![Image](https://i.imgur.com/O2um1a4.jpg)
This must be about the tenth iteration of the TIE Avenger. I tried to paint the initial models that I printed a couple of weeks ago, and they turned out to be so unbelievably fiddly that even painstaking masking (each one took an hour to mask) didn't give me a satisfactory result. The problem was that the gaps between the solar panels are less than 1mm wide, and getting low-tack masking tape to stick well enough to prevent paint getting underneath was downright impossible. I've also had the notion of this being something I could potentially even produce low volumes of for other people, and so making these easier to produce in the future was something I thought spending a bit of time on now would be beneficial.
... what followed was six hours of painstakingly taking the model apart so that I could separate each of the 28 solar panels into individual pieces, allowing me to paint them without the tedious masking process. I've also removed the cockpit window and hatch, as they proved genuinely impossible to mask properly, and I thought the easiest way of doing them was to simply make the centre of the ship hollow, and just remove the 'window' parts leaving the octagonal frame. I may want to paint the inside of the ship black to achieve the level of contrast needed to make it look right. I printed each of these two pieces four times just because they're so tiny that I anticipate breaking a few and I wanted extras.