RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Wonderful Louis!

But, I have found your next challenge waiting for when you have finished.

Yeah, that Aliens 2 movie APC really looks good.

Continuing with the build, the next big challenge with high risk factor was the experiment in making Marder Dielh tracks out of HL Leopard 2A6 tracks.

Below is the real thing and was the objective. The Marder tracks are narrower, and have 1 extender you see at the junction with the roadwheel instead of 2 on the Leopard 2.
The work involved is pure madness and consists of removing one extender on each side and put the track together. Even in an assembly line mode where individual processes are optimized for speed and efficiency, it takes overall about 5 minutes per track link. The links need to be unlinked, cut, parts sanded, superglued back together (with lots of glued), holes drilled to clean them up of glue, sanded again, inspected and tested for issues, corrected, metal pin shortened and filed, vertical pin for idler and roller alignment shortened, etc. Over 3 days, I estimate I spend 7-8 hours on one single track. I wanted to finish and fully test one track before I spend time on the other.
Here you see the parts for one track.
The new product is a 35cm wide track.
Also ordered and installed the Ludwigs 3D printed Marder idler wheel for more accuracy.
Track is installed. This is the Diehl track look I wanted to have on my Marder. Keep in mind the tracks have not been polished or painted. I also sanded the HL numbers that were molded on the front of some links.
Performance and robustness was a major concern. After a initial test of manually running the tracks, which failed miserably and created much unpleasant emotions, I identified and replaced a couple of trouble maker links, and also had to thin the vertical pin for the idler and rollers. Then suddenly everything fell into place. I did a 10 minute engine test with the track raised, followed by another 10 minute test with the weight of the tank and tracks against the cutting mat with no failure.
Honestly, although it seems to work and will look ok, I do not recommend such track conversion and I am not sure how long the tracks will last in operation. I am not really looking forward for building the other track either, but I went this far so I will do it. I have a pair of M-26 tracks on backup... I might keep the DIelh tracks for static display and short running demonstrations, I will see later.

Regards, Louis

Breathtaking Mr cq11...............I wish you well in your therapy after those tracks are both completed !!
The seat module is a work of art too, looking at your reference pictures as inspiration would cause me to soil me strides & look for another project

Hi, thank you for your encouragements.

This is the turret, part 2.

Here are the parts offered by Ludwigs for the turret rotation unit next to the top of the hull and the previously assembled turret core. The motor and gears are very small and commercially available for a few dollars in China if you want to order them separately. Ludwigs provides the dented wheels that must be glued together, and the mount for the motor. Notice the dents are towards the inside.
I realised that Ludwigs centered the turret hole, this is a small mistake that needs to be corrected for an accurate model. You can see the gap between the turret and the grill on the left.
According to my calculations based on references, the turret hole need to be shifted 5.5cm to the left. The turret now correctly follows the contour of the grill on the left.
This model is not a regular tank design. There is no book or references on building this model so the builder has to ponder his options at every step and select one. There are many ways of doing this I am sure, probably better ones too. Because I want the interior of the fighting compartment to be detailed, I had to design a rotation system that allows for a turret basket to rotate 360, and that does not show too much. In my design, the dented wheel is glued to the hull and the rotation unit is placed inside the turret ring, pretty much like the real thing actually. You can see remnants of the previous location of the turret hole in the picture.
The elevation servo is installed. It is a very simple design with a pushrod directly connected to the gun unit shaft as shown on a previous post. It takes a while to adjust it in order to provide the lowest and highest elevation the kit design allows.
The rotation unit is installed inside the turret ring on a strong base made of residual plasticard. It was thoroughly tested and works well.
The core of the turret basket has been built. The inside of the turret basket will be further detailed in coming days. The real thing is quite complicated so I think it will only give it some basic interior.
Everything was tested at every steps with the TK60, a much improved operation compared to the TK20 series. Now I can assign engine start, lights and the MG to switches. Here you see the gun at maximum elevation. Of course, i did not assign the 20mm gun to the main gun of the control board, no big bang here with this tank. The TK60 comes with the ability to have 2 independent machine guns. So, the 20mm gun is assigned to the main machine gun and with flash unit. The rear 7.62mm machine gun turret will be assigned as the auxiliary machine gun.
This is how it looks inside the vehicle. It is the first time that I actually build an RC tank with its turret basket. It was stressing me a bit and it is quite a load off to see that my gizmo design works. It is actually quite amazing and exciting to see the turret basket rotate through the rear ramp, something I have not seen before in RC.
Next step is to detail in inside of the turret a bit and permanently place the cables through the floor of the turret.

Regards, Louis

Now that is cool!

Award winning solution to an otherwise impossible problem

Hi,

Update on turret/gun tests.

The rotation unit provided by Ludwigs had a major failure. I guess it is too small and fragile for such build. It worked ok for the first set of test but the load and friction was too much at one point. The motor was turning but nothing was moving.

Too bad, it was cute and i like experimenting with new stuff, it was not cheap either. It was quite unpleasant having to remove it, plan and redo the rotation design using components in hand.
See how small this thing actually is. I should have known better...
The gears are real tiny and obviously not a good choice for my type of build. Maybe if I had been more gentle or use ball bearings everywhere, but it is obviously not strong enough for my 1/16 scale tanks and builders should beware.
I did not want to order and wait for something else so I used a HL rotation unit that I always have a few in hand. I trimmed it to make it fit better within the restricted room in the turret. Not as cool as the little guy but it works.
Watch the YOUTUBE video below of the turret and gun tests with HL rotation. Ok, there is no big gun or big bang here but this turret can still rock and provide a lot of action.

https://youtu.be/xRtu-ZvDYfU

Regards, Louis

One of the most impressive- and definitely most unusual- gun tests I've seen so far, Louis. As for the build: the unforeseen obstacles, and the required lateral thinking- you have all necessary tools in the box (mental and physical) to fulfil your mission objective. Without wishing to sound too militaristic, that is
I'm fairly sure from what I've seen of your work, If the build were an easy one; it probably wouldn't satisfy you. For the observer following along, there's a visual treat of meticulous handicraft

Louis this is just outstanding! The function is so impressive

Hi, thank you,

43rdRecceReg wrote:If the build were an easy one; it probably wouldn't satisfy you.

Yes, the last real kit a built was a Tamiya Porsche King Tiger early last year, finished it in maybe 2 or 3 uneventful weeks... the thing is, I do not even remember building it... Then I found those Ludwigs basic kits, they opened a brand new world.

Continuing with the build;

In this post, I am presenting the turret basket.

The interior of the Marder turret is complex and the lack of structured reference is enough to discourage even the hard core builders. Of the pictures available, the small size of the turret makes it impossible for the photographer to get an overall view. All that is available are pictures of very small sections. It takes a while to understand what is seen and recreate the general layout.
Also, almost all pictures are of the Marder 1A3 and many modernization efforts have created hybrid models. Pictures of the same area for different vehicles look different. I found very little and only partial material on the interior of the 1A1 version. So, for this reason, my turret basket is a mixture of 1A1 and 1A3 layout. Better this than inventing stuff for the areas with reference gaps. Since the turret interior is meant to be seen from the rear ramp, i only gave it a general look and feel without going into too much details. It would have taken weeks, and many confusing building sessions.
Here is my turret basket. It is scratch built out of nothing, with only visual references. The use of the HL rotation unit complicated my earlier plans even further so I had to adjust the look and feel of the basket around it. And I know the ammo bins are not right for the 1A1 version, but nothing I could do about it.
The rotation is giving me some trouble, it is not perfect. Because it is a hand built turret basket under a rough resin cast turret itself without any built-in slot or guides (or anything to help the builder actually), it is not completely symmetrical as you can imagine. As I will likely build other similar models in the future, the experience I gained in the past 2 weeks on this turret will be most useful.
But I cannot ask for too much. It rotates and I think it looks good from the rear ramp and behind the seat modules that will be installed, that was the objective.

Now I can finish the rest of the interior, and get some fresh air.

Regards, Louis