Armortek

Hot out of the printing soup the fire extinguisher handles. Mark Hawkins has done a really nice job of just what I asked for.

If there's something you like drawing up and printing in extra fine detail, PM him and he may be able to help you out.

This is just the handle, collars nuts and wire will have to be made to suit.
I made my brackets not knowing how far the handles would stick out some time ago. The handles are slightly larger (10%) than the old fire extinguisher they are copied from, I was worried they may look too small, detailed but out of scale. A 1/6 hand shows it should look great when the bracket is bent and the handle fitted.
With these handles you can make them as complex as you wish, I'm just keeping mine simple with the collar and nuts.
Unless a change of mind there are four interested parties, I have two spare pairs left.

Cute little handle.

Vince

Cute little handle in place Vince, well, one side only so far. Just got to put in the fake cable and bracket. But before doing that, have made yet another tripping hazard on the front armor deck.
A piece of tin plate trunking that protects the cables from the Dozer junction box on the full size tank. I've made it up from thin aluminum sheet cut and glued together.
A paper template was made, and after 4 hiccups (including one reverse image) I had something that resembles the piece, a few glued on bolts and a couple of brackets and it should be good to go.
The full size piece in the last picture.

Dozer cable cover all painted up and bolted down. On reflection I wished I'd cut back the front Armor plate and sculptured as David Battson and other's have. Then the mud guard support could have been made larger as with the full size Tank. But is what it is.
The dummy extinguisher cable is fitted (A solid core PVC covered wire) with clip, and rubber seal washer made with a paper hole punch and a black plastic folder partition, small hole drilled and it looks the part. I can finally bolt down the bins this side, waiting for the extinguisher cylinder to be glued on later.
Might bolt it on, my gluing looking a bit iffy with the close ups.
A bit of tidying up me thinks Ah, there's always tomorrow

Hi Jhon
I have looked at your build a few times and I enjoy what you create with hand tools, these are great skills and patience for details.
Nowadays CAD programs and CNC machines they make things easier but also take the joy out of hand-crafted details.
I am glad to see that there are still people who do things this way,

Regards
Stanislav

I have so much to learn, However, I'm definitely in the right place .Please can you tell me where I can get the red fire extinguisher handles? Sorry if I have missed it somewhere else .

Hi Clive
I got my friend Mark H to design and print a few out, I think there's a pair left. PM me and I'll give you the details.

Thank you I will work out how to pm you

Stanislav, Thank you, I like to think of it as a rustic shed industry, where if the power goes out I can continue by candle light.
There is some jealousy when you see the marvels of high tech machining and 3d printing, but that's the nice thing about this hobby the sharing of information and creativity with old and new technologies.

Hi Clive, PM sent.

Stripped out the power distribution panel today to check the wiring and connections before buttoning down the deck for paintwork.
I have resoldered all the flying plugs to the red boxes having found few joints I wasn't happy with previously.

Chieftain as many will know is a very heavy model and probably takes the control gear to the edge of the R/C equipment limits. So everything has to be tip top in my opinion once the covers go on.

Stripping down the distribution board did expose some weak joints that have now been redone and hopefully will now give a good service from now on.

This is one of the early red box systems and only has one fuse for the smoker circuit, supposably because the heater could short circuit in some way. The ESC's should protect themselves with internal protection. Not sure if the sound module and amp is covered, don't think so.

So to add a little more protection, a 50 amp breaker has been fitted to protect the whole circuit should a major unexpected current be drawn.

The pictures show the wiring in the power distribution box after the sleeving was removed, there were no bare wires on the sockets,
I had to remove the sockets to repair them. Those tiny 2mm button set screws were right mummies to loosen.

Due to the high levels of current expected on the incoming supply wiring, I also soldered the loop terminals even though they'd been crimped.
I'm sure they were good for fifty amps but there's nothing like a bit of insurance too.


After rejointing and before refitting.

Will we ever see it running?

Just joking.
Pulling your leg a bit.

Take your time. After all it's the journey that counts.

Vince

No Vince, you are completely correct. It has taken far too long. Had this been an Tamiya kit it would have been on the shelf gathering dust years ago
And I blame the other Marvelous builders on the forum for it all! What fantastic jobs they have made of their models.

A long long time ago in a galaxy far far away (before covid) Chieftain began with Phil Woolard, setting a high bar that was nearly out of view and it's been all up hill from there on. Then there's David Battson Mk3 master piece setting an even higher bar that needs binoculars to see

Phil's and Youngjae showed us what we were getting and what could be achieved. Then other hobbies and life got in the way.
Thankfully I have Centurion to take out when a I get the urge to play with something heavy with tracks.

The deck has been replaced and model turned on the bench, so I'm starting again down the passenger side now. Most of the detail has been done. fill a few gaps and lift the long bin up 6mm. Fit and sort out any wobbles on the road wheels and I soon might a have a rolling chassis, clearing the bench for the turret build. into the new year.

It's is The ever lasting gob stopper.

Managed to get some time on the Chieftain over the last couple of weeks, 2nd Extinguisher handle fitted, and finally getting the road wheels on. I added longer set screws on the road wheels allowing washers and M3 Nylock's to be used. All stainless, no expense spared, no rusty lug nuts here.

Now hopefully getting the hull off that dolly.

I used the lift table and some short ramps to lift the hull high enough to slip the Dolly out. Once off the work bench, I can now start on the cast turret, lovely.

Not That dolly! Hello Dolly Hannibal making sure it all went to plan.

Lovely work John.

Cheers Charles

Thank you Charles. Trying
Ahh, the Chieftain Turret, what a beauty of curves it is, but not for the faint hearted, a crippler in fact if your not careful. It weighs a lot, making the KT turret child's play. And that was heavy.
From the beginning I was going to do something a little different than a standard Armortek options turret build. So the turret was going to be upside down for a while with three modifications to develop.

First, Remake the slip ring support bracket so that the slip ring device is more central so the wiring will do less sweeping inside the hull.

Second, A form of automized stabilization, nothing to complicated, but something that can be tinkered with on a relatively small budget no special tools and off the shelf bits and bobs.
And Third, a centralized push pull recoil system like the Armortek Centurion because it seems the best and most reliable system I can fit without having to change any major parts. The original Chieftain system draws on the side of the barrel, not as good as the central draw in my opinion.

The original Armortek slip ring bracket is set well off center, (70mm+) so I cut a similar looking bracket from aluminum and mounted it off the traverse gear ring, stepped above the pinon gear for clearance. The central point is still off center by 30mm but the sweeping effect should be less than half of the original position and its as close as I can get without attacking the recoil bracket.

Stabilization I thought like many would look really cool. But it's complicated especially on two axis. And anything going wrong with traverse could be devastating to the model and anything within the gun length arc.
The modification I've fitted is a single axis of gun up and down with override. The only way I could see to do this on the cheap is to use a big fat servo, a model submarine self leveling device and a servo slow motion controller. Oh and 1.8kg of lead and a bump stop!
I've used most of Armortek's original mounting points and added extra length to the recoil frame to suspend an extra two counter weights bolted together. Armortek's original counter weight (630g) has been removed and replaced with three lead weights totaling 1.8kg. This is to reduce the weighted leverage on the servo by the very long gun length.
A bump stop has been attached to the turret roof to stop overtravel of the servo when the power is switched off or stopping the gun banging into the hull in a malfunction.
In operation with the self leveling device fitted drives the gun quite fast, this causes inertia and bounce and maybe causes a "hunting" effect.
To counteract this effect a servo slow control device is fitted, which smooths out the action and no bounce is noticed other than that from the barrel slide. There may be some lag but this can be tinkered with at a later date when fitted to the hull. The self leveling device also allows manual override so the gun can be positioned via the transmitter. I don't expect it to be perfect just something to entertain if it works well in the frontal arc.

Phew, Finally, while I was messing around with the elevation I saw the possibility of modifying the recoil drive system from the side push pull system to what I think is more reliable and smoother the centralized pull push system as mounted in Centurion. Just my opinion and not difficult to do adding brass bush into the barrel pivot point which is nice.
A servo reverse device is required because the servo has been mounted in an opposite position and now works backwards. I'm not going to fiddle with the red box recoil unit or the servo as it is simpler to fit the reverser that costs less than £5.00

I should add, all of Armortek options supplied are very robust and easy to fit. They probably shouldn't be messed with, but I like a challenge especially the stabilization effect, Or I should say an autonomy system that could not be achieved with the basic screw jack system supplied.

Hi John.
Looking forward to see how you go on with the stabilisation system, for me it sounds like a much better option ie simple .
Your idea of adding a big chunk of weight at the breach end to balance the gun should work but I may look at reducing the weight of the gun itself to save on overall turret weight.
Regards
Steve