A quick review of Carlos Pinto cars and trucks. I just received my second order of Carlos Pinto cars and trucks from Portugal. The first order took a couple months due to COVID19 delays, however the second order only took a couple weeks. As before my order came well packed with absolutely no damage, and even all the finest details were intact. These are high resolution, and very smooth resin prints, the best I have seen so far. I painted the cars from the first order with great results without cleaning the cars, as they came very clean and dry, with no hint of sticky residue, and all the cotton they were packed in came off very easily. I first primed them with Tamiya Fine Surface Primer, then used Tamiya paints, thinned 50/50 with 92% Isopropyanol and airbrushed. After the vehicles dried, I used a 20/0 sable paintbrush for details with a special technique. I dipped the paint into full strength Tamiya paint, and immediately dipped the brush in a bottle cap of 92% Isopropyanol, brushed the excess off, on the bottle brim, then quickly applied only 1 brush stroke per paint dobbing. Tamiya paint is notorious for drying on the paintbrush before you can apply it, so I had to use this technique, as I am still waiting for an order of Tamiya Retarder to arrive. I am very pleased with these vehicles. His variety of offerings changes frequently, so I just bookmarked his eBay store so I can check back often. Carlos Pinto Cars and Trucks
I can attest to the Carlos Pinto products as well. Great quality versus other 3D and resin cast products that I have. Smooth finishes, minimal flash and very little clean up needed. The tractors are fantastic. Granted, pics are on Ebay of the same, but here are a few of what I have acquired from him thus far. These are straight out of the box, and no primer or the like applied. I have conversed with Carlos via Email. Great guy and very much about customer service. Although, be aware of some possible shipping delays from Europe due to the pandemic.
I got another order of Carlos Pinto vehicles for my modeling era in. These are all new models since my last order. $115 for ALL of these, pricing is to be considered very reasonable. Each is slightly different except the White trucks and the Pup Trailers. The detail is excellent, and although you cannot see from these pictures, the fine detail is there like headlights, side view mirrors, rolled down windows on some of the trucks, spokes on some wheels, bolt patterns on others. Also, Carlos came out with a 50's style 35' trailer, and I posted on his facebook that I could use them in 25 foot for my NP TOFC flatcar project, and within a couple hours he had modified his drawings to make the 25 foot pup trailers I needed. So far these are the best 3D printed vehicles I have received, and the detail keeps getting better, far better than my painting skills. All are foreground quality! Oh, one more thing, most of these are hollow now, and all have small toothpick sized holes underneath to support easy painting, which I think is a welcome modification.
I just ordered the 40’s and 50’s set of cars and trucks — 10 vehicles in all. Well represented cars and trucks of this era are hard to find in Z. Carlos’ product is the best I’ve seen thus far. Some may consider the $48.99 (total incl shipping + tax) a tad spendy, but our options for good quality autos are near zero.
Yes Lance, that price is good, averaging less than $5 a piece. Look at the price of vehicles from Artitech averaging $30, Showcase Miniatures $15, Randy Brown $8, and compare the detail as equal or greater, and the selection is increasing at an eye opening pace. A2Models has a really great selection of Z Scale resin vehicles, and I have lots of them, but the detail is again, not as good. I have a whole lot of Make My Model vehicles that I didn't prime, and the material is disintegrating now, and the surface was always a bit gritty, but the new resin printers seem to do a much smoother job. The resin prints also prime and paint smoother and easier than the FUD Shapeways prints too. If you want foreground quality period vehicles, you better snap up these Carlos Pinto vehicles before he burns out and stops making them. I have been a model railroader for many decades, and rest assured, IF THEY DON"T BURN OUT, THEY GROW OLD AND RETIRE, and regardless of the reason, if you see it, want it, and don't get it now, you will end up sorry!
Hi, Lance. I just ordered the "Last One" on ebay. I hope Carlos will make more. I saw a lot of other great stuff on his website. We'll see how these come out. Jim
I usually let the primer dry a full day, then paint base color, so I painted some today. You can see some step lines, but that's typical until 8K 7" screens and 10µm Z steps are available on 3D printers:
I have yet to paint any of the Carlos Pinto vehicles yet, but did manage to "HANDPAINT" two of the tractors I acquired from him. Pretty tough to get the surface results I wanted, and indeed the camera highlights the roughness. Most difficult to get the rims to look true and round when hand painting and I was not willing to put hours and hours into these. Once these are on the layout, they will be more than acceptable to the naked eye, even in the foreground. Sample pic provided in order to show what I was attempting to model. The venerable FORD JUBILEE tractor.
Jim, I have conversed with Carlos via Email a few times and have "bent his ear" on things we are in need of vehicle wise, like these 50's and 60's cars. So I am pretty sure he is more than willing to run another batch if needed, and may surprises us with new offerings. I also asked him to look into producing the GREYHOUND SCENICRUISER multi level passenger bus. In light of my request, he did release a city bus instead, but the GREYHOUND would be really cool in Z !!!! I hope he is working on releasing one.
I finished the green cars, and overall i am happy enough to call them foreground quality models, although my painting skills on such tiny models can improve. I take daily medicine pills as large as these cars!
Looks excellent!!! Indeed, foreground worthy!!!! Excellent work on the wheels, which alway challenge me. I did notice that you painted the windows in black. Seeing as these are not hollow vehicles, I was debating how to paint mine. Observing what you’ve pulled off, I think I will move in that direction with the windows.
Hi, Lance. The Scenicruiser would be nice. Greyhound had a maintenance facility in my neighborhood and it was close to the tracks. They would make a nice scene. I would also like to see some International checker taxicabs. The delivery vans will look cool with just about any product decals. I'm looking forward to working with them. Resin and cast vehicles drawback is the windows. They are hard to get right. Just wondering out loud here...how difficult would it be to print the windows on acetate and then insert them in the opening? Jim
Actually these are hollow vehicles. I chose painting my windows black because it was closest to the way an opened window usually photographs. The stakebed truck does not have a window, it's opened, as you can see from the photo below: Now look at the stakebed truck, and you will notice it really is opened, it just looks black in the photo, hence painting my model windows black works.