'Nuther milestone. Suspension fully installed and working sweet. Still some experimenting with final drive and assembling tracks.

https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...f1a60ad905.png
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...f369b60317.png

Been working on other stuff, but did print the nearly 200 track links and laboriously made them.
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...663becb07c.jpg

Sure is looking nice. Your prints are excellent quality. Hope those resin links hold up! They are beautiful.
B

That looks fantastic!!!

Thanks guys! My hands are killin me - the link pins are tight and take some pushing and twisting to get them in. (just stabbed a pin 1/2 way through my thumb!) The differential works but the breakaway torque is higher than I like. I'll order a different one and see if it "differentials" easier. Need to get off my duff and do the superstructure, but that's the easy part and I like the hard part lol. Given I won't be driving on rough pavement for hundreds of hours, I think it will hold up ok. I test printed the links with the FDM printer, and surprisingly they came out pretty good too, so I can always run FDM links if I need to.

What you need is a small brass hammer to gently tap those pins home.

Been working on some other stuff, but making progress on design of the superstructure of late.


https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...8b437abad2.jpg

Looking really rather smart. Very nice work
Be interesting to see how you get on with the fdm links

Thanks. I've run the track around the house, and I think the SLA track will be fine- the suspension and tracks work better than I expected; quite smooth. I also got a different differential with much lower break-away torque which should make my scale steering work properly. Onward and upward!

I been busy printing resin soldiers for my personal collection of models i have designed myself.
The figures all came from CG Trader
Pak40 team
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Mortar team
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Wirblewind crew
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Flakvierling 38 crew
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Flak36 88mm, crew borrowed from other teams to see how it could look, but also made a guy for sitting on rear axle who is hell bent smoking a cigarette to keep warm
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Case tractor
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Hertzer - chipping away at the details
 

Lots of little stuff to tune, but getting closer. Still stalling on the gun emplacement, but almost ready to tackle that.
https://cimg4.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...8e8ea3418e.jpg

When I did the main gun on my hetzer I built a frame to give me Traverse and a trunnion that locked over the barrel of the 50 caliber paintball gun, but something tells me that in that scale you're not going to have quite enough space for that. Bwahaha

Seriously, though, it's looking really, really good. Are you going to do the sliding cover that goes on that vent directly in front of the muffler? They made quite a few changes in that area over the few years that the tank was in production, and I know of at least three different exhaust systems that were installed on those. Mine is very similar to yours, but it has the protective screen that goes over it. I like the way yours looks, it's very smooth and looks like it just came out of the factory. Great job.

I'm going to build an outer square frame for the my SU-100 with bearings on the top and bottom for traverse. A smaller square frame inside that frame with bearings on the left/right will take care of elevation. Saw a person do it that way and it was very effective on their Ferdi.

Thanks for the feedback! As I look at all the data and photos, there are so many small changes its hard to settle on just one config. I do like this earlier muffler better that the later (few months later!) fat can one. I will do the sliding cover, just one more of the many little things to tidy up on the superstructure. There's a dozen other little additions and corrections to go too. I tend to get basics in place, then do waves of updates and revisions - as more parts get in place, it's easier to see the inaccuracies in the overall configuration. For the gun, I'm not very good at organic shapes like the manlet, so I do the easier stuff first lol. I want to be as scale as possible, but don't have enough views of the gun mount internals to really get it right yet. I do plan on scale traverse and elevation though. I'm thinking paint ball or at least airsoft. Its funny how in my model airplanes there are others willing to dogfight and even air-to-air paintball combat, but everybody is all wishy-washy about tanks lol. I'd love to do tank combat like they do 144th scale model warship combat - thin balsa skin so you can see the hits, and CO2 BB guns for the guns (shoot up, score, patch, fight again)

like this:
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...833e2dc69c.jpg
just square aluminum extrusions, slice off a bit and attached pivots and bearings.

That's pretty much the exact same setup I have in my 1/6 hetzer, just a little smaller. I found that it works very well, and I haven't had any trouble with it even though it's holding a .50 caliber paintball gun that must weigh at least a pound and a half.

More Progress
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...5e50bbe4e9.jpg
https://cimg7.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...bb696b63dc.jpg
https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...c145da413b.jpg

https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...c27aadc334.jpg
Time to finish the Diamond T 980, this project's been kicking around for nearly 2 years.

Spinnetti,
CAD is looking great for the Hetzer! Fantastic.
Ex Pat
Love the idea of a Diamond T. Will you use a donor drive train or create it for printing?

Great projects,
Bob

Drive line will be JJRC/Fayee metal geared differential axles, with WPL upgrade parts off of ebay - 380 motor with gearbox and a central transfer case. Should be beefy enough to pull a trailer with a 'static' tank (i.e. an empty shell), but hauling a full option Sherman around isn't going to be a realistic goal on anything other than carpet.

Thanks Bob. Diamond T will be a good one, especially if you have all working diffs..

Totally cheating and making it 6x6 rather than 6x4 - I suspect that it won't turn very well without power to the front axle ;)

Hetzer is looking good :cool:

Well, all the difficult bits on my 1/12th scale Hetzer are done, and I had first drive today. Everything went flawlessly - super happy to have a really good result on my first try at designing and building from scratch and "going my own way" instead of copying the tried, but not very true methods of the commercial ones. Although plenty of uncertainty, the drive system with working differential and differential braking just like the real thing all worked perfectly. There's still various bits like the front gun shield, periscopes, head and tail light and tools to finish up, but that's all easy stuff. Also need to get somebody to paint and weather for me as I don't like to do that stuff. (I like model engineering, not modelling lol). I'll finish off the details, then my next project will be some variant of the Stug. Probably a III.



https://cimg8.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...81341ab0ec.jpg
https://cimg0.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...e3e7baae2e.jpg

Comparison of the Hetzer in 12/th scale with the HL models in 1/16th scale. I'll eventually do these in 1/12 scale too, but that's a ways down the list.
https://cimg2.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...b73d5fc094.jpg

Very interesting work. Of particular interest is you transmission, did you publish any line or concept drawing of this?
I'd very interested in seeing your design or if you have any print files or documentation for sale surely I'd want to be
on that list...

Jerry

Jerry,

There's no drawings since I work completely in CAD and didn't do any concepts. Went straight from brain to parts design. I ordered a couple random differentials off the internet, one was just too stiff for this scale (would have been ok for 1/8th or 1/6th scale maybe) and the other just right. I 3d printed the housings and brake drums which key to the output sockets on the differential. I also bought some "dog bone" axles, and cut off one end on which I mounted a pinion gear to power the final drive which is also scale and is inside the housing on the exterior of the hull, just like the real thing. There's about a 1:3 reduction in the differential and a 1:15 reduction in the final drive so 1:45 overall reduction. I 3d printed "brake bands" out of flex material and it works just like the real thing which also used brake bands on the output drums. One end is connected to the servo arm, and the other to the differential housing. Basically, if you look up how the real thing worked, this works the same way, only I have a single speed transmission instead of multi-speed. My system definitely works better than the multi-motor/gearbox arrangement of Tamiya copy-cats. (though the Tamiya Sherman had a scale type system with twin clutches which was very cool).

https://cimg3.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...68cd209557.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...ab7208a96c.png
https://cimg6.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...4c90378cdc.jpg
https://cimg5.ibsrv.net/gimg/www.rcu...eac79a39a0.jpg