SpaceHulk.BeckerF.com is the home to an awesome 3D Space Hulk set up. He also includes a lot of info about how he made the terrain. And he's from Stuttgart, my wife's home town!

DEI GRECI has some pictures of his awesome scratch building of a super heavy 40k tank, along with an example of his resin casting technique.

I've been working on a vibrating table for the last couple of weeks (around holidays, family and campaign terrain), based on Ultrawerke's. I've wanted to do something like this for a while, and after seeing his, I realized I had pretty much all the parts he used. The only things I actually had to buy was the "shadowbox" frame I got on sale for $10 and a couple bucks worth of springs.

I grabbed a couple of old fan trays from work that were getting thrown out a while back. They came out of some pretty high end computer switches and were large (120 cm, I'm sure). I always thought I'd use them either for industrial terrain or to power a hover craft. ;-) Anyway, they're 12 volt, and I had a 12 volt wall wart laying around, so after grabbing a couple of bucks worth of loose dc power adapters from Radio Shack, I went to town.

The only thing is, Ultrawerke's computer fan is more manageable, because this fan spins like CRAAAAAZY. You'll notice that where he has a long bolt with a nut on it...I have a tiny washer. That's because when I glued a bolt to mine, it about vibrated apart throwing itself off the table. Even with just the washer, it still goes nuts and my molds slide everywhere-- hence the guard rails along the sides and the grip tape. I tried throwing a potentiometer in there to lower the voltage, but it seemed like it would only spin up at when the pot was turned to 0. I'm an electro-n3wb, so I'm not sure if I can lower the rpms. I guess I need to read up here and here, both of which seem to suggest that the pot method should have worked...may need to revisit that. Also, I shorted my first wall wart mocking this up with alligator clips, and my second one is putting out more like 15v... I might also look for some tighter springs.

I think the grip tape was actually useless or at worst counterproductive. I guess the movement isn't just side to side but also up and down, and the rough surface just doesn't help much. I think what I really need is a rubber surface for the molds to kind of stick to.

The little kickout to the side is where I'll mount the power plug and an on/off switch. The shadowbox frame is almost an inch thick, and it seems too much trouble to mess with. I'll just glue that on the side and drill a small hole to run the wires through.

I also probably need to go buy a piece of foam to sit this on so I can run it when the family is asleep. It gets a little loud and rattly.

Hirst Arts also has instructions for making a vibrating table.

Here are pictures of the current state of my December terrain for our Trucidos campaign. It's down to the wire for me, but I have a few more evenings left to finish. I'm glad December has 31 days!

With my original CD case tower I made, I was very pleased with how the simple cardstock paper Imperial Eagle I cut out looked on the sides. I wanted to duplicate this, so I had the idea of making a resin casts of some 40k symbols. That way, I only had to go through the effort of cutting these fiddly icons out once. I spent probably three to four hours just cutting them out of styrene sheet. Once done, I superglued them acrylic sheet and made an RTV mold of them. So far, it seems to be working out just fine!

The resin appears to be fairly flexible when it's this thin, so I don't think I'll even have any problems contouring the cast pieces to fit the curve of the sides of the towers. Here's what the pieces look like right now.

A few things I could have done better:

1. Contact cement does not adhere insulating foam! It EATS it! I keep forgetting this...
   
2. Spackle for contouring isn't really that great, because wherever it gets a ding, it shows up white. I need to try mixing up some custom filler
   
3. I used styrene tubes for my pipes. I should have just used regular rods, as the tubes tended to buckle where I heated and bent them. On this piece, it will be covered up, as I have something to lay over the pipes to make a better walkway.
   

Now this green stuff press mold article looks really useful. I've done simple, one-sided versions of this in the past, but this is the most developed version of it I've seen. Epoxy putty is a lot easier to work with than RTV silicone and liquid resin.

Tabletop Terrain can suck up a lot of your time, even if you don't play the games covered. There are a lot of nice terrain ideas there, and don't miss the tutorials. He uses Ultracal 30 for his Hirst molds, may have to try that.

Chicago Terrain Factory has a lot of informative articles. There's some nice pictures of his Hirst Arts projects, info on resin casting, and more. I really like his tournament markers.