Ender's Crafts: Fixing up, magnetizing and painting 3d printed Hippogriff and Centaur proxies

Thursday, November 5, 2026

Fixing up, magnetizing and painting 3d printed Hippogriff and Centaur proxies

I bought one set of the vehicles... the rest can be 3d printed.

Centaur proxy

I found a reasonably good halftrack model to be used as a Centaur. It needed some funky resizing on its different bits, but the end result is pretty OK.

I drilled into the tracks to insert some magnets, but they proved to be too thin and brittle.

I reinforced the are with green stuff, and I'll just cover everything up with mud.

No stupid suspension to take care of. Glue on everything, reinforce with Vallejo Heavy Gel.

Assembled and turret closed off for the nun gunner.

Unfortunately, the cabin blew up after priming and being left in a sun lit area.

I cleared out the area, glued on some plasticard, then glued on a Sentinel bit to cover up the flatness.

Hippogriff proxy

Again a pretty good model, but resizing was needed. This is it assembled and the turret closed off for the nun commander.

No separate suspension to assemble, everything was baked into the undercarriage. I just had to glue on the wheels. I was a bit worried that they won't hold up to the drilling for magnets, but steady fingers solve everything. Next time I'll drill out the wheels before gluing them on.

The full range of guns was provided, and they even had space for magnets. Obviously not a perfect fit. So I superglued in the magnets, then dripped in UV resin to fill out the space.

Ruined truck

This regular 6 wheeler truck was my original Centaur proxy idea, but the model turned out to be a disaster during printing. The front axles and wheels are just ruins, the cabin is almost entirely missing, and most other surfaces are warped. This is how it looks after I removed all the supports and cleaned off any excess nubs, plus glued the warped pieces and drilled the back wheels for magnets.

Why though? Because I'll put on my big boy pants and make something useful out of this disaster.

Chop off some of the front axle remains until the spot if fairly plane, and instead take a leftover axle from the halftrack and two extra wheels from the IFV. Magnetize the wheels prior to assembly. Apply a generous amount of Vallejo Heavy Gel to the join spot, put in the axle; apply a generous amount of gel to the inside of the wheels and place them on the axle. Put all of this on a magnetic sheet so the magnetized wheel aligns properly. Align everything so the wheels don't look wobbly. Leave overnight to cure.

Next is a multi part plan. Use UV resin for maximum bondage and quick curing. Create cabin walls using plasticard.

Closing off the cabin means you can't use UV resin as the light will not reach the interior. Use Heavy Gel and leave to cure overnight when inserting the turret.