Houston, I have a (Shapeways/paint) problem

[Biggles downunder]

It all began when Baxter brought along a cute little Zeppelin that he bought from Shapeways and he asked if I could fit one of my 3D printed mounting pegs. ‘Easy’ I replied and sure enough, 5 minutes later the following evening I had the peg fitted.

Hm, I should paint this for him to match my Zeppelin:



Pretty easy I thought, a coat of Vallejo grey undercoat, spray (Vallejo Air) green on the tail and mid-section; dark brown on the nose; cut an irregular edge on masking tape & apply tape; paint a light-brown section and another section light-green; remove tape; a coat of satin finish - done and dusted, or so I thought…



Comprehensive ‘fail’! So, I am now faced with stripping off the paint and undercoat, working out what went wrong and starting again.

Any thoughts on what went wrong and, more importantly, what I should do to prevent a repeat failure?

My guess is that I should use a different primer but what?

Here is the Shapeways label that is on the plastic bag, if that is any help:

[malachi]

Wayne,

Sorry to hear of your troubles, that's a pain. I've not heard much bad press about Vallejo primers but perhaps there was some kind of solvent or release agent on the surface of the plastic (common with minis). After stripping, I'd try washing it with dish soap and water then dry thoroughly (perhaps a hair dryer to speed things up, but I would also give it time to make sure it's dry). You could try a rattle can of Rust-Oleum for the base primer if you want. I've had good luck with several of their primers on balloons and shapeways planes.

[Biggles downunder]

Hi Chris, yes I was wondering if there is some sort of release agent that should have been removed first. Stripping back was no problem as I found that I could scrape it off with my fingernail! It was like a flexible layer that lifted off in chunks.

I think I’ll give it a good scrub and then track down that primer. I was initially worried about using anything too aggressive for fear of damaging the surface

[flash]

I was gonna ask if you'd washed it before painting, that's probably the culprit. What a nause.