RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

Shame there isn't a decent Dremel style lathe. Good as 3D printers are there is still a need for old school tools.

Took a bit of work, but I split everything down into kit form, printed the parts separately and printed them, then glued it all back together, leaving the barrel free to recoil. I still have a mountain of detail work to do on the assembly, plus sort out the elevation, traverse, and recoil...which is going to be a tad awkward....

Awesome

Fantastic!

Mr Wibbly you are truly a master craftsman and builder! Such an impressive feat

I love it when people say 'great' when I have posted up pics of something that I have subsequently noticed is bag of spanners. lol.

Due to the way that Openscad works I had totally missed out one of the tubes around the gun. Luckily, I was able to dismantle the whole thing, print the missing part, reprint the plates it goes through and a couple of other bits, and re-assemble it as it should be.

I also did the mount, and now have a barrel assembly that will elevate and rotate. No idea where I will hide the servo's, but that is for later...along with the servo recoil.

You really make the case for spending the money on a 3D printer, Wibbs. Great stuff. So does the tailgate drop down to give the crew some foot space? I would think it might be difficult to reload with that back wall up, eh? I've not seen the real thing so I have no data to draw on.

What caliber is that again? Can you get scale shells for it? Or at least dimensions for the real ammo and maybe we can turn something up in brass or something? On second thought, I'll bet British customs would blow a gasket if I sent you some of those, eh? Solid brass scale rounds for that behemoth would be pretty hefty to the hand and might scare those poor boys half to death! Probably not one of my better ideas, eh?

I hope you can source scale shells for it over there because some of those in the racks would really be a cherry on top, can ya dig it?

Think you could post a couple photos of something being printed? That would be cool, and something I've yet to see.

The problem with using Primeportal to analyse parts close up is that you can look so closely at a part of a part that you miss the bit that is out of shot. In my case the hinge point for the gun is back up by the breech, not down at the traverse drum. Ho-hum, I had to redesign a couple of parts and then spend a few hours printing them, but it all fits and hinges how it should now. It's not perfectly to scale, it was case of what will work in 1/16 scale, and how to print certain shapes.

In answer to the question, yes, the blade and the rear door hinge up and down. The shells are 155mm, but all I did was print an ammo rack, and then a pile of shell cases to put in the holes. Again not perfectly to scale but everything is where it should be.

Also did the winch for the rear door, and a crate that is attached to the front armour. I will leave the final sanding and filing until everything is finished and then have a mammoth session of cleaning up, filling and primer/painting.

Got to say that this is my most adventurous use yet of the 3D printers, but its more down to getting the best use out of Openscad that anything else, though learning which printer settings work best on which parts is something that I have learned over time.

This is looking formidable. When designing this, I guess alot of time goes into working with the software itself. But how much would you say, are the actual costs to print those parts, in terms of plastic and printer use?

The cost in £'s...probably the most worthless currency on the planet right now. lol:

Bulldog lower hull. £25
Panzer III tracks. £15

...depends where you buy, beg, borrow or steal them from.

Time taken to design parts, well over 100 by the time it is completed. Over 2000 lines of code. I could reduce that as there are ways to do it....countless hours.

Printer. Plenty about at cheap prices if you avoid the branded pretty box ones. They all do the same. Stepper motors move belts, and the belts move the print bed and raise the hotend with each layer. They are incredibly simple machines, that just require setting up properly.

I print with PLA, no heated print bed required. 1.75mm PLA can be found for £12-£20 per 1kg reel on Ebay. The cheap stuff sells out fast, especially grey. Increasingly difficult to get hold of. If all of my designs and prints had worked first time I could probably have done the whole job with one 1kg reel. Another reason to avoid expensive branded printers is that they use cassettes of PLA, and charge silly money. Its just the same PLA as every other brand.

Here's each of mine printing