stu22

I wouldn't buy that method of 3D printing sorry. Finish quality of your printed piece is less than acceptable. Go look at the Objet range of 3D printers and compare the output. It's opposite ends of the scale in print quality.

I'd have to agree. At the scale you're working with there would be a lot of finishing to do on something produced on a Cube, Makerbot, or anything else at the price point.

Of course, in the interest of science, if you send me a STL file I would be interested in how bad it would be At the scale you have I'd guess it would take less than 15 minutes to print and a few cents in plastic.

Also wondering, what's the build volume of your CNC? Are you going to try to do a complete mini-aluminum Hopper?

Everyone, I want to publicly apologize to the seller. I was completely wrong and went off half cocked and was not thinking.

I have contacted him and will do whatever it takes to make things right. This is my fault and I will take responsibility for my stupid actions.

Did you do anything to limit the travel of the dampers? The TRF set on my Baldre had a little too much travel so at full extension there were issues with the drive shafts staying in the cups. I just put an o-ring in the dampers which fixed the problem.

Only other thing I would add is a front one-way but that's more of a personal preference to how you want the car to handle.

Whilst I think 3D printing is cool, I don't think the plastic is very cheap, is it? If you already had all the other bits to bolt onto it then it might be worth it, but wouldn't this much material mean starting from scratch would cost more than buying, say, a basic HobbyKing 1:10 truggy?

Plastic is typically $45 for a 1kg spool.

You're right in thinking that the cost of printing parts is pretty high.

I used the excuse of printing out parts for my vintage collection as the excuse to get my Makerbot Thing-o-Matic. Of course I haven't had any time to play with the toys lately so nothing has broke but for the old Kyosho, Marui, and Associated cars, and the Tamiya models that have not been re-released, I can beat on them more than I used to and not worry about breaking something that I would then have to hunt down or end up buying yet another parts car for that one piece that you just can't find. The D-parts on the Falcon is one piece that comes to mind.

For anyone who want's to get a printer, keep in mind any of the sub $3k machines out there are really not "consumer products" yet. Despite the press they have been getting lately (along with Bre Pettis and his claims for the Replicator line) the printer is as much a hobby as a tool. You'll spend quite a bit of time tuning and tweaking to get it to work reliably.

This kind of technology could become cheaper, but I have to wonder about the plastics themselves given dwindling petroleum... But I suppose by then we can find alternative materials for these purposes.

A project like this is a hobbyist's dream!

Besides ABS, PLA is the other commonly used plastic for these printers. I believe it's made with some form of starch so it is a renewable resource. Currently it is not as tough as ABS, tending to be harder and more brittle but I'm sure there's some chemist hard at work fixing the problem.