Latest project...

Cool! Did you manufacture each track piece by yourself!?!

Ayup.

Each pad (there's 62 per side I think) required 4 holes to be drilled, plus 4 more in the rubber pad that's riveted/glued to the aluminium plate. So, that was a FUN weekend...drilling all those holes! Then the glueing/riveting was about another 3 weeks, doing 8-10 per day and letting it set up in the vise overnight.

Looks really cool! What is your plan for steering? Tiller bars and breaks?

Nope, independantly driven electric motors, with a robotics motor controller allowing each side to be run seperately. It will do the "turn on a dime" trick that tanks are supposed to do, with the ability to run one track in forward with the other in reverse.

How thick is the armour on her?

3/8" ply for most of the sides, but the top deck is 3/4" to carry the weight of the turret.

wow, that is sweet! Those itty bitty torsion bars are enough?

Ayup. 1/4" spring steel that I picked up from an industrial supplier near the dockyard. So far, no problems, and each wheel has been tested to 60 pounds of pressure against the spring...so, 60 times 14 is 840 pounds of theoretical weight it could carry.

Current all up weight is close to 220 pounds.

that is actualy the coolest thing i have ever seen i want one seriously you should market these things lol......revolving turret yes or no?

It will have a revolving turret, but I'm not there yet.

Marketing this would be totally implausible. The Canadian Market would probably be around a total of 5, and with the amount of time/money I'm into this, I'd never get any return on the investment.

So what size of gun are you going to mount?

Intent is to build a pneumatic gun system for launching Nerf projectiles, the ones from the Nerf belt-fed gun, alas, it will be a single-shot breech loader though. With a co-axial airsoft machine-gun tossed in for good measure.

As for plans? Buy a 1/35th scale Tiger, a set of calipers, and a calculator, multiply everything by 7, and go from there. Look for stuff that's "close enough" and commercially available. Princess Auto has been VERY helpful. But, here's a quick blast on the price:

14 wheels $8 ea = $112
14 spring arms $8 ea = $112
4 drive sprockets $16 ea = $64
2 motors $65 US ea = $155
1 controller $225 US ea = $270

Those items alone have run me a total of $713, not including the costs of the steel for the frame, the wood sheathing, the batteries, etc etc. I'm into this beast for about $1000 right now.

*shrug*

I've lost track (haha) of how many hours I've put into it.

NS
 
Oh, as a side note, some historical liberties were taken...I only have 7 road wheels per side, not the 8 sets of interleaved ones on the original.

I made a little mistake, I designed the lower hull based on a set of blue-prints I found on the web, and the upper hull based on a plastic model I had in front of me. They were different, something I only discovered after welding most of it together, so that resulted in a bit of chop work to get things to fit right, meaning I lost about 2" from my lower hull section, meaning I no longer had space for 8 six in road wheels, instead, I had space for only 7.

Minor point that only the really dedicated armour enthusiasts will notice.

I'll get it out for another spin before too long. I had it out on the front lawn today, but overloaded things a bit. Blowing 30A fuses is fun!

NS
 
I realize this project has fallen by the wayside over the summer....too busy shooting to do any building, but I had it out tonight doing some cutting and welding to lighten the frame up a bit. I did a bit of work on the drive sprockets and lightened them by about 25%, and the work on the frame will save me between 15-20 pounds, meaning my overall weight (currently about 220) will drop to about 190-195-ish.

About a 12-15% weight savings, with consumerate improvements in battery performance.

NS
 
A man who works with his hand is a laborer.

A man who works with his hand and mind is a craftman.

A man who works with his hand, mind and heart, ia an artist.

Congratulation, and thanks for sharing :)
 
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The first fully assembled track:

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Where we're at today:

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Outrageous...

more pics...that is WAYYY cool....dont know how I missed it till now
 
I have a couple of short youtube clips, but only of test runs.

I've had a problem with the tracks popping off the sprockets, so I'm re-doing the rear idler wheels, and am about 25% done replacing them with milled gears instead of the rubber rollers I was using.

Hoping that will fix my problem.

NS
 
Well,

I've gotten a bit of work done on the rear idler situation, hopefully it'll fix me up.

I also noted that I was starting to see a bit of surface corrosion(rust) on the bare metal frame.

I decided to do something about that, so I picked up a can of rustoleum paint at CT, and have had a bit of a go at tidying up the looks a bit.

Here's how things look as of this evening. I tore everything off the frame to apply a coat or two of paint. Note, this is similar in colour to the correct interior of a real Tiger 1....

NS

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This project brings to mind the mash episode where frank tries to drive the Sherman and ends up running over half the camp including Col. Potter's jeep.

I tried to youtube a clip, but no luck.
 
Wow, this was brought back from the dead!

Now i can't help but mention that there is a nerf '.50 cal' that runs full auto on D batteries IIRC. 25 round belts. Under a hundred bucks.

Depending on where you work, it can be an office must...:D:dancingbanana::D
 
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