RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Awesome work Rob!!! It looks brilliant. Are you going to do a kit?

Alwyn

Thanks for the compliment but it hasn't been printed let alone assembled yet.

No chance of a kit, the print time for all of the parts would be more than I can bear, I decided long ago that I would rather keep the hobby as a hobby. If I allowed myself to be drawn down the road of running a business out of it I wouldn't enjoy doing what I do. This way I am never under any pressure to get anything done, had enough of that during my career.

nice start, this is one to watch , and like you said ,she wont be a quick build , 70 hours just for the road wheels , and thats without misprints

I managed to get a wheel down to about 90 mins, so that's 'only' 15 hours plus. I am awaiting a new board for the printer electronics, and in the meantime have been over it giving it a good clean and oil. I have downloaded a set of parts for one different printer, plus the parts for the one I already have, so if I can cost it all up and it comes out cheaper than buying a kit I may well make another one.

Sounds intriguing - using a 3D printer to print a 3D printer!

That was the whole premise behind the original reprap 3D printers...and that project was undertaken just down the road at Bath University believe it or not.

I could buy all of the 3D printed parts for a printer for about £20-30...but that's the cheapest part. I'll post up a price list for a DIY printer so that people can see what it costs compared to buying a kit with all of the bits in.


Edit ....Did a quick calculation, and I was up to £220 buying individual parts, still a few minor parts to cost, but the price would be around £230-£240 to build one identical to the one that I bought as a kit with a better quality hotend, though mine prints just fine. The kit cost £270?

So yes, it would save £30, maybe, but for the convenience I may as well go and buy a kit with all of the parts, and I could get one for less...though again, the all important hotend would probably be junk, so £190 for a kit and £50 for a hotend. It looks like the minimum spend either way would be about £250?

The world of 3D design and printing is as clear to me and as achievable as the dark side of the moon

The printers are pretty simple things, best ones are the kits as you learn more about what it all does when you build it, plus the parts are all off the shelf standard stuff. If you buy a nice and neat cased factory one two things will happen. Firstly they will go out of business and you will never be able to get the parts, and secondly they cost double for something that does the same job.

The one thing that anyone who has a printer needs to do is learn how to create the parts that they want to print in a CAD program. There is no short cut to doing that, it's stick at it for hours/days/weeks/months/years until the penny drops. Some programs suit different people better than others, it depends how your brain works I suppose. I have spent ages looking around on the web to find something that looks like something that I want, if I can I download the code, and then I play with it to learn how it does what it does. Then I can design something that is exactly what I want. You Tube is an excellent resource as there are a hundred and one tutorials on there, especially for Openscad and Blender. I wish I knew how to use Blender, but alas I went down the Openscad route so I stick with that.

I'd like to second everything that Rob says, the printer is the easy bit, the trick is to understand what you are trying to build/create, and break it down into simple bits that can be represented by cubes/cylinders/spheres which you can add/subtract to/from one another to create your desired end result. Best to think of it like using lego where you add the bits together to create complex shapes and models. I use Openscad and it is fairly easy and intuitive to use, there are lots of examples and tutorials and the best thing is it's free, so you can download it and play with it even if you don't have a printer.

I think CAD and 3d printing is the best thing I have gotten into since I got my first mechano set as a kid, it's absorbing, incredible fun when you create something that works, and very low cost once you've bought the printer.

Alwyn

Take a look at my post in the 3D printing thread....