Because I need steel tracks for my Sherman BARV that’s still under construction, and don’t fancy building the Bronco ones but think metal and 3D-printed ones are too expensive, I thought: what is there to be found in terms of 3D-print-it-yourself files? That brought me to this set by FaustusModels on the Cults3D website.
For your €6.49 you get eleven STL-files:
There are really only five different parts, but you get them with and without supports, plus a “raft plate”, a rectangle with a reinforcing cross on it, whatever use this may have. Here some examples of the parts, the versions with supports:
I don’t have a 3D printer myself, but my brother does, so I asked him to print me ten or so of each of the files, so I could see how buildable this is before I have him print up 160 or so to put on the model. He made me eight:
They look reasonably good, but it immediately gave me the impression that cleaning up the parts would be more work than for a comparable set in plastic or metal. That very quickly proved to indeed be the case when I cleaned up two track blocks, one end connector with pins, and one end connector with duckbill extension.
And then I discovered that there are barely any holes through the blocks or in the end connectors. I suspect this is because of the printing resolution or something like that, but just this alone makes the set just about unusable. I drilled one hole through each block with an 0.75 mm drill, because the pins are about 0.6 mm thick, and that took over a minute per hole. Great, with 79 or 83 links per side, times two holes per block, times two tracks … Even if it goes faster when you get the hang of it, you’ll still be spending roughly five hours just drilling holes. And we’re not even counting the end connectors here, nor the fact that with the aching hands you’re certain to get after a while, you won’t be drilling as fast anymore as in the beginning.
Oh yeah, and when removing the supports from the blocks I found I had to file quite a bit off them to get them reasonably to size and square.
OK, then, let’s put them together:
That works, and they stay together pretty well without glue — but I think this is largely due to two factors. One is that my brother used slightly flexible resin, the other is that the block is still slightly too long on the side I filed down, so that the pins spread apart slightly and therefore hold on the end connector fairly well. But the blocks also don’t hinge relative to each other, so I can’t bend this around a wheel.
Conclusion
No, thanks.
