Leopard 2A4 to Gepard 1A2

[JesseGuthritsch]

Hello fellow tank nerds! I will be making my first Armortek kit when my Lepard 2A4 kit arive and I am excited!

I will be moding the chassi to more resemble the 1A2 varent so to look more like a Gepard AA tank.

Then I will be installing 2 HPA airsoft "engines" (becasue they call them engines for some reason) that will match the Gepard firing rage of 1,100 rounds per minute and be firing almost exactly 1/6" scale ammunition (5.95mm plastic bbs). The cool part will ve the red glow in the dark bbs that will look like tracer rounds in low light conditions.

I was to match the 1/6th scale to most things but I want the turrent to be able to rotate at the same rate as the full sized tank which is: 0deg to 180deg in 4 seconds for the tilt axis and 360deg per 8 seconds of unlimited rotation in the other axis.

For drive system I am shooting for a 1/6gh scale max speed of about 11km per hour.


Right now I'm prototyping the airsoft guns. All the dimensions are just guesses until the Lepard tank chassi arrives and I can get the final dimensions into CAD. I'm mostly just confirming everything will work how I think it will... spooler, it already doesn't.

I am have a little trouble in my bb feeding mechanism as it keeps wanting to jam but besides that the guns work well. I am thinking about making 2 feeding mechanisms and then some sort of 2 passage bb rotary union.



Anyways, I thought I would should some progress of my early prototyping of my Gepard MOD. Here's some pictures:

[JesseGuthritsch]

Some pictures of my dual gun setup with a bb slitter that isnt working very well at the molment.

[Adrian Harris]

> 360deg per second of unlimited rotation

You won't need to fire the BBs, they'll fire out with the centrifugal force

Adrian

[JesseGuthritsch]

Dangit, I meant to put "360deg of turret rotation per 8 seconds" and not per second as that would be scarey.

I edited the first post to fix that.

[Adrian Harris]

Can't wait to see it in action

Adrian.

[Mark Heaps]

Always interested in solving technical problems but need some clarification here as to the actual symptoms to aid my fault-finding due to it being a 2-gun system..
Jamming ( stopping firing and requiring some intervention to unjam ) or misfeeding ( erratic firing )?
Zooming into the photos could suggest either as the feed tube for one side is fully loaded, the other side is not.
Which side is not firing as you wish ?
The fully loaded side ( jammed ) Loaded but not firing ? Mechanical misalignment in feed mechanism at the gun or too much free space there allowing 2 BBs to jam against each other
or
Other side not fully loaded (misfeed) ?, could fire more but the BBs are not getting to it. Entry end of feed-tube squashed / deformed or otherwise lightly obstructed restricting the entry of the BBs into it or less underpressure on that side preventing the BBs from being pulled into it as they are being pulled to the other side more strongly?
A top or hopper feed ( rotating the splitter 180 degrees vertically so that the BBs drop into it and then seperate out to the two sides ) may be better for a 2-gun arrangement reducing the suction effects each has on the other during their cycle of firing.

[JesseGuthritsch]

I wish I could post larger files on this forum as I have slow motion footage of the jamming mode.

The bb feeding mechanism was jamming from time to time but some spring steel fixed that and I have fed a few 1000s bb with out any jams. The poblem I am now having is I was trying to feed the 1,100 bb per minute threw 1 tube and then divert it to 2 streams to the 2 guns and after 14 diverter designs, I cound not get a jam proof Y splitter.

I was thinkng I needed 1 stream of bbs as the ammo and feeding mechanism would be part of the forward chassi and I didnt want to have to make some sort of roraty union for 2 streams of bbs but then I was like yo Jesse, how do real tanks do it. And then I realized it would be much easier to make the bb feeding mechanism and the ammo storage as part of the turrent that just under the turret. That way I could just feed each gun with it own feeding mechanism and just have independent piping to each gun.

I have an IG account that I post updates (like my slow motion video of the jamming) if you dont hate that particular social media.

my IG name is: huskymachining

[Frank Breitenbach]

Hello Jesse
Do you know that the Gepard is based at the Leopard 1?
One aditional information: Th distace between the 3th and the 4th wheel is 100 mm lager.
All the best
Frank

[JesseGuthritsch]

I wish Armortek was making a Leopard 1 but im too inpatient to wait so I was going modify the leopard 2 chassis the best I could to resemble thr leopard 1 chassis. I knew from the lengths online that the chassis where slightly differnt lengths and the front leading armor angle looks different.

I did not know the distance between the 3rd and forth wheel are 100mm larger. Are you saying that the leopard 2 has the extra gap or the leopard 1? I do have a few decent tools to make the nessiasry Modifications. I just wish I could find some decent prints of the Leopard 1 to use so im not just going off of pictures on google.

[Peter Quambusch]

Hi Jesse,

Nice idea, but far too much work....
It´s not only the distance between the wheels, it´s the whole system, that´s different.
The hull is longer, the tracks, hatches, sides, everything is different, ....
It would be a lot easyer to start from scratch top build a Leo 1...
I know that, as I drove both during my active service.

Cheers

Peter

[Ed Groenenberg]

Just wondering, have you considered long spiraled spring tubes for the feed in?

Some years ago I followed a forum thread of a guy who did make a 3 barrel Chrono Blaster (from Halo).
he did use these spirals to feed the bb's from the back to the middle where the engines were..
That apparently worked better compared to flexible pipes.

[Peter Quambusch]

Some measurements:

Leo 1 Leo 2

Lenght: 9543 mm 9670 mm
Width: 3370 mm 3700 mm 3760 mm (Skirts)
Clearance: 440 mm 540 mm 500 mm (Rear)

[JesseGuthritsch]

he did use these spirals to feed the bb's from the back to the middle where the engines were..
That apparently worked better compared to flexible pipes.

I treid soft and hard plastic tubing and the soft sucked and jamed all the time. The hard plastic tubing worked okay but for the final design i think im going with honed SS tubing and 3d printed or machined 45 and 90 degree elbows. Last night I machinded a new feeding mechanism that feeds 2 streams and as soon I make the 2 path ways out of the SS tubing and connecting brackets, ill test it out for jamming and reliability (fingers crossed!!).

[JesseGuthritsch]

Hi Jesse,

Nice idea, but far too much work....
It´s not only the distance between the wheels, it´s the whole system, that´s different.
The hull is longer, the tracks, hatches, sides, everything is different, ....
It would be a lot easyer to start from scratch top build a Leo 1...
I know that, as I drove both during my active service.

Cheers

Peter

You dont think it would be possible or practical to alter the Leopard 2 chassis to look like the Leopard 1 chassis?

last year I spent months designing a sutable suspension system for this prioject of mine and then I discovered the Armortek kit and thought it would at least save me the design time of the susspension and tracks systems and those systems looked very similar to the Leopard 1s, at least to my untrained eye.

[Peter Quambusch]

Hi Jesse,

I´m not saying it´s impossible, but A LOT OF WORK....
E. g. the hull of Leo 2 is 3,7 meters to 3,37 meters Leo 1. So you have to cut out a section of everything, front, rear, torsion bars....
The tracks are totally different, so you need new tracks.
Engine deck layout is different, drivers hatch, hull sides, exhausts, storage boxes, etc, etc.
I´m not sure, but I think the wheels are smaller too...

See what I mean?

Might be easyer to go with the hull and put a KF 51 turret on top?!