A new project - Nichimo Spirit FF - The first of a kind

[silvertriple]

How do you integrate an imported mesh , I was trying this today and gave up , I'd imported tires and wanted to integrate them with a wheel I modelled myself , importing the mesh was easy .

Go in Mesh, use insert Mesh
Then, I think it is under Solid/Create and Convert Mesh to Solid

But then the file becomes bigger

[silvertriple]

When are you printing the replacement chassis to fix the car , I'd love to see it running .

I will definitely have to do some videos

Since I had the driver in, I decided to tackle roof and wing in the afternoon.
I decided to do the roof with Metal Sheet, as I prefer the one from the Exceed than the one from the Spirit FF...


Then I did the wing with too much extrusion, bodies and combining them to finish by add fillets


I did play crop and resize to 80% on vertical to see if it can look like the box art...


I still have to get the bodyshell in...

[XLR8]

That looks great! Can Fusion 360 create images with perspective rather than parallel projection?

By the way, the click-n-drag orbit function still isn't working for me.

Awesome stuff, right there!!

[silvertriple]

That looks great! Can Fusion 360 create images with perspective rather than parallel projection?

Yes, you have to check under display settings, camera. The option is there, but it won't look as good as on the box art

By the way, the click-n-drag orbit function still isn't working for me.

Well, I would like to help here, but not sure how

Awesome stuff, right there!!

Thanks !

[silvertriple]

Today is an important day for this project...

The 3D printed MJF Nylon PA12 chassis arrived... I was quite impatient to see it arriving, and be able to do some fitting test



I also took the gearbox in, and it fits perfectly... As said, it is an important step for the project.

Have to decide if I print all plastic parts or just the one that I need to replace, but I tend to think the first option is better, as then it will be really my own car

[silvertriple]

I basically spend quite a few hours yesterday evenning to build a bodyshell using surfaces, but I can't thicken it at the end... (even though I put all the surfaces in the same direction)...


I also had quite a long time to understand that combine become stitch when it comes to Surface environment (but still no way to thicken it).







I really need to take care of building some clusters of parts to reduce the printing costs (black MJF PA12 and red SLS PA12)... Which means the bodyshell and all those elements which require review will be left there until I get back on this.

In the meantime, a bit of fun with a vertical resize (and no, I won't use the perspective view, as the rear wheels look exactly like the front ones in perspective).



Next : take care of the parts printing (I already ordered a bodyshell to TBG for it), build, run and vidéo

[Dadio]

The new chassis looks ace
The only time I did a thin body I designed it as a block then hollowed it , then used Vase mode to print it and cut away to shape it . It's somewhere in my Yo-Clone-oh thread , nothing fancy just a copy of a Funco Half body , I did do body panels for my SRB Funco replica build but that was done quite normally really .

[silvertriple]

The new chassis looks ace
The only time I did a thin body I designed it as a block then hollowed it , then used Vase mode to print it and cut away to shape it . It's somewhere in my Yo-Clone-oh thread , nothing fancy just a copy of a Funco Half body , I did do body panels for my SRB Funco replica build but that was done quite normally really .

Yeah, I probably could have build a block like I did for the chassis and gearbox... But I'm trying to learn new things while doing this as well (not a success yet, here...).
I'm already impressed by what I succeed to do. I had 3 hours of Fusion 360 in 2021 while designing the shock tower brace for the Hunter. (what I did at that time was fairly simple, just sktech and extrude, and I did that without understanding some key concepts).. But I was not really happy, and found Tinkercad being much more easy for what i did at that time... And basically I restarted Fusion 360 with the Samurai wheels, for real this time. There is still a bit of learning curve, and lot to discover (not even speaking about understanding)... Would be curious about how you have learnt to use Fusion 360. Lot of the learnings on my side come from videos and discussions with Ryo on how to approach this or that (that helped a lot, specially when i was going full speed to dead ends )...

[Dadio]

Well firstly I'm a 52 year old dyslexic technophobe mechanic , never had any kind of office job let alone CAD experience but I studied design technology , sculpture and graphical communication in school , when I started 3d printing I looked at SketchUp , Tinkercad , Blender and Fusion 360 as the best suited to my needs and abilities , never really took to SketchUp , Tinkercad was too basic and Blender was more sculptural ( learning a bit of Blender now though ) so that left me with Fusion , I stared doing the tutorials on YouTube till I could do a little of what I wanted , I've really only focussed on what I need to do , there's so much of what your doing that I've no idea about because it was not what I needed at that moment , in so many ways your far and away ahead of me

[Dadio]

What I would say is I wish Fusion 360 way there when I was a kid ! With access to this as a kid my life may well have been very different , it's like magic that I can have an idea in the morning and an object in my hand in the afternoon . I have lath and mill and before Fusion and a 3d printer those were my toys of choice .

[silvertriple]

Well firstly I'm a 52 year old dyslexic technophobe mechanic , never had any kind of office job let alone CAD experience but I studied design technology , sculpture and graphical communication in school , when I started 3d printing I looked at SketchUp , Tinkercad , Blender and Fusion 360 as the best suited to my needs and abilities , never really took to SketchUp , Tinkercad was too basic and Blender was more sculptural ( learning a bit of Blender now though ) so that left me with Fusion , I stared doing the tutorials on YouTube till I could do a little of what I wanted , I've really only focussed on what I need to do , there's so much of what your doing that I've no idea about because it was not what I needed at that moment , in so many ways your far and away ahead of me

On my side, I'll be 52 in September, i'm a probably a bit dyslecix as well, and had a industrial engineering background I never used as my work adventures contributed to keep me with computer at hand... I've been doing software implementation or working in this area for most of my professional career. That said, I love gadgets, technology, motorbikes, and mechanics... I had my first steps in cad back in 1993 while in an engineering school. I remember having said one my professor that CAD software would remain useless unless we are able to do things faster or as fast as what I was doing on a paper with a pen and ruler and a protactor: i was very fast compared to my colleagues, and what really differentiated me from them is that I did not need CAD and 3D visualisation to read, decrypt and understand technical drawings (to the point I was able to spot the mistakes on the drawings - when I was reading a plan, I was able to orbit, cut see through the part in perspective in my head, and that helped a lot). Using CAD tools when you were fast at drawing was so deceptive as it tooks ages to reproduce the thing I was able to do on the paper in few minutes... It has changed a lot, and 3D printing is probably part of the enablers for this. Basically, here, I had to learn the tool and how to use it.

And there is still areas where I think I could do better: basically, you know that you start to be efficient with a tool when you find ways to go faster to do the same thing... Kind of exemples that I noted during this Nichimo journey :
- defining circles by their tangent rather than the position of the center is in most of the case faster, as it does directly relates to the way you would measure the distances
- directly draw in final without using a construction line, and use the constructions lines only when absolutely needed
- using joint to position parts built outside of the main model
- using parametric when you have a doubt on a measure
- ...

And the "depends of your needs" is for me something I can't define... My needs are directly linked with what is possible to do or to dig into: when I started this project, I had no clue about Nichimo. It's funny, but just like the Hunter, I know there was two iteration of the chassis (although in the case of the Nichimo, I don't have a clue about the why), and that the right half of the gearbox of the Spirit/Vantage is the symmetry of the left one of the Exceed/Midships (but oh why????) and few other details... That being said, while the look of ugly ducky has probably contributed to its meh reception on the market (as well as the journalist trying this car who did not understood the way to use it initially), the design of the chassis is really having some interesting elements (which is somehow a very nice surprise ... I may want to try to model a Vantage FF and the 443WDS siblings as well at some point (If ever I find one at an acceptable price)...

[Dadio]

I never use construction lines , just delete sketch lines after use , seemed to amount to the same thing to me , I guess I only look further when I hit an obstacle and need to find a way round .

[silvertriple]

I never use construction lines , just delete sketch lines after use , seemed to amount to the same thing to me , I guess I only look further when I hit an obstacle and need to find a way round .

Well, I use them to define points, and I always makes sure no blue lines remain on my sketches. Blue line means issues

Tonight, I prepared my cluster of parts. The overall idea is to group the parts together for the prints.

I will have 6 STL files for black parts :
- Chassis (already printed)
- Top Chassis
- Bumper and battery holders set
- Suspension arms
- gearbox
- lost ark (the radiobox )


I will prepare the red parts clusters tomorrow. Depending of the cost, I may print them white sls or red sls (not all providers are proposing dyed red sls).

[silvertriple]

Yesterday, I had a puzzle with all red parts to tackle.


I decided to not decide anything yet for the wheels: the tires are in ok state, but they are old, and they would probably not survive to a run. Which means I may have to adapt modern/easy to source tire, and therefore redsign the rims accordingly. This will be for later. In the meantime, I may use a set of hotshot wheels...

As the only providers I'm aware of doing dyed sls PA12 are all expensive for each stl file, I decided to take all the red parts I want to print in the same stl.
And I started to group them around the roll cage with some sprues, axles and other tricks relying on joints to capture bodies in the design, and create one single stl that makes it.


At the end I had this :


I estimated the printing cost in many point of time of this by exporting the stl and submittting it. Adding parts in the cluster doesn't climb the price much so it's the good method (same principle as the box I used with the Hunter, but with part too small to be able to use the same way)...

I will order the print for the black and the red parts soon...

[silvertriple]

Not all the print providers work the same way...
Wall thickness, intricated bodies or not, and other details on sprues are different per providers...

I've uploaded my files for the black parts to one yesterday, and got feedback this morning :
- Top chassis is fine.
- for the others, I need to make sure there is only one single body as multiple bodies are not supported

In short, I need to review my files as for most I had the sprues going thru holes...

One of the file is made from a single body but appear to have multiple shells inside, and I can only see one single shell when analysing it... Seems I need to understand what happen here (and I'm not too sure what to do here, as I redid my work differently with the same result)...

Seems it will take some time before the print are validated... It may also delay the Samurai and Hunters

EDIT: I really need to sleep the analysis says the number of shell, there was multiple bodies in the previous file and I got confused (360 times)