TOPIC:

Thanks Lee,
Those video are quite well done. It explains how to use parameters, revolve and pattern on path...
I did not start yet. I know the guy who made the ones available on Shapeways for both Samurai and Hunter/Galaxy (he is very helpful on Marui parts by the way). Now that being said, Shapeways is hugely expensive, and there is ways to get things printed in the same type of material/process for much cheaper with more possibilities in terms of post processing. (I believe getting alloy wheels from Pargu would even be cheaper than print them on Shapeways, so better cost options are better - if ever you are looking for this, have a look at materialise.com or weerg.com).
I will model the Samurai wheels and probably some Hunter wheels as well (I've done all the measurements for the Samurai wheel already, and i'm currently setting my strategy in terms of parameters)...

Interestingly, you can also print tires in TPU, so you may model the Big Bear tires as well. Printing is however an issue, and you need a direct drive extruder for this. Bowden extruder type doesn't really work with TPU (even though some people says it's possible - but it requires supports, and they are overly difficult to remove with TPU if not in a different material, which adds even more complexity).

And basically, those requirements are leading me to re-think my 3D Printer strategy. I'm currently considering changing my Creality to something more robust, and with a better support: the printing possibilities would be acceptable for longer time if there was not so much cheap and unreliable solution around, and the conclusion is that I already spend more time fixing it than printing due to this... Not sure what will be the conclusion, but i'm quite sure than rather than putting a lot of money and time in various upgrade and fine tuning, it may be quite more interesting for me to consider another printer more in line with what I want to do (clearly, I learned a lot, and with what I learned, I would probably have won to take a smaller and cheaper printer for the first one). 


 

Today I made the SCX Rod project ready for the trail.
Hope to drive tomorrow if I don't have a bad day.

To get it ready I had to fasten the steering horn, make a new servo wire to my ledbar and refit the rollbar and interior.

Also had a tidy up of my mancave.

Oh Richard. Too nice rod. I love it. 

Got my first Samurai wheel model today


Tried to be smart, more details to come in my Marui Samurai thread, later on today or tomorrow

I want a set for my friend if they are standard tires😁😁😁😛😋

Great offroad rod Richard, dont forget to film the run. 
Marc, you've done  great job modelling that rim.  I have thought about tpu to replicate a tyre but unless you can get a really soft compound the tyres are a bit hard. There is one company that sells 60a shore which is pretty soft Recreus Filaflex 60A Filament, fibrology do a 40d and 30d which is still hard as rubber shoe sole if you check the shore hardness scale. Ninjaflex is another but I think that is only 40d.  Not sure about the thickness of a tyre but it may be a lot softer that an shoe sole. Anyway I think I have direct drive on my printer, feed wheel is a couple of centimetres above my extruder, I have also seen a matt tpu which would be better looking for tyres but i think its on the harder side of the scale too as most are 95a or similar. 

Yes, I thought about TPU 3D printed tyres. I tried to print TPU with the bowden setup of my Creality and it did not work out as expected. And the tire printed was far from perfect...
(There is some stl for both Hunter/Galaxy and Samurai tyres on Thingiverse).

Digging a bot more about TPU printing, you need slightly more than direct drive to be able to print TPU: full metal hot-end doesn't really help there as the entry of the hot end will be hot enough so the TPU may flex within the extruder itself. I had some TPU filament, I handed it to my brother who has modified his Creality Ender 3 and has a Direct Drive, but he told me that for the time being it's not really successful. Further, the slicer may also have an impact on this, so lots of parameter to tweak... I'll probably retry once I have a new printer (the thing is to decide which printer and how much , and how much kit less in 2022 to finance it :-/ )

As for the wheel, the "resizing feature doesn't work as expected yet. Some parts are not resizable yet, and the slot are not expandable. I believe it is due to the filets, and I may have to think more to get it right, but I already progressed a lot on that aspect. Went to bed far too late yesterday (this morning actually), and it was not solved, but at least, I had an idea during the night on what to to to make it work

Can you not resize the wheel in the slicer?  I can in mine That's how I extended the new lunchbox wheel and made a standard size wheel a 1.9" to fit the crawler tyres. 

Well, there is multiple reasons why I do not want to do that:

• Why doing something simple when you can do something overly complex is the first one 
  
• The second reason is that I do like the simplicity of those wheels design and I'm keep telling myself those would be great in proper size, with 3 or 4 slots on a touring chassis with a Dodge Charger or a Ford Torino bodyshell (Im quite sure it would great asortment :-D)...
• The third reason is that if I succeed to do this, I'm quite sure I can model any other wheel following same principles with the ability to adapt them to the tire internal diameter, the width required, the offset required and the hub type I would need (maybe i overly simplify this, but let me find out which monster I can design )...
• Fourth reason is basically a good way to learn something that could be useful for others of my projects (I'd like to be able to scale my parts easily to adapt new requirements - that was not possible in Tinkercad without reworking the design, while with Fusion360, it would be dumb easy to set a led holder for a different axle distance and so on).

Sorry, I can't help thinking like an engineer who loves complex things.

I did a short run of my SCX ROD today.
A small video will be up in the video section as soon it is uploded on YT.