1/8 Scale HL Abrams

[tankme]

Looking good. Might want to visit those smoke dischargers on the turret. They look to be mounted upside down.

[Jib]

Man, good eye. I can’t believe I didn’t notice that.

The model came like this, with a T-90 sound set and upside down smoke grenade launchers. Hopefully they just put them upside down in the wrong sides and all I have to do is unscrew them and move them.

I just checked their promotional videos for this tank on YouTube, they are all upside down on them as well

[Jib]

The CROWS still isn’t on yet, I got distracted 3D printing stuff for the drivers hatch and making a new speaker that fits inside the hull better.

Made my own periscope insert and rain guard lip. Going to reprint the insert in black tomorrow, put in a 1 mm piece of lexan for glass, some of that shiny film for the two other periscopes, slap some wipers on, stick the camera in. Sand and glue the rain guard and dremel a little notch in the middle.

The CROWS has some inaccuracies that are bugging me that I want to fix before assembling it, but that’ll be next. I’m really itching to get that on there.

[HERMAN BIX]

Jeez thats coming on strong mate!
Could be a case of "Stop looking and you wont find anything" going on !!
That speaker almost seems too small

[Jib]

Jeez thats coming on strong mate!
Could be a case of "Stop looking and you wont find anything" going on !!
That speaker almost seems too small

Can’t stop! Won’t stop! I’m starting to wonder if I’ll ever be “done” with this model, or if it will become the tank of Theseus.

The speaker box is about as big as I can get, it’s like roughly 6”x6”x3”. I am planning on getting a better full range speaker later, but I think it’s only about 0.5” wider in diameter than this one.

The speaker doesn’t sound louder, but it does sound a little clearer? But maybe I’m biased.

[Jib]

Another update here, all having to do with 3D printing. Still don’t have the CROWS LP on, but I’m getting closer. There were some parts on the original model from DKLMRC that bugged me, so I updated a few of them.

The star of the show here is the functional gypsy rack, you can fold it up and away, or fold it down for extra storage, just like the real thing. I was also able to create a pattern in Design Spark to create the mesh floor of it. I will
Probably use this same pattern to do the same thing with the floor of the main bustle rack, and get rid of my Home Depot mesh screen I have in there now.

It took me a little over a week to figure out how to be able to do the things I need to do to design the rack and get the measurements precise enough so everything folds up as it is supposed to. The mesh screen made my dinky Windows tablet have a stroke when I tried to modify it, so I had to move the project to my desktop computer to complete it.

I also had switched out the 3D printer hotend from a 0.4mm nozzle to a 0.2mm nozzle l, which made the print times jump exponentially, but I get greater resolutions. Everything in white is from DKLMRC, everything in silver and black is designed and printed my me, with the exception of the Jerry cans. Silver is PETG and black
Is TPU.

https://youtu.be/dA77fTfrkhk?si=hhpETQvBAK_WeZtu

[Stormbringer]

The mesh really has turned out well

[tankme]

The extended bustle rack is definitely looking the part.

[Jib]

Update on the model, still having brown out issues with the MFU, but

I’ve got all five cameras installed and working

I’ve finally installed the CROWS LP

Painted and installed several aesthetic add ons

Made a new video showing these updates off: https://youtu.be/DJX6YsUvGV8?si=Qa5lZZk5hR23Fe-O

[Stormbringer]

Ohhh thats nice mate