Witness the birth of a new monster...the IS-4

[Stormbringer]

I can almost imagine it trundling about the floor

[ColemanCollector]

Holy moley! Work of industrial 3d art!

Sigh...I'm thrilled when I manage a decent benchy...
Miles to go before I sleep.

Mike.

[tankme]

Got a little more work done tonight. The rear deck was screaming for some protective screens on the fans and rear grates. Cut them out of some old window screen I have in the scratch building material box.



I cleaned up the last of the print lines on the front end along with finishing the blending of the front fenders complete with fake bolt details.



I also started to do the weld details on the turret. The weld line will go all the way around the removable roof of the turret. It will help hide the separation and still allow me to remove it to work on the turret insides. Plus it's a weld line that's supposed to actually be there.



Not much progress, but fiddly progress.

That's all for now...

[Stormbringer]

Its the wee details that take the time

[Herr Dr. Professor]

Not just the welding, but the texturing is remarkable. Compare the photos fresh from the printer to these most recent ones. WOW!

[MrChef]

Herr Doc is right tankme you've got quite the knack with improving fidelity.

Nice work sir

[tankme]

Ran into a bit of snag with this build:

When the original sprockets I printed shed a sprocket tooth, I printed another set in PETG hoping that it was the fact the old ones were in a more fragile material. Long story short, the new PETG sprockets have shed teeth and I haven't even put any power to them yet. It's kinda why this build stalled.

I have a plan though:

Since I've been test printing the new KV-1/KV-85 tanks Inkor is releasing, I found that he used the same basic track STLs for the IS-4 and the KV-1. The KV-1 sprockets fit my previously printed IS-4 tracks perfectly. The only difference was that he made the center guide tooth higher and slightly hollow on the KV version track. The KV sprocket teeth are much beefier than the ones in the IS-4 file set. The IS-4 tank was one of his earlier designs and not many have built the tank (that I've seen) and no one has printed a make of it on the Cults 3D website. Technically the KV tracks are narrower than the IS-4 tracks. I'm guessing he decided to forgo redesigning them for the KV to save on CAD time. I haven't gotten a response as to whether or not he will make the KV tracks more narrow, but that's kinda off topic. I'm not a CAD master so I can't just make the teeth stronger in CAD for the IS-4. I can however try to use my Bambu slicer skills to make the teeth wider. I'm going to attempt to slice the sprocket teeth off, widen that section, and then reattach that to the sprocket hub using the slicer tools. It should give me the extra tooth strength I'm looking for while still interfacing with the track correctly. The STL file made from my slicer fu will look strange and might take a few tries to get it right, but in the end I think it will be worth the boost in reliability.

I think I can do it so wish me luck...