M3 Grant (Lee?) scratchbuilt... or that's the plan anyway...

[RiskyR]

Hey Rob, how are you (and your project) doing?

Well, I'm not dead... but I had a little bump in my recovery (from an accident more than a year ago) which sapped my strength and time to do pretty much anything. But I am slowly crawling back up and things look good for the near future.

Not being able to build or tinker with tanks has not stopped me buying them tho. The collections has become pretty shocking. Retail Therapy FTW!
Since the last time I did anything I managed to score a Tamiya Gepard (for a steal), a second Tamiya Sherman and some other assorted poor lost tanks that needed a good home. Also scored a Sherman track horn and a 17-pounder shell casing just for the mancave...

Rob

That's tough, I hope your recovery will get better soon! Good to see you're still here

I wonder where you find all those second hand tanks! I'm always looking around but never find anything for an interesting price..

[Rob1970]

I wonder where you find all those second hand tanks! I'm always looking around but never find anything for an interesting price..

Well, the math is simple

Boredom + Internet Acces + money
----------------------------------------------------- = "cheap" secondhand tanks
Access to Marketplace (if wife not looking)

I actually have a few tanks I might sell on with some of the unexpected low bids I've won. Mostly people not knowing what they have and glad to get rid of it.

On the other end of the spectrum there's people asking crazy money for crystal-driven ratty old HL tanks, often with dead batteries or even the remote completely missing. I've seen one guy trying to sell a Heng Long "Pan-tiger" (about as popular among RC tankers as a bucket of spit...) without a remote or batteries and a lot of the greeblies missing for, and I quote "...at least 150 euros..."

That being said; I did have amazing luck with the second-hand Gepard. The guy didn't want to ship it, so one bidder retracted his (way too high) bid, and I didn't mind the 100+ km drive up to Den Helder. Not for a 175 euro 1/16 scale Tamiya Gepard. It needs some work, but I think I can handle that when the time comes. The real challenge is getting it transformed to a Dutch "Cheeta" with all the right bits. Designing those to 3D print is going to be fun.

[Rob1970]

Aaaaand just when you thought it was safe to go back on the forum...





More sooooon!!

[Herr Dr. Professor]

[Rob1970]

So, what have I been up to? Well, a lot of therapy and healing, because it turned out I was a bigger mess than I (or the doctors) suspected. But now I am on the mend, and getting back to doing things other than therapy and rest.

While I was away from my projects and the 3D-printer some things happened. First my computer died, then one of my 3D printers. It all put a major crimp on my motivation...

Last May everybody in my company got a big bonus and a large chunk of profit, which was nice. Just around that time Creality announced their new K1 and K1Max printers. And boy did they look shiny!! And they promised to be hassle-free, plug-and-play machines. Just what I as a 3D-printer-user needed. I'm in no way a 3D-printer-tinkerer after all.

And then the reviews started to show up from the 3D-influencers on Youtube, and the K1 seemed to be a bit of a lemon. A lot of teething problems, some of them rather bad. All the negativity steered me to the printer the K1 was supposed to be competing with; The Bambu Lab X1. So I spent a healthy wad of cash on one of those...

Aaand I have never been happier with a 3D printer...

So I dusted off my Tinkercad account, discovered some new functionality (Yay!) that solved a few problems I had run into while working on the Grant the last time. And it all ended up leading to this;



A completely 3D-printable hull. Better fitting parts, and a bunch of other stuff.
Also wished I had gone for a welded-hull variant...


I took down the uploads on Thingiverse (because the files are horrible compared to what I have done with the new parts) and will be uploading the new files "soon".

TTFN,
Rob

[Tiger6]

Looking good Rob! Glad to see you back on the CAD

[tankme]

Glad to hear everything is getting better. I have no regrets buying a Bambu X1C. I have printed so much crap now it's not even funny. It's not perfect, but it is darn good.

[ColemanCollector]

That looks sharp!

Mike.

[RiskyR]

Looks superb! Glad to see you're back

[Rob1970]

...But now I am on the mend, and getting back to doing things other than therapy and rest.

Well...



I had surgery last week (which was planned... 2-sided inguinal hernia, one morning in-and-out surgery that went well) and I contracted covid (probably in the hospital, NOT planned!). And let me tell ya, coughing with inguinal hernia or while recovering from the surgery to repair aforementioned inguinal hernia is NOT fun!

So my fever-addled brain has been busy sorting my files because they were a mess and I lost track of which was the final or at least most recent version. Mainly working on getting it all printable with minimal supports and sorting which parts would be best printed in resin. Also seeing of I can do several version with minimal fuss by making different engine decks and rears...





Tinkering about with getting parts I think are "done" (are they ever?) printed and putting them together, tweaking here and there to get the fits nice and snug. Messing around with the rear between fever spikes...


TTFN,
Rob