Tankhobby

More progress, ready to prime and paint, test run video next week (hopefully)...


Test fit to lower chassis. The 76mm does have a taper to it, but you can't tell from this shot, must be the perspective. Wheels are off and being painted. This is going to take a LOT of paint!




Adding a white LED to the turret spotlight. Just enough thickness to get two wires through.


The light will be stationary. I could have made it so it turns with one of the knob controls on the transmitter but that was going to be a lot of extra work. Maybe on the next tank, I can always retrofit it.



The turret kit was great at having a T23 turret option. One drawback was it was molded with A LOT OF EXCESS RESIN! I used a grinder bit to scrape the interior walls to reduce the weight. This huge chunk was at the bas of the turret. I driller the small hole at first to run the wires from the lower chassis to the turret. I then realized there was
too much excess resin so I removed this giant piece. By the time I removed all the "unnecessary" resin I probably cut the weight in half.



Getting ready to prime!



You can see the 3D printed headlight lenses in this shot. I'll cover the lens portion with mask and then remove after priming and painting.

RC_BobM

Looks really nice Nick! Can't wait to see it running. Looks like you have another Shermy in the back ground. This is really cool!
Bob

Tankhobby

Some videos. Not finished but I couldn't wait to take it out.

Crius

Looks excellent. I'm sure it will only get better with stowage and stuff. Maybe one of these guys. Bwahahaha



So did you do anything to waterproof the electronics? Have you had a chance to weigh it? The barrel recoil is great, makes me wonder if you could somehow wire in the heng long unit from the abrams that makes the smoking barrel effect. Good job on the .50 mount, any plans to do a .30 cal for the TC? I even have a good .30 cal I might donate if you do. I have tiny little bits and bobs on several very cool tanks around the world. Not sure why I get such a kick out of that, but I do. Seeing a photo or video of a cool tank from someone I know and knowing there's some tiny little detail that came from me seems pretty cool to me, but I'm kinda twisted to start with so maybe it's just vanity or somethin'.

This is the .30 cal I had in mind, I've replaced it with a different model on the jeep so it's currently a spare, and of course you'd have to open the muzzle, but I'd be pretty tickled to see it mounted on a very cool tank. And yes, I know the ammo belt is on the wrong side, it's not permanently attached.

Tankhobby

I have that figure! He's in my display case at the moment, I had him in my Vantex Sherman but with the Airsoft unit mounted in the turret he no longer fits.
The electronics are mounted on a board that about an inch off of the floor. It takes a while for any water to ingress into the chassis so as long as I don't sit still in a deep puddle or stream I'm OK. As it's configure now it's about 50 lbs. Eventually either an Airsoft or pneumatic cannon will be added so a few more pounds.

Thanks for the .30 cal offer. I designed one in FreeCad for my Rochobby jeep. I'll probably post the files after I fix a few things. I also did the .30 cal cradle:
https://www.thingiverse.com/thing:4820796

Here's a pic of the .30 cal and cradle. The guy in the back was a quick stick figure I mounted, it's been replaced with a normal Joe

Crius

That cradle looks really good and I will probably give it a try. Didn't they use a different system for a tank commanders 30 cal? I'll be interested to see what you come up with.

Tankhobby

Something like this?
https://models-hobby.com/featured-pr...ar-period.html

Crius

Exactly like that. I've already got the gun, can and ammo belt. One of those in front of the TC hatch on your Sherman would be very cool. Will you have to cut the TC's legs off to get him in? That makes it easier to make the head and/or arm move anyway. I lucked out on the Hetzer and the area right below the commander's hatch is empty so a full figure droops right in. The CO2 line for the paintball loops right under there and provides perfect support for his legs. I like to lie and say I planned it that way.

Tankhobby

There's plenty of room inside the turret now. Once I get the gun to shoot it will be a different story. Either way I go there's a lot of stuff to fit into the turret.

The there's always these:
https://www.cgtrader.com/3d-print-mo.../tank-crew-usa

Panther F

Great videos!

MAUS45

Wow, thanks for sharing the videos!!!

Tankhobby

For anybody that is interested in the electronics. The ESC is a Sabertooth from Dimension Electronics, I have good result with their products. Yes there are two speakers in this tank. The Taigen board drives one with engine and turret sounds. The way I configured the system I couldn't get the Taigen "fire" sound so I put a separate sound card in. In regards to the firing I like to have as a separate channel anyway. There are two voltage regulators, one for the Taigen board (8.2 VDC) and one for the lower voltage components (5 VDC) like the servos and sound board. I have two channels that are free, one is a knob and the other a three way switch, so that is maximum, mid and then minimum. Not sure what to use them for yet, if I use them. Need to do more current draw and temperature tests. A quick test on level ground the current draw with a 6S lipo is about 10 amps at full throttle. I'll post some pictures next time I take the top off. I have a few digital displays showing various voltages plus one of those Lipo monitoring modules that shows full voltage then each cell's voltage and then repeats. It also has a sound alarm for low voltage.

RC_BobM

Great Videos - it turned out excellent. Thanks for sharing your schematic. I have a couple questions being an electronics-noob:
1) Whats a recoil board?
2) How do the 2 sound cards sinc together? Or maybe they don't? Or you use one for motor? The other for gun noise? Sorry you may have already said this.
3) Are all the 5V powered from the Sabertooth (it has a 5V terminal -at least the bigger ones do)? Or a 5V bus /terminal block /VR from 24VDC?
4) Assume the 250VAC 10A is the master switch rating?

Great stuff, gotta get me a big 6S LIPO to test on mine!
Best regards,
Bob

Crius

That's very similar to the system that I have in my hetzer, the one that shoots the .50 caliber paintballs, though I would probably never be able to draw a good-looking schematic like that. I'm also using a 6S lipo and a sabertooth ESC, but I went a slightly different route for the functions. First, my Sabertooth is the 2x32 and my fuses are a little bit tougher at 15 amps but almost everything else is controlled buy an ibu2 Pro, the green board early version. That takes care of sound, and with the TPA amp it pushes two 4 inch 4 ohm speakers just fine and sounds great. With the paintball gun in there I'm using two heavy-duty servos on pots for elevation and Traverse and I'm also using the FlySky 10 Channel receiver. I use the channel on the IBU that should be used for main gun elevation to rotate the remote mg34 on top, and the servo circuit that would be used for Barrel recoil is now used to pull the trigger on the paintball gun. My tank does not have that fine Barrel recoil like this Sherman does, but I had to make some sacrifices to install the paintball gun. The sound effect for the main gun and the mg34 comes from the IBU and that also provides the LED flash for the mg34. It even powers the smoker, and believe it or not, that's a stock $10 HL smoker and it works just fine. Since I have so much room in there I'm actually running a separate 2s lipo to power the IBU, and then there's a small 3s lipo to power the fpv system, but with all that room in there having multiple batteries is not a problem. One of these days I'm going to install step downs so that I can run everything from one 6s lipo. There are tons of different types of Step Downs on the market and they're very cheap, like a couple bucks apiece, and they come in a lot of different varieties. I have several laying around here, one will reduce anything up to 40 volts down to either 5 or 9 V, the user chooses which, and then I have step-downs that can be dialed to any voltage that you want with a maximum input of 40 volts. I just take my voltmeter and a little screwdriver and dial the voltage to the level that I want before I install the board inside the tank. Oh yeah, the 10 channel receiver is powered by the five volt bec in the saber-tooth. I also have a 1/6 scale M5 Stuart on the shelf and for that I'm going to go with 3S lipo and run everything from an IBU2 Pro. It should be very much like installing the IBU in a 1/16th scale tank, I'll just have a lot more room. If that project turns out even half as good as this Sherman I'll be well pleased. I'm very impressed with this tank, and I'm very, very happy to see others using 6s lipos to power 1/6 scale tanks.

I'm also curious about that recoil board, is that the board they use on the airsoft Barrel recoil tanks? Again, great job on this Sherman and I hope this will not be your last 1/6 scale project.

Captain Action

Love the cast hull, looks good and drives nice.
So do you think its a better value to print the tracks yourself ? I am thinking about having a friend with (a printer and knows how to use it) do a set for me.
How much time did it take to print out the set and did you also print the track connectors ? Thanks

Tankhobby

The tracks are from Spyker Workshop, they are molded out of Delrin. I did 3D print tracks for one of my 1/6 Stuart tanks and it took a very long time! The pads were done with flexible filament, the guide horns or end connectors were of ABS. I used nylon screws as pins and used a drill with a tap on each track pad when assembling the tracks. Worked well but the suspension and idler have to be secured with no wobble otherwise it's very easy to throw a track.

Tankhobby

Definitely not my last 1/6 project, I have two more Sherman Dragon kits on the shelf, a Kettenkrad, Hasbro halftrack with the 75mm gun and an M3 Scout car (21st Century) that will all need to be made RC. Something else I think probably in the back of the closet. The recoil board is my own design, I designed it many years ago to add recoil to my 1/16 Tamiya Sherman. It connects to a servo and will drive the servo from its current position all the way to the end of its throw. It needs a trigger signal to activate, a simple RC switch works best if using with a receiver. I did a project several years ago for a club where they used one recoil board for recoil on an 88mm gun, and another to have the gun traverse before it shot. There was an ultrasonic detector that would detect tank motion to activate the gun. I put in a board that duplicates the Tamiya firing signal so the gun could actually score hits on the tank.

Tankhobby

Hi Bob,
1- See my response to Crius. I've used these for many things beside recoil, like pulling the trigger on an Airsoft gun (although now I use the MOSFET triggers).
2- The sound cards are not synchronized. All the sounds (except gun firing) come from the Taigen board that is connected to the receiver. The gun sound is tied to the channel that fires the gun, so they are completely independent.
3- I use a separate 5 volt regulator, I think 5 -7 amps to run all the low voltage stuff, also a separate regulator for the Taigen board that wants about 8 VDC. Both regulators are powered by the 6S Lipo. The Sabertooth 5 volts only powers the receiver. I needed more current for the recoil, traverse and elevation servos.
4- Yes, usually switches have AC power ratings, so that particular switch can handle a lot more current at lower voltages. If I recall the tank peaked at 14 amps but generally it's draw is below 10 amps, that switch can easily handle those currents at 24 VDC.

As a note I originally ran this with a 3S Lipo and a Sabertooth ESC. It was too slow, I didn't even bother to test climbing ability but immediately switched batteries to a 6S and was very happy with the speed. Then I put 10 pound weights in the chassis (only the lower chassis was assembled at this point) and ran it around inside and out in the back yard on some hills. I was a bit concerned that the 12 volt motors would burn up on 24 volts but so far so good! I measured the temperature on the motor casings after running it a bit uphill and over obstacles and the maximum I got so far is 155 F. That should be OK, if it gets to over 175F that could be a problem.

MAUS45

Thanks for sharing your electronics layout Nick, it confirms a layout I was going to use for my 1/8 scale Tiger II from R/C Armory.

FLAMME 2

Great job i love it

Biasphere1

Great job mate awesome job. Just a Q , are you still using the car seat motors ?
I have a 1/6 Dragon M4A3 , well I actually have 2 but one has like yours the 3d printed Stryker parts and the motors like yours fitted that's why I asked , I also have a 2nd set of motors for the 2nd model , so yes I'm just wondering how they're holding up.
Here in Australia our country has been trying to kill us all since Summer 2019 in 2019 we've been burnt out totally worst bush fires in our existence, then Covid /20/21/22 , and now 21/22 we've been flooded AF worst floods in our history as well So if our country kindly and with the utmost respect to this country tries to stop killing us I'll get back into my 1/6 Dragon M4A3 . lol. I am in an emergency service organization , so yes we've been busy .
I'm thinking of making my first one JGSDF M4 with a 76mm gun but I could always go back to Olive Drab in a heart beat.
Cheers and you've done fantastic job mate.
I tried to post up a pic or two but I haven't got enough posts posted .

Tankhobby

Thanks!
I haven't run the tank in a few weeks, it's spring here and there a lot of winter clean up and planting to do outside. But I'm almost caught up so I can run my RC stuff outside again!
The car seat motors are still in the tank. If at any point they fail I will mention it here. I have two more kits still in the box, might print my own tracks on the next one. I want to make it an M4A3 76mm so I need to either print the T23 turret or if the aftermarket kit is ever available again purchase one. If you use the seat motors I recommend using more than 12 VDC to drive them, or try higher ratio on the drive for more speed. I think the stl files from Stryker has two options for the motor drive, slow and fast.

Weather here is a bit crazy the last year or two, very high winds. I have a lot of very tall trees on the property and many are blown down and some snap in half with the top slamming to the ground or hanging half on the tree half on the ground. A lot of work with the tractor and chainsaw.

Biasphere1

Cheers Nick.
I have grabbed a few Sherman STL's from Lubos Hort's web . The turret, mantlet and barrels you want are at 1/10 but I've scaled bits up(print at 166.66%).
I've printed up a few different wheels and things so my tank looks "used" , remember most everything fits most everything else on a Sherman most runners up country at the end were mixNmatch. The JGSDF Sherman has a spare drive sprocket either side as spare/armor on the front side body of the tank.
If I've broken any laws posting that , somebody slap me a warning and I'll be all good.
Well that's 9 posts one more and I can post pics up.
Update it pinged me for a link maybe after my next post lol.

Tankhobby

Took it out for a test in tall grass and weeds before I mowed it all down.

RC_BobM

Nice video Nick - tall grass no problem! Super cool.