What's better than watching paint dry ... ?

[Adrian Harris]

Watching plastic melt

Sherman return roller brackets being made from PLA.

Lots to learn but good fun so far and out of the cold and the wet for a change.

Adrian.

[Maarten Schutjes]

Nice,

Which machine do you use? I had an Ultimaker for several years but recently switched to a Zortrax

[Adrian Harris]

This is a Cel Robox.

It's quite odd having to think about how to make parts by adding material, rather than by removing it.

Adrian.

[Maarten Schutjes]

Ahh the cell robx. 3d hubs had some nice things to say about thar machine.

Personally Iwould use ABS for parts like rollers. ABS has a decent amount of flex to it and it tends to bend rather than snap when put under pressure. PLA is more brittle.

Enjoy!

[Adrian Harris]

I had a read through some of the reviews and "Best Of..." lists and this one seemed to be favourable, plus it's one of the few to advertise 20µm layers.

I have a roll of ABS on order, but am playing with the PLA roll with which it arrived.

It seems to use Microsoft minutes to the print timings - the last one said it would be ready in 10 minutes and it took over 7 minutes to complete the first of seven layers !

Adrian.

[Maarten Schutjes]

Yes, you need to have patience

The parts for this oildrum took altogether almost 24 hours to print



And it took several days to get this lot designed and printed

[Adrian Harris]

What software do you use for the design ?

I've been using TurboCAD for a number of years but only really done 2D and 2.5D work with it. I've never really managed to get my head round the 3D design, though I'm slowly getting better.

The main problem seems to be that parts move in the 3D space unexpectedly, so what looks fine from the front is all over the place when viewed from the side

Adrian

[Maarten Schutjes]

I started with Cubify design. Very easy learning curve, very powerful/versatile and very affordable software. You can make parts and assemblys and 2d drawings of your designs as well. It only exports .STL. Which is what the 3D printersoftware needs.

After a year I was confident enough to upgraded to my current software; Cubify's bigger brother: Geomagic Design. It has even more features like folding sheet metal and im- and export solidworks and a lot of other files.

To give you an idea. This 1/6 scale boogie is designed in Cubify Design. First I designed the parts, then placed them into an assembly, to see if everything fitted.



You can also use the .STL files with CNC machines (In this case a program called Deskproto was used to convert partfiles exported as loose .STL files into a NC program file for a CNC milling machine).

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[Gian Marco Menozzi]

Hello,
if not mistaken is the suspension of the Stuart M5A1,
The're making?
I'm trying to fix my Stuart,
I'm going to montargli the tracks and the wheels of the Sherman Vantex,
you have also made the case for the rear suspension system / track you tend?
Marco

[colin fairweather]

very nice work

i use the up+2 great little printer and 123d design software a bit limited for larger prints but still very good and easy too use i would love to convert this to cnc but cost would be prohibitive

colin

[Maarten Schutjes]

Nice work Colin!

@Gian Marco. Yes these are for a Stuart but not for a plastic one. Sorry. And producing all the parts in metal (boogies, wheels, rear suspension etc, is very expensive.

[colin fairweather]

thanks maarten

[Gian Marco Menozzi]

Maarten Schutjes
Thanks for the answer,
I know the cost of achieving the metal pieces,
little by little I'm replacing the plastic parts with metal parts in my Stuart,
congratulations for the pieces you're designing,
you have a Wip on Stuart being on a forum?
so I do not go off topic on this forum
sorry for the bad english Help me with an automatic translator
Marco