Imaginary tank

[bikerdude]

Finally got some time to get on a bit. Had my eldest to look after this evening so he was on nyloc duty, 15 wheels (drilled out to 4mm), 15 M4 x 65mm S/S bolts, 30 washers, and 30 nyloc nuts. He did very well, with a little help, me holding the bolts still for him. Anyway we've now got the 2 sides, fully fitted with all the road wheels, tracks and gearboxes. Unfortunately it turns out the gearboxes that I thought I could use have a short shaft, so I'll have to look for some reasonably priced long shaft gearboxes. Now to sort out the middle hull section. I'm finding the 'make it up as you go along' very beneficial for being able to cover up bad workmanship. When I put the 2 side pieces together, I saw just how bad my freehand jigsaw skills are! However 10 mins with the belt sander, both sides match, and theres a little step in the top run, which almost looks like it's supposed to be there, rather than there because I cut 1 piece wonky...

Photos below show the little bits done over the last few days.

I was a little worried about the proportions here, looked far too tall and narrow, but didn't look so bad once I put a set of tracks on.







Then this is todays progress, proportions look about right to me, good enough for the kids to play with it anyway. All just propped up on some DVD cases at the moment. Toying with the idea of fitting it with a spare Tiger turret I've got...









If anyone has some of the cheap HL metal gearboxes with the long shaft that they'd like to swap for short shaft, let me know.

[wibblywobbly]

If this runs, it will have been a fascinating build. Hopefully the weight won't be too much, you may end up needing low ratio gears in there, but no harm in trying the cheap option first.

[Pak36]

Reminds me a lot of the LeMan Russ from Warhammer 40k!

Love stuff like this.....you never know where it's going to end up! Makes me think I should do something with the spare parts I have from the many upgrades my litle Panzer has had just sitting around in the shed gathering dust.

[HERMAN BIX]

I'm looking in on this too.............got a box full of useless plastic tiger parts that seem to have just found a reason not to be binned !
Could be a simple way of doing a WW1 Tank.
An outer sheet covering the wheels & track run, add gun sponsons & Caitlin's ya former Uncle !!
Great job so far Mr Biker

[bikerdude]

If this runs, it will have been a fascinating build. Hopefully the weight won't be too much, you may end up needing low ratio gears in there, but no harm in trying the cheap option first.

Hopefully the gearboxes will cope, as it'll be running on 12v instead of the normal 7.2v, if the standard motors can't cope with 12v I'll try and swap them out for something a little beefier, I think I've got a couple of Graupner 500's in the garage. Failing that, I may in the future opt for a pulley and belt system, or chain and sprocket system.

Reminds me a lot of the LeMan Russ from Warhammer 40k!

Love stuff like this.....you never know where it's going to end up! Makes me think I should do something with the spare parts I have from the many upgrades my litle Panzer has had just sitting around in the shed gathering dust.

Just looked up the warhammer tank, looks good, and encourages me to fit the Tiger turret! It's great like this, no one can tell me I've done it wrong, 'cos it never actually existed!

I'm looking in on this too.............got a box full of useless plastic tiger parts that seem to have just found a reason not to be binned !
Could be a simple way of doing a WW1 Tank.
An outer sheet covering the wheels & track run, add gun sponsons & Caitlin's ya former Uncle !!
Great job so far Mr Biker

Indeed, the WWI style was chosen due to the relatively easy shape, as well as the fact they were designed to go over trenches, and the kids want to dig trenches/holes to drive it through. The eventual idea is to do as you say, and cut a thin sheet of ply to cover over all the wheels, and then fit sponsons to that, doubt I'll have time for that before our holiday though, plus on the beach, if the sides all open it'll be easier to remove any sand buildup.


It's all going to be built in separate pieces, making it easier to change things if it doesn't work. So I'll have the 2 sides with sponsons fitted, 2 inner sides with wheels and tracks fitted, then a central box with the gearboxes, speed controllers and mixer unit, plus a 12v battery from an industrial fire alarm system. Should be room enough to add sounds and smoke at a later date if wanted.

[bikerdude]

A quick update before I shoot off to work. A little more progress today:

Decided to scrap the idea of making a separate box in the middle, and so I glued the bits to 1 side, then glued the other side on. First 4 photos just show the bottom plate glued in place, and how I've sanded it down at the front to meet the other piece coming down from the front. It still comes down lower than the side pieces, but will do for now. If it works and they like it, over the winter I'll remove all the wheels, sand it all nice and smooth, then fibreglass it and sand it again.









I then forgot to take any pictures of the next bit, was just concentrating on getting as far as I could before work. But TBH it's all simple so doesn't really need many 'in progress' shots. Next 4 show how far I got, 2 sides glued to the base, with 2 pieces angled at the front and a small upright piece at the rear:









As you can see in the pics, I've got some HL plastic gearboxes which I used to make sure the base plate and rear piece would give enough room for the gearboxes. But once it was all together with gearboxes I couldn't resist quickly popping a couple of screws to hold the gearboxes down and grabbing a couple of speed controllers and a transmitter. Ive not got the mixer yet, so had to steer each track independently, plastic gearboxes really aren't up to it, right hand gearbox needs aligning with the tracks a bit better, and I think the hole for the shaft to pass through the hull needs enlarging slightly, and the ESC's have different start and end points set, so was hard to get the tracks to do the same speed, BUT I did manage to drive it from the kitchen to the lounge. With the minimal electrics and large size I've got plenty of room for a decent smoker and speaker if wanted at a later date. Hopefully attached is a link to a quick youtube vid, not very good as using 2 hands for steering meant I had to stand my phone on the floor and try and drive in shot.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DsSw2EN1ueA

[HERMAN BIX]

Love it, I'm seriously going to try to do a basic version of a WW1 tank after seeing this.
Cheap & cheerful, wood and left over Tiger bits !!................brilliant Baldrick !!

[bikerdude]

Love it, I'm seriously going to try to do a basic version of a WW1 tank after seeing this.
Cheap & cheerful, wood and left over Tiger bits !!................brilliant Baldrick !!

The metal gearboxes and mixer unit should be here in a day or 2, once I can drive it 1 handed I'll get a better video. Will also give it a go in the garden on the grass when the metal gearboxes are fitted, at the moment the plastic gearboxes click and slip if I turn too quickly.

Wednesday and Thursday morning I'll make the top, and figure out how to attach it, and my eldest can't wait to get some guns on it.

[bikerdude]

Less successful day today. 1st off, I'd ordered some long shaft black steel Taigen gearboxes for this, then decided that the black gearboxes are supposed to be better than the silver, so I'd take the silver boxes out of my Bulldog, use them in this tank and fit the Bulldog with the black boxes. This didn't go well but I'll start another thread on that in the general section, suffice to say the black boxes performance are far less than satisfactory. I didn't test my Bulldog before fitting the old Bulldog boxes in this tank though.

So, I fitted the old gearboxes out of my bulldog to this tank, connected up the ESC's and had a relatively good steering ability, though the plastic tracks slip a lot on the lino in the kitchen. I then tried to connect up the Mtroniks V-Tail Tank Mixer. http://www.mtroniks.net/prod/RC-Accesso ... kmixer.htm
Now the blurb on the site states:

'The Tank track mixing module is designed for use in RC models where you want to mix two seperate signals such as throttle and steering to control two seperate tank tracks.
The Tank track mixer has the same operation as the VTail mixer but with a reduced differential effect making it ideal for use with model tanks or robot projects.
The mixer module is easy to connect up and allows you to use your transmitters throttle and steering chanels to operate your model by mixing the signals to each speed controller/motor to speed up or slow down to give steering effect.'

Which I took to mean, plug that in to the appropriate channels (1+3) in the RX, then plug an esc into the 2 leads coming out the other side of the mixer, and that would give me forwards/backwards and left/right. Unfortunately I seem to be able to get left and right turning on the spot on the right hand stick as I want, but I can't get the mixer to allow me to go forwards and backwards, just makes it turn in a circle again. I've emailed Mtroniks but heard nothing back from them so I will try and give them a call tomorrow.

I plugged the esc's back in to the RX directly and tried it out with the metal gearboxes on the grass sloped garden. And, it worked! Not overly well, think it would be better with a little more ground clearance, so doubt it'll work on the beach as intended, and it also needs extra road wheels, between what are already fitted. I dare say it would also improve it a fair bit if it had suspension, but that'd be a bit too complicated to approach right now, maybe sometime over the winter I can fit some crude sort of suspension. The tracks also seem fairly tight at a stand still, with little to no sag, but when running it was sometimes spinning the drive sprocket inside the tracks.

So in summary:
1. Need to sort out with Mtroniks whether their mixer will actually work as I want.
2. Source an fit yet more wheels! I think I spotted some for not a lot on eBay.
3. Have a look at some sort of track tensioner (as someone already said I'd need, I was just trying to simplify it)

And looking further forward, design and make some sort of basic suspension system, and possibly increase ground clearance.

[Will01Capri]

Awesome work, really cool idea and have some fun with it.
Looks like i have competition out there doing what i do then with just having fun making stuff weird and wacky.
But your tank looks nice and robust and the kids will love it.
Make sure they don't sit on it and try to get a RC ride along haha

The track tension is going to be a bit tricky i reckon once it gets loaded off road and especially with sandy beaches.
The issue you might find is that if you have to run tight tracks to keep them working and on the drive, the plastic nylon drive sprocket may decide to split on the spline. But i do belief instead of having to buy a complete metal gearbox, you can just buy a metal drive shaft and gear which can be retro-fitted into the gearbox and prevent this from happening.

If you are going for suspension try and keep it simple with some cool old looking leaf spring style suspension. Either buy a load of WPL leaf springs, or if you have something with an old retractable mains powered ting like a hoover, the big spring steel spring for retracting the cable would be perfect for making DIY leaf springs. Then drill a hole in one end to hard fix and let the other side float. Or if getting more adventurous bend one end round a steel bolt, solder the connection and bolt it into some alloy u-channel.

Love you build by the way. Superb