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Hi It's definitely time to start a new thread today. Not that the Bearcat SS is finished (it will be soon), but because now I have started some work on the 44Bs and Zerda chassis. I'm very happy as I like to work on car with chassis variants simultaneously... let's recap first what we have. First a Zerda with a broken cage, and some tender loving care needed. It cames with the orignal wheels, the broken elements missing from the roll cage puzzle, a Beetle MRC body shell... There is some work for sure. The rear shocks are rears from a Super Hotshot. I might discover additional details later on... Second, some 44B chassis unused parts. And today, I got some cars joining the crew, including two 44B incomplete chassis. Let's detail the Hirobo 44B. A Hilux - SWB, and a LWB incomplete chassis : The 44B Hilux chassis is missing the top of the radio box, but beside this looks complete. The bodyshell is in pretty bad shape, but some key accessories are present, and will allow to create STLs. The LWB chassis is incomplete, but I don't see too much issue there at this stage.

Initially, when I got my two 44B chassis, I was at my friend's place to get 2 cars I had a deal on since few months... The first one is a Super Wheelie (7.2V, not the early version), with a Toytoa Land Cruiser body The second one is a Big Bear, with Lunchbox wheels (unfortunately, I don't have the chance to get one with nice original tires). I wanted those cars to model the chassis. And now that I have some ideas on how to proceed for the body shell, I may even do that. I tore down the Super Wheelie this afternoon, as the project box I was using for the Ninja got free this morning. The chassis is fairly simple. There is more parts on the bodyshell than on the chassis itself :-) At the end (it was definitely very quick to get it in parts), this is the content of my box... The Big Bear should follow at some point as well...

Bormac's midships reshuffled a bit my pipeline of work. In the plan, I wanted to go thru the Samurai model (and still want to go thru it), but since I need to tear down the number two to restart this, I'll start the car that was planned after the Samurai... I located last year a shop (not exactly nearby), with a guy passionate about vintage. Each time I get there, we can talk for hours... While I was there in September last year, he talked to me about a car that may be of interest for me... I got it in December. It's almost complete, I'm just missing a driver figure. It's an Hirobo, and it's one of the 2WD models they made. There was 3 variants based on the same chassis : Bearcat SS, Bearcat and Tomcat... I got a Bearcat SS. ABS bodyshell (the front bonnet), monoshock for the front, shock cylinders in plastic, roll cage and no wing. The differences for the variants were as follows: Bearcat - Lexan body shell (there was the roll cage under that one), wing, and metal shock cylinders, with a monoshock at front. Tomcat - Lexan body shell (the front bonnet), wing and roll cage, metal shock cylinder - one per wheel. The position of the shocks at the front left many people thinking that it was the same as the bearcat, as the second shock was relatively hidden under the bonnet. The chassis and arms are the same. I packed the Midships, and therefore, I have a box empty waiting for a car to get down to parts :). The Bearcat SS found a new home :-). Work plan : get the car to parts, cad it, clean and restore. I decided to remove the wheels today. I started by the front right wheel, and it did not start well: I can turn the nut, but the axle goes with it. No issues for the 3 other wheels, but I will need to find a solution...

Hello, Few weeks back, the postman delivered 3 parcels, among which there was two Marui rare cars: a Ninja, and a Shogun (from two different origins). It is quite exceptional get a Shogun, but to get a Shogun and a Ninja the same day is probably even more nowadays... Specially considering that there was also a Samurai in very nice shape in the last parcel of that day... The Ninja chassis is in good shape, with its bumper and all the elements that comes with it. The body shell will require a replacement. And I have already some multipurpose driver figures from The Optima House to complete it so its good. The rear transmission seemed to be locked but upon inspection, it seems that there was an mistake made to rebuilt it and a long screws on the shaft cover instead of a short one was the cause of this. This is sorted. I will still need to do a full tear off to clean it up, but beside that, it looks fine. For the Shogun, the situation is more difficult: - the rear gearbox will require some work. - Front gearbox is missing the D-Cut bevel gear which transmit the power from the rear, the central shaft and the joints - for the wheels, 3 rims are broken (they are extremely rare, probably even more than Samurai ones) - Driver is missing (but same as for the Ninja, I will have an easy solution). Bumper is missing (it is the same as the Ninja but the color is different), and the battery door is missing as well (as often on those Marui chassis). I had already a solution for the central shaft and joints. I'll probably have to model the d-cut bevel gear to complete this. I did not tear the Shogun yet, but worst case scenario, I have already some small metal bevel gears ready just in case (I had an opportunity to get those, and since I would like to have a Coors as well at some point, that could be useful). Further, if my understanding is correct, the Samurai rear diff is the same as both front and rear diffs used in Ninja/Shogun (and that means the spare diff set from Aristcraft I have could be used as well, but I will have to specifically confirm this in situ). Yesterday, I decided to get into the operations. And I decided to focus first on the battery door. It is a simple part. I took the measures and did it in Fusion 360. 15 minutes later, I had this. And this morning, I test printed my door... Not bad, a quarter of millimeter to review on the locks and that's it (I believe it could work that way, but as it is already difficult to get the battery door out, it's not what I call perfect so I corrected it). Then, putting all the pictures together in my files (like I do always with my RC cars projects, for which every pictures you see on a thread is before stored in a folder for the pictures of the project, next to the documentation and so on), I discovered there was two version of the battery door. Here is the picture I received from a friend with a Marui T-Bird Coors. There is some ribs added at the rear end, likely to protect the gearbox. For the small story, I had some discussions recently with a friend with another T-Bird Coors, and that one don't have the ribs. I did further search on internet, and found some pictures with Shogun with the battery door with the ribs... My assumption is that those ribs were added at the time of the introduction of the Shogun (and there was a few months of T-Bord Coors production without them - T-Bird released in August 1987, and Shogun released in December 1987). I decided to rework my Battery door design to add ribs (it definitely makes sense to protect the gearbox): I do not have precises measurements for the ribs, so I made them up from the thickness (I had a picture from my friend with the Coors indicating this), proportion and lining up elements with other elements, and the size of the gearbox part it is supposed to protect... I did the design with MJF/SLS PA12 printing in mind, so it had to respect some thickness rules to be printed anywhere... I'll share the parts on my thingiverse at some point when I will have the final part printed. And while I did start this project officially, that doesn't mean it will run quickly like the others that are on top of the priority list, so don't expect this one to move fast Thanks

Hi, Beside my attachement for my first buggy and other dreams of my teenager's times, I really like unusual or weird things. My 22nd RC car is at home. It's complete, but it requires a LOT of work (more than TLC). Rather than be called a car, it should be call a project. How to describe it: The first of a kind is probably one of the best definition. It's quite rare... Teaser : I will update the thread name and content in due time, when someone will find what it is :-)

Hi TC designers, I need to design some 2D parts that will get CNC cut out of carbon fiber. I have done it in the past with SolidWorks and got the parts made by FibreLite. A very rewarding experience that I want to reconduct. Back then I was a member of the Experimental Aircraft Association (I have a few hobbies...) and I would get some sort of a student version for free that I could use as long as I was not making money etc. I just want to build the parts for myself. Now, they changed the deal with EAA and long story short is I need to fork the full 100$ per year to get that student license back. Since I will only be designing that one part for my M-05 this year, the 100$ fee is a little steep. What is everyone using for CAD? Again this is for 2D carbon fiber, not 3D printing. Feel free to PM me if that is more appropriate. Thanks!

Hi everyone, Recently a project I had in mind materialised... The Marui Samurai 4WD was one of my dreamt cars when I was 15 years old. I never got one back in the time. This car looked awesome and aggressive. It maybe the most beautiful roll cage buggy of those times, ahead of the Javelin (which is still very nice and totally among my favorites). For the technical specs : 4WD 3 Differentials Chain transmission 1070g ! And what is really awesome is its look. It really looks aggressive, with bigger diameter rims and low profile tyres on the front, and some smaller rims and bigger tires at the rear end. And the driver figure is much more realistic than what it was on Marui's Hunter and Galaxy... Few press articles I found out while searching for information (not exhaustive list - I'm still searching for more) Marui Samurai Test track - Radio Control Model Cars - March 1986 : https://www.overrc.com/vintage/documentation/archives-de-mike/Marui Samurai MC.pdf (source: www. overrc.com) Marui Samurai - Radio Race Car International - April 1986 : https://www.overrc.com/vintage/documentation/archives-de-mike/Marui Samurai.pdf (source: www. overrc.com) Marui Samurai Track test - Radio Control Model Cars - July 1986 : https://www.overrc.com/vintage/documentation/archives-de-mike/Mauri Samurai MC Track Test.pdf (source: www.overrc.com) The Samurai 4WD (french) - Auto RCM - February 1986 : https://www.retromodelisme.com/article_page/1589/samurai-4wd-marui.html (source : retromodelisme.com) Marui Samurai Banzai! (french) - Auto 8 - February 1986 : https://www.retromodelisme.com/article_page/4227/essai-samourai-marui-marui.html (source : retromodelisme.com)[/list] Long story short, searches were active on "Marui" in many places for ages before even I started my Hunter project. And I saw some Samurai going thru... Until I decided it was time... Few weeks ago, I contacted someone in the region where I was born and where my parents are still living. For the small story, the guy posted some pics of his Samurai on a group asking question on a car he was considering as he'd like to be able to use it without the fear of breaking something, and that was the day of my 50's anniversary... We discussed and it appear thru the discussion that the guy knew my uncle, and he accepted to book the car for me for a few months. I asked my father to go and buy the car for me, but was not sure how long it would take for him to do... Decided it was time to find some parts for a project, found one set of rear plates for almost nothing and ordered them, intension was to tease about the car on some forums A Marui chassis is always a thing to bother about when you start a Marui project. Dadio was selling one of his modeled chassis on ebay, he gave me the link and I was alone to bid on it. The day I received the chassis, one good friend in another forum contacted me to proposed me a Samurai with a broken chassis, as he knew that I was that in mind. Having a chassis already, I thought the chassis was made for this one, so I decided to go for it The first of the two Samurai arrived home last week, with a Galaxy roll cage and few parts. It's not complete, but I don't mind. This is a project, a new journey, and will keep me busy for some time, which is definitely what I'm looking for :-D Yesterday, after getting the Nichimo Spirit FF down to parts, I decided it was time to do the same with the Samurai to have a more precise idea of what was needed for it. Status at the end of what is missing or need rework : Left and right chassis to replace (Thanks Dadio to the rescue) Middle Front Bulkhead broken Gearbox damaged with a lot of play for the center diff (I believe the car was probably running forward in RWD and backward in FWD :-D) Rear right arm slightly damage where the pivot ball is placed. Luckily, it seems that I can just inverse the arms to get that back to work[ One of the front Knuckle is damaged (again a thread which was damaged) Missing a roof, and roll cage requires work Driver missing On the good side : not everything is bad, and with the play on the gearbox, I feel very lucky having none of the gears to replace... And there is also the second Samurai I'll probably not have in hands before Xmas. In any case, this is one of the new background routing I'll regularly post about in the next few weeks/months... That's all for today!

Unexpected, somehow I still have no words for what is happening right now. And I need to tell the long story, as it is part of what came as a result of the Nichimo Spirit FF project for me. Few weeks back, an Australian guy mentioned he was searching rear arms for a Nichimo FF car in one comment of my posts on Facebook. I had the link as I had a set in my ebay watch list (for no reason as the intention was to get them printed anyway), so I gave him the link... Discussing with another friend I discovered this guy was behind a Youtube channel (TRUE VINTAGE RC, https://www.youtube.com/user/Bormac073), and looking at few videos, I found them quite interesting and detailed, so I subscribed... Few weeks later (it was about 3 or 4 weeks ago), my Nichimo Spirit FF was printed and built. And that week, that same guy, Jason, alias @BORMAC, posted he needed parts as he received an incomplete kit from Europe. Among the missing part, there was some which I could help with my own now unused parts as replaced by 3D printed ones, and the broken chassis I thought myself I could not do anything with it. Jason told me he would get the buyer to pay for the shipment, and I told ok, and on the next day, the parts were going to Australia (and if I can see a nice video on those cars, that will be a nice bonus already). 2 weeks ago, I was in the car sitting doing nothing as one of my colleagues was driving while we went back from a 3 day trip for business... And Jason contacted me as he found a car in France on ebay, but the seller would not ship to Australia... He asked me if I can help again. I said why not. Jason knew from the discussions we had earlier that I would be interested to model that car as well, and he proposed me not only to get the car going to me, but to allow me to tear it down to parts, get it in CAD and then send the package to him... I was finding this a bit crazy, a lot of gamble (specially with a seller who got only to feedbacks on ebay), but that was Jason gamble... On the next days, I helped him a bit with the translation, gave him my full details so he can eventually get it send to me, but I was kind of thinking that story could turn in a nightmare as well... This morning I got advised (I had the tracking link so I knew it was incoming) that I had to get the parcel from the destination point (a relay nearby). Jason told me "it's going to be amazing or a nightmare". Here is what was in the package: A Nichimo RC Midships 443 WDS. So it is definitely amazing :-) Some parts are common with the FF cars, and I'll start to model it soon This is typically the kind of things that tells me that putting the stls on Thingiverse for the Spirit FF was a good thing. I have the authorization from this car owner to do a proper thread, and I'll start that as soon as I start to tear the car down to parts... Well, I was not really able to wait that much to do something. I need a empty box to get it down to parts, so I just started to have a look at something easy for today. I took a wheel off, and modeled the rim. That was quick to start. I could not help doing it :-) I'll get a box tomorrow while on the way back from the office and the car will get a proper tear down.

Completion of this project has been almost a decade in the making... Commercial-level high-rez resin 3D printers had been sitting beyond $200,000 for all of the nineties and even when smaller desktop units dropped below $20k by 2011, their build envelope was only large enough to cram 5 or 6 custom ring designs into... IOW, not terribly applicable for 1:10th scale modeling. Jewelry casting resin was $175 a liter. Disruptors came on the scene with their $2500 resin printers. In 2012, this was a downright bargain compared to my first printer at $15k. Resin was "less" costly at $100/liter. Reasonable expense for paying clients, but remains extravagant for hobby tinkering -- and the build envelope stayed minuscule at 5.7 x 3.2 cm. The only way to fit a standard on-road 26mm wheel into this space is to orient it upright. I attempted this very exercise around 2014 but the end-result wasn't worth posting here. Problem? Vertical print position pooled and caused a resin imbalance. The build-envelope constraint permitted no other alternative attempts. The wildly off-balance wheel was only good for shelf display. 2019 is the next watershed year where resin 3D printers have started tickling the $200 milestone. How'd they achieve this? By utilizing super-inexpensive components from the cellphone industry -- deploying a relatively cheap 2k-resolution smartphone screen rather than building a 3D printer around a $1000 theatre projector makes all the difference in final cost. All the buzz became loud enough to take notice. At $200, there are indeed some cheap resin printers cost-wise but also cheap in quality; questionable design features abound. Experience proved invaluable in identifying features to avoid. The standout winner worthy of a spot in the stable is the Elegoo Mars at $250. Jaw-dropping price point no matter how you cut it. Tons to like: Stretched-film release design similar to my $15k printer suggesting low-maintenance workhorse reliability/repeatability. Superb Z-axis rigidity using a linear-rail like design. A wobbly Z-axis arm can cause disastrous banding in the print. User-replaceable critical components as demonstrated by their own instructional YouTube videos. Crack the masking screen? $40-ish replacement makes things right. Considerable leap in the build envelope. The Elegoo is able to print what fits within 11.9cm x 6.8cm (x 15.5cm height) and still maintains a 50-micron resolution. Color touch-screen control. Files read off a thumb drive. Prior resin printers mandated tethering to a dedicated computer to drive the projector. (itself limited to a bulb lifespan) After running a few calibration tests (largely unnecessary and for my own satisfaction), it was time to address my long awaited project. 26mm width BMW Style 35 wheel fitted to a Tamiya hex hub. Elegoo Mars 3D printer. Quickly Glowforged a pedestal storage box for it and made sure there was resin on-hand. One liter of their resin is just $45. Third-party resins can be used as long as they're formulated for these kinds of masked-SLA printers. Laser SLA like Formlabs and Moai require different resin formulations. Still, not many are gonna beat $45/liter! The free support & slicing ChiTuBox software has quite a bit of nice features coming from this veteran resin jockey. The ways to identify & edit supports for undercuts or floating islands is praiseworthy. One nit is that there's no apparent publicly centralized data pot for exposure times for Elegoo resins. Possibly walled off in their Facebook page. The product box only provides a range -- thus my initial tests. Small-object test prints suggested that my settings for Elegoo Black Resin be 60 seconds for the first 5-6 layers and all subsequent layers can be at 6-seconds exposure. As shown here, the represented build platform has plenty of space to accommodate an on-road wheel. For reasons outside the scope of this hobby forum, a flat lay-down positioning of the wheel isn't necessarily the most recommended, but I've printed using two alternate ways and got away with successful prints. ChiTuBox goes as far as asking how much I paid for this batch of resin and can calculate the projected volume of resin used and total cost of parts put on the build platform. Let me do the math for you.. a liter of resin ought to yield around 66 Tamiya wheels. Toss the sliced file onto a USB thumb drive and feed it to the printer. Here's the angled & supported version... What kind of detail does 50-micron yield? Hex heads on the lug bolts resolved with a faithfully reproduced dimple at the center of every one! Here 'tis mounted to the M-04L chassis... spins just as nicely as the Tamiya-made wheels. No off-balance issues. Giving the back part of the rim a squeeze shows that it takes nearly DOUBLE the effort over Tamiya's ABS plastic to start deforming. At roughly 1mm resin wall thickness, the toughness observed so far suggests it would fare no worse than manufactured wheels. Once I get my hands on more resin vats, I'll dedicate each one to their own resin making for super-quick printing material changes... black, grey, white, translucent, etc Now all the things that normally get scuffed up (side mirrors, body posts) can be easily and affordably re-grown on the high-res 3D printer. Onto the possibilities of fabricating all the details I only dreamt of decades ago... windshield wipers, light buckets, suspension arms, action cam mount...