RC Tank Warfare community hobby forum

and lashings and lashings of T26's...

SoCalBobS wrote:Thanks everyone for all the great info! Lest anyone have doubts about the ungainliness of this tank, watch this modern clip of a T-35 changing direction at a show.

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Thats totally wicked, what a beast

Still working on this tank. I posted this clip to show the action of a module randomly animating the four auxiliary turrets. It's the "Pololu Micro-Maestro". It can program up to six channels for servo speed, range of motion and frequency independently. I'm running four. Another builder used the two additional channels to program barrel elevation.

Delete - duplicate.

Astounding Sir, hats off to you and your team that helped.

What material did you print it out of? Was it ABS as recommended?

tankme wrote:What material did you print it out of? Was it ABS as recommended?

My buddy is the fabricator, I am the assembler (and publisher). This is his response to the same question on another forum.

1. It is PETG, which is slightly more temperature tolerant than PLA. I did not use ABS because it warps a lot. In retrospect, that should not be a problem for a small part like the track, and maybe I should try some ABS tracks. But I thought ABS would warp too much for large parts like the body, so I just stuck with PETG for everything.

2. These tracks have tiny features (at this scale) and I think they would not be useable without a very fine nozzle. I used a 0.25mm nozzle, and something like 95-100% infill.

3. I had trouble printing large batches of these at first. With the help of an infrared thermometer, I traced this problem down to uneven bed heating. When I set the bed to 80C, parts of the bed were at 80C, but other parts were at 108C. This melted and warped tracks on that part of the bed. I resolved this by backing off to a lower temperature (like 60C) starting with the second layer.

4. I initially had a lot of frustration with PETG but eventually found a profile that printed pretty much 100% reliably. I notice a lot of conflicting advice on the web about how to print PETG, but eventually found something that worked for me. If anyone wants the profile I used (for Lulzbot Taz 6 and Lulzbot Mini, with no enclosure), they can contact me.

My printer is enclosed and from what I've seen from other reviews it prints ABS really well so I may give it a shot and I guess if that doesn't work I'll switch to PETG. Just don't want it to melt down in the Texas sun. Yours looks great though.

Try a couple of large parts to test - one hull section, a side skirt or something. If it comes out without warpage, put it in the sun to see how it fares. Counting all parts and tracks, it's almost 500 parts! Have fun.

All the parts are on, all the mechanics work. Next step is painting, weathering and detailing.