RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

The plan is to make it as strong as possible, designing it so that there are as few parts as possible. It's all done apart from needing a pair of short shaft gearboxes. I reduced the parts list to:

Rear hull
Front hull
Front upper hull
Roadwheels x 12
Idler x 2
Idler spacers x 2
Sprocket x2
Suspension arms x 12
Stainless suspension springs (bought them in 100mm lengths and cut 12)
Suspension spring mounts x 2
Panzer III/IV tracks.

It's all held together with stainless hex bolts, stainless washers and nuts, so can be dismantled if it ever needs maintenance. It also now has smaller sprockets. Once the Festive postal chaos is out of the way I can order some gearboxes, and get it completed.

Still progressing, need a pair of short shaft gearboxes to get it up and running, but before I can fit them I need to dismantle the whole thing and paint it. The best/easiest/fastest trick I know for 3D printed parts is plastic bumper paint. In the UK Halfords do it for less than £7 a can, and it is amazing for smoothing surfaces.

Love the build Rob, and great tip about the paint

Alwyn

This truck is 3D printed and sprayed firstly with the bumper paint, and then a gloss coat. It's as hard as nails, I've rolled it down quarry cliff faces over rocks and hardly scratched it. It's silky smooth high gloss.

Looking damn good so far, we need more "late soviet" items to go with my TOPOL truck

Would be curious to do a test of just how strong the body is with the bumper paint/gloss though as I see alot of people take care of RC models as if they are super fragile wine glasses

The shell on the MB is 2-3mm thick, so it's as strong as it can be. I had to print the front and rear separately but they are glued and bolted together to make it all one solid lower hull.

Great looking build Rob, the crawler is very good looking too

Will this have the same electronics as your other builds with sound etc?

Sure, I rarely use RX18's nowadays, so I will find a TK22/24 with suitable sounds and run it with that. Of course, until I actually fire it up I have no idea if it will run nicely, though everything lines up and rotates smoothly, so it should do. The odd thing is that these don't have return rollers, my only concern is whether the plastic tracks will flex sideways on the upper run and detrack it. There is only one way to find out?

Just to prove it actually runs, though it needs decent gearboxes as these are scrap plastic ones and one of the final drive shafts is slipping like crazy.

it's so cool
i love it