RC10Talk - The Net's Largest Vintage R/C Community

morrisey0 wrote: ↑Sun May 30, 2021 10:16 pm On my latest gold pan build, I am putting a stealth trans into an "A" pan, so I thought I would just google a quick adapter as surely someone out there has made such a thing seeing as RC10 3D files are numerous, but for some reason, this does not seem to exist. Oh well, not a complex piece, and my simple brain and sketchup made it work. All stock hardware and no holes drilled. Only lifts the trans 3.5mm, which I don't think will be much of an issue.

(forgive the printing quality in a few parts. as always, adapting printing settings to ever-changing filaments is an on-going process. this is modified, cf reinforced pc, so it may not be pretty, but it is plenty strong)

Very impressive! Looks great.

Raising the trans will affect dogbone engagement in the outdrive so you'll probably want to check that before you head out for a first run.
Will you also print a 3.5mm spacer to go atop the bulkhead for the brace plate?
Anyway, excellent work. I think your part could also be used as a drilling template.

Yep, trans brace spacer installed. And yes, I just noticed that I didn't tighten one side all the way.

I think the dogbone angle is okay, but I may limit the shocks another 1/8" or so just to help. I did find that the diff side dogbone would end up in a position that would hit the motor plate, and that would bring everything to a screeching halt real quick. A little spacer behind the shaft seemed to take care of that.

Sorry guys for super-posting in this thread, but I am kinda using it as a platform to promote the benefits of 3D printing in RC building. To me, the two go hand-n-hand. I know a large portion of the members here are restorers, and bring old cars back to life as the first time they were built, but I build drivers for the most part, and am not too proud to redo things that I think are just better, or more practical in the modern world. I have always had more fun building RCs than driving them, and printing just adds a whole new level to that.

Bla, Bla, Bla! For today, I found that thin wall'd front tires (jconcepts rips in this example) would not "lock" on the front wheels of my classic, so I figured a thicker wheel ring would grab onto the sidewalls nicely. They work great!

For those unfamiliar with sketchup, it unfortunately does not work in a world where "round" shapes actually exist. A circle is just a connection of multiple angled straight lines .......................... and I hate it! But, time is too limited these days to learn a better modeling app, so I am kinda stuck where I am for now. But again, function over form any day!

There's no need to apologize , a few of us here use 3d printing for much the same reason .

morrisey0 wrote: ↑Tue Jun 01, 2021 9:09 pm
For those unfamiliar with sketchup, it unfortunately does not work in a world where "round" shapes actually exist. A circle is just a connection of multiple angled straight lines .......................... and I hate it!

I'm not familiar with sketchup, but does it have a setting where the number of lines used to make a curve can be increased? That should be the key to printing parts that are rounder. Very nice project you've got going here.

Frankentruck wrote: ↑Wed Jun 02, 2021 5:09 am I'm not familiar with sketchup, but does it have a setting where the number of lines used to make a curve can be increased? That should be the key to printing parts that are rounder.

Yes, you can take an extra step and adjust the number of "segments" per circle, and of course make things much better looking than the above. The wheel ring doesn't really matter and was just a five minute design, so I didn't bother with it. You can get it to the point that it is difficult to see with the eye that it is not a true circle.

My biggest problem with the segments is during the design process more than the end result. For example, if you put a "circle" on top of another, but the segments don't line up, then you have edges crossing each other and just have a mess. Or if you create an arch between two 90* lines, it is easy for a segment or two of the arch to cross the lines. I am sure there is a very logical reason skecthup does it that way, but I sure do wish I could just tell it to make a round thing.

Try switching to Fusion 360 , during the drawing phase there are no visible segments , it only applies them in the export format and you can choose the fineness of the segmentation , when I print cylinders there is no visible segmentation in a wheel sized print .

How to take a simple RC10/10T battery hold down mount and make it way over-complicated.

I never thought that I would have the audacity to print parts and stick them on something as classic as a RC12i ............... but I did.

The chassis "rib" on my car broke while taking it off, and had seen better days anyway, so an easy replacement was made.

For the front bumper, I actually spent a good amount of time refreshing the stock unit, and had it in good nick. But, when installed on the rig, the "bright white" of the bumper made the "antique white" of the nylon parts around it look even more antique! I think the printed black bumper plays here.

Sometimes you wake up to great prints, sometimes you wake up to, well, this.

Don't know if it's been discussed before and this may be old hat for some, but I wanted to give this thread a tip on designing 3D printed parts for use in RC, since I've done a few parts for my RC's, and I'm also working on a 3D printing guide for my company. Mostly what I print aren't suspension or structural, but my TLR 22 4.0 knuckle adapters for me JRX Pro SE are a good example. It's a small part that didn't usually break in stock form, but mine has taken quite a few hits, including a friend that had a propensity to turn straight into a solid object at full throttle.

One thing I think everyone should keep in mind when 3D printing parts is you shouldn't try and copy the original exactly, because the design of mass produced parts are largely driven by the manufacturing process, and often compromise the performance. Here's an example.
The original part in black is injection molded. Injection molding requires you to maintain a relatively consistent wall thickness to avoid defects, and all features have to be reachable by a surface on the tool. There are also sometimes provisions for "knockouts" that don't need to be there (see the four round spots in the ribs). Ideally, the tool has just two sides but you can do "side actions" to get geometry that would otherwise create an "undercut", though this increases the cost of the tool so designers try and avoid it. This is why molded parts have lots of ribs. They're adding strength to a feature, but are trying to adhere to the consistent wall thickness as much as they can.

But ribs really aren't ideal for strength, and this isn't the best way to design a part for that. In most parts, the outermost grain bears the most load, so the more material you can put there, the stronger and more rigid the part will be. But a rib only allows for a small area of material to be added where it's needed.

The part on the right is designed to take advantage of 3D printing. The infill can be reduced quite a bit and all of the outer surfaces are filled with material. A simple roller doesn't need a lot to be strong, but if you look back at my Pro SE adapters, other than being C shaped, it's not "cored out" for wall thickness and the material is mostly where it needs to be. This is also in PETG, btw. This part hasn't failed, but if it did, I could fill in that C and it'd be a very solid part. I just didn't because I didn't want to work to get that king pin all the way through as I was iterating. The part in the center was modeled by a coworker who went so far as to recreate the knockout pads and it actually took longer to print than the solid part to the right. It also had some quality issues because our printers are old and need work, but the "full" part did better because the printer wasn't lifting and reversing as much to reduce stringing.

The caveat to this is that this rule is for FDM printing where you can control the infill and wall thickness with machine settings. With other processes like DLP, laser sintering, multijet fusion, you have to core out the part in the model, or accept you will have a solid part. The only downside there is you may end up with a bit more weight while not necessarily adding strength, though you may be able to do something clever like design the part hollow and model a couple of holes in strategic places to allow excess resin or powder to come out. For reference: I seem to recall once reading that there was no strength benefit to infills greater than 30%, though I don't have that source to cite, so don't quote me.

HS-YZ250 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 11:55 am One thing I think everyone should keep in mind when 3D printing parts is you shouldn't try and copy the original exactly, because the design of mass produced parts are largely driven by the manufacturing process, and often compromise the performance. Here's an example.

This is not always true : it depends 100% of the target process for printing. You may do a lot of things with powder based printing processes you can't do with FDM... So please take into account this as well... Generally, I'm using FDM mainly for dimensionnal vaildation, or parts very easy to print. My final parts are generally printed using MJF of SLS (powder based process) and the results are very good in terms of quality...

Have a check on my Super Wheelie or my Nichimo Spirit FF if you want to see...


That being said, there is still lot of things which can be done in FDM, but you have to think the design for it (and with the experience, there is also some tricks you can use to overcome some difficulties with the printing, but it is clearly based on iterative tries)...

silvertriple wrote: ↑Sat Sep 30, 2023 2:01 pm

HS-YZ250 wrote: ↑Wed Sep 27, 2023 11:55 am One thing I think everyone should keep in mind when 3D printing parts is you shouldn't try and copy the original exactly, because the design of mass produced parts are largely driven by the manufacturing process, and often compromise the performance. Here's an example.

This is not always true : it depends 100% of the target process for printing. You may do a lot of things with powder based printing processes you can't do with FDM... So please take into account this as well... Generally, I'm using FDM mainly for dimensionnal vaildation, or parts very easy to print. My final parts are generally printed using MJF of SLS (powder based process) and the results are very good in terms of quality...

I wasn't really accounting for the iteration process. Certainly the quickest and cheapest process is good for tuning fit an finish (to an extent). The core of what I was getting at, though, was that when you're copying an existing part, realize you're using a different process where the design can, and really should, take a different form than the existing part that is injection molded. I used FDM as an example because it's most accessible to the public and because I had some examples on hand.

When I first visited ol' school member rc10johnny's place awhile back, he had a 1:4 visible V8 model sitting out, and I made a comment about how cool I always thought those were ................ and before I knew it, he was handing me a NIB kit as a gift. And as we talked about the kit, he mentioned that his one peeve about it was that it came with a 2-barrel carb, and he didn't think any V8 should have a 2-barrel. I told him I would look into it and see what I could do. I am way late on getting this done for him, but got the Dominator done for him this evening. It is weird to scale because of the mounting and cleaner adapters needed, for just a model sitting out for display, it should be okay, and Johnny won't have to deal with that wimpy 2B anymore!