter)

Unknown Scale Scratchbuild

 

 

 

 

In-Universe Notes:

Salvage One is a privately owned and operated freighter that tends to operate in Federation space.
She was cobbled together from spare parts found at a private boneyard and was paid for out of a favor that was owed to her current owner and captain, Edward Mitchel III.

She is not super-fast, capable of cruising at warp 5 but is capable of warp 6.5 for a short time in a pinch. She is capable of interplanetary landings though, and her dual cargo doors on the front allow her to take on all sorts of cargo. Later in her life, Captain Mitchel had tanks added on to the sides of Salvage One to allow him to carry other types of cargo. Would be pirates are caught off guard by her two forward facing phaser emitters and a forward and rear facing torpedo bank.

The ship is well maintained, however, has not been upgraded for a very long time, because her owner likes to spend most of his hard earned credits on gambling.

Real World Notes:

I dug this out of my scrap pile and realized that I had found another model from the 1980's that was thrown together and never painted.

Once again, I had utilized an old DOT Matrix Printer ribbon cartridge and it appears that I was going for a Star Trek look with that warp nacelle on top. She sort of reminds me of the Ginny's Delight ship from an old Dragon Magazine.

Since I had much better parts these days, I ripped off the nacelle, and replaced the aging Elmer's Glue on the other parts of the ship with super glue. At this point, I was opting to not install a new radar dish as the original was broken from it's years of storage.  I didn't like the large gap that was between the front prongs of the ship and fabricated a cargo area from sheet styrene.  I even dug up a TOS era deflector dish assembly and tacked that to the front of the ship.

I then proceeded to replace the nacelle with a legitimate nacelle and supports as well as filled in a couple blank spots to serve as a hidden bridge.

I glued together some super glue caps and made some make-shift side tanks as the sides of the ship seemed too plain.

Finally, I cracked open the model putty and filled in a bunch of gaps. At that point, I started trying to come up with a name for her.  Several people at the Star Trek Modeler's Group page and Kitbasher's Corner Group page gave me a bunch of suggestions.

Nathan Kaiser - SS Shiitake-Maru NFT-1999
Winston Marsh - Salvage 1 (or Salvage One)
Dane Alley - The Scavenger
Scott Trusty - The USS Reclamation
Jeff Blaauboer - WASTE MANAGEMENT 1 - JUNKER(airplane from earths past) - PICKEMUP - HAULER

After 24 hours of letting the putty and cement set, I had gotten a few name suggestions for the ship. The name of "Salvage One" as suggested by Winston Marsh kept drawing me back to it, so I decided to roll with it.  I still felt the model was missing something, so after digging through my greeble box and applying a few extra tidbits, I started painting the beast.  As I progressed with the painting, I decided to add back on the radar dishes.

Those things do actually rotate. My painting style consists of roughly painting in finer details and then going back over again to touch things up.

I took a day off to let the primary hull paint work dry and then I continued detail painting and painting the rest of the hull. While doing this, I discovered some major holes in the bottom of the ship that required some special cut pieces of styrene to cover them up. After that, I basically finished painting the model.

Photo Credit: NASA

And back to our universe.  As you can see, ordinary items can be used to create unique looking models.  I hope I just inspired you to try this cool form of model building on your own.

As always, I hope you found this article useful and informative.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment below.

So for now, "Live long and prosper!!!"



Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:
SMITE Ship (Viper I)
Junker Class (Freighter) (Model     Work In Progress)