RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

I have a complete basket case of a Tiger 1 sat on a shelf, so having been to Bovington last week and taken a load of pics of 131, I thought I would see what it would take to turn the aforementioned basket case into something resembling the real thing, but at minimal cost. I am going to try and do this without spending any money. This is for two reasons, I want to see what I can achieve with 3D printing parts, and also because I am a complete tightwad.

The Tiger 131 pics are here,

viewtopic.php?f=183&t=20729

and the more astute will see that there are whole host of differences between the HL Tiger and 131. I can't promise that I will get all of the dents etc right (trying to put dents into 3D printed parts isn't as easy as it is with plastic moulded parts).

I took a saw to the BB barrel, and printed an extension piece. It is reinforced on the inside to keep it all aligned.
I have also spent a great deal of time designing the early Feifel air filters, they are in several parts that all go together, plus I am using styrene tube and some of the original mouldings. The green that you can see is the filler that I use to infill the ridges that 3D printing inevitably produces.

This will be a long term project, that I will work on when I am bored....

Looks good so far , looking forward to many more pics during the build.

My hero will you be making more of the early (Twin Pot) Feifel Air cleaners,
At the moment the only source is "Sprue J" from Tamiya which includes all manner of bits and pieces that are usually not needed, consequently to get the Air cleaners costs a fortune,
Shaun.

It took a few designs and redesigns to get them ok, I am also using an ancient reel of filament that I was going to throw away, but it is worth using up on a test project like this.

If and when I get around to buying fresh filament I might think about running a few off for those that want them. I looked at the sprue and it was $29? so thought that I would give this way a go. Each part takes around 30-90 minutes to print? I might upload the designs to Shapeways and see what they charge to print them, they would be much higher quality that way.

This is what I had to test to get the parts the way that I wanted them. I just need to stick some styrene tube in the bottom of all four, I have some 12 sided twisted hose on the printer at the moment...and that is taking forever...

You would be very popular amongst those of us who enjoy building early Tigers if you could get "Shapeways" to take an interest,
I could make a list of the different modifications I would like to see but I feel that I would be pushing my luck.
Shaun.

I half expected to see myself in your pics of 131. I took quite a few pics when I was there the other day too, and would be happy to share if you need owt

Well the damned hoses are proving a challenge using the 'past its sell by date' filament. Printing hollow tubes forces the printer to move the print head away from the tube between layers to allow the filament to cool, and printing it solid prints too hot and causes the filament to mess up. There is a solution but I am giving it a rest and will tackle it later....

I will also upload the parts to Shapeways and see what's what.

Fixed the horrible hose printing and produced four of them. One side is almost done, I can do the other side tomorrow.

The light makes them look worse than they are, but they are 12 sided, and will look like hoses by the time I have finished with them.

There I was ferreting about in my spares box, I never throw anything away, and what do I see? Airbrush hose?? I can use that to get the braided effect on the air intakes, it's exactly the right size and I can cut it to any length I want. Sorted.

jarndice wrote:You would be very popular amongst those of us who enjoy building early Tigers if you could get "Shapeways" to take an interest,
I could make a list of the different modifications I would like to see but I feel that I would be pushing my luck.
Shaun.

I just uploaded a file to Shapeways, that would print the whole thing as one piece. It would cost just under £10 to print each filter unit, which means that the Tamiya sprue would be a better option. I might be able to get that price down if I redesigned it but that will have to wait for another day.