Eagle Project Pt 1

"The Eagles. Everybody likes the Eagles."

Eagle Transporter Development Team Patch

In 1975, a great, and yet awful, sci-fi series started showing on British television. Space 1999 (wiki). The stories made little to no sense and physics was magic; a nuclear explosion blasts the Moon out of orbit sending the Moon and the inhabitants of Moon base Alpha on an alien planet-of-the-week discovery tour of the universe. Yes, physics.

The star of the show was the 2001 influenced model work (very much like the Moonbus). And the hero ships in the form of the multi-purpose Eagle Transporters.

For reference: a built MPC Round 2 Kit (22" half studio scale)

There were many kit versions around 1975 onwards, made by MPC who had the license, they were not detailed but inexpensive and I built all of them. And rebuilt a few times. The Eagle is in my top 5 vehicle designs and building a large scale one has always been on my bucket list. I want to build a full 44" studio scale but before I do that it's time to practice with something half that scale.

Thanks to the magic of 3D printing we can. 3D printing with FDM style printers leave layering artefacts which spoil the finish. But with enough graft, sanding, filing and painting, you can get amazing results as per the Liberator model.

I had a model to print in mind from Thingiverse but it would need a lot of re-working to get a print good enough to work with. I didn't even know if it could print the cockpit to any decent degree. So I decided to try a test print of the cockpit. If it didn't work out, I wasn't going to try. As it turned out, the cockpit was the easiest part to print.

Source Material

I have a great book about the restoration of an original Eagle hero ship from the TV show. It's called "Modelling the Eagle" by Mike Reccia (ISBN-13: 978-0993032059). It also covers work done on bringing the MPC Round 2 kit into production. This was a great personal reference. 

This book became my "oracle" on how the TV show Eagles were put together, and how I might best remix the model I had to work with.

Thingiverse Model

https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:2289627

I have no idea how he printed this as good as the above looked. The model files are full of gaps and floating parts due to thin or no supports as I discovered.


The model files still contained all the sub-objects which meant it was possible to split off parts using Autodesk Meshmixer (a free and very handy tool for 3D printing).

For example, lets look at this main body section housing some superstructure, an interior corridor, airlock doors and external greebles. Pictured below.

Items like the door panel features, the com-lock panel and other parts are not needed. We did some clean-up (hence the "After" frame) but still more work was needed, removing the door frame and even (if you can spot it) an interior door that "slides" to one side.

Now, in the show, all the doors slide to the side, it's the future. This model shows how it's impossible as the door would have to slide through the side of the ship. And we even have an interior door model that would print if we didn't remove it.

This made it obvious that the province of this model was more for CGI work that printing.

And there was no support for the landing gear pods to attach to the sides. This model wouldn't go together very well. And the Thingiverse model doesn't show it assembled. No has anyone shown a completed one.

But I stuck with it as it happens to be the best most accurate Eagle on Thingiverse in terms of dimensions. Seriously, most of the other suck in terms of accuracy.

The Cockpit Test Print

The Eagle cockpit was make or break. It had a lot of curves and raised sections. It would need to be printed 'nose up'.

Using very fine layer details, I printed this at 20% infill but 0.05mm layer height (ultra-detail for a Prusa i3 Mk2).

In retrospect, I should have sliced this part horizontally near the back wall of the cockpit. I want to come back to this later and hollow out the cockpit to take lights. But this will be a good test piece even if it won't be on the final model.

The Spine

The spine was the longest part which I was troubled about due to bridging. The STL supplied it in two parts, due to wobble (the printer managed to spit out a plastic 'bogie' which caught the nozzle causing it to move every pass) it failed several hours in. Results below.

I ended up splitting it into four pieces and printed one at a time. Note where it's been sliced at the bottom. 

I use superglue, cyanoacetate (cyao), to bond everything, sometimes Gorilla glue. But superglue works best for me unless I need a longer work time in which case Gorilla glue. It all works well with PLA and ABS. The spine hasn't come apart yet and it's taking a lot of weight.

The Cages

These would be printed separately from the internal greebles and interior compartment, the model has everything mashed together. There were may problems with these parts; the greebles were not accurate (I wonder if this was on purpose to make it legally distinct?) and there was no support for the landing pods where the legs attach. How the legs attach will have to be remodelled and the greebles removed.

Another session in Autodesk Meshmixer finally pulled everything apart.

The cages could now be sliced for printing. Different versions and orientations were tried.

45 Degree Rule

FDM printers work by layering a round cross-section on-top of the previous, the maximum offset you can efficiently use is 45 degrees. After that you're relying on hand crafted settings, luck, printer calibration, cooling...ugh. But the general rule of thumb is try not to print sections that overhang by more than a 45 degree angle. So the part I sliced and printed below....

Looked terrible. It was gloopy and bridging randomly worked. It was so bad it went right into the waste pile.

This orientation was better.

This created stringing and more work, so not used.

And this was an attempt at the centre cage section using custom supports generated by Meshmixer.

I don't recommend this. While it work and looked like a hairy mess after printing (nearly half of the supports failed). It did produce a good piece after some cleaning up.


The best orientation was the one in the next screenshot, in terms of clean-up and assembly. All of the modified files will be made available at the end of the project.

The interior compartment is just a box, I added sections to take connectors from the leg pods.

The leg pod files had this protrusion built into the model, this would make it had to sand and finish, so this was modified it to have the connector as a separate piece.

With these parts, the front end of the Eagle started to take shape.

The spine fully glued, and all 4 leg pods printed.

Tanks printed with the frame section down but with support material added.

Lets assembled and painting started.

The passenger pod need a lot of clean-up to remove surface details and door sections that appeared to float over voids that wouldn't print well. Again, Meshmixer with it's Analysis mode was used.

Printed in three sections, left, right and middle, to glue together. If I revisit this, I'll create a hollow pod with an interior.

I'm at the point where I've printed the cages, spine, cockpit, engine bells, leg pods and the passenger module. Most of the major parts. Allowing a test fit held together using cable ties.

Lot of sanding to do on the engine tanks and forward cage, the cockpit too. But I might reprint this after modification.

I want to talk about the sanding, priming and paint in the next post. This covers about a month of work. I actually miss sanding the little pods. Next time no surface decals, and just cut features from sheets of styrene.

Until then...


I started this blog with a quote, which comes from the Comic Strip Presents episode - A Fistful of Travellers Cheques.

Everybody likes the Eagles