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Tank treads

Posted: Wed Sep 25, 2013 2:19 am
by dpmacri
I thought it would be cool to build this: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:56606

I tried a few times with PLA but something kept coming unstuck from the bed and ruined the print. Recently I switched to trying out ABS and managed to get a decent hollow pyramid without much stringing so I figured I'd give the tank treads another try.

However, I'm impatient so I printed it at half size :-P

It looked good on the bed:
Finished print.
Finished print.
Unfortunately, the tread spacing a we're too right (I could tell while it was printing) and they broke as soon as I tried to loosen them to move. So instead of tank treads I got two planetary gear wheels attached to a bar :-D

Edit: oh, and as another symptom of my impatience, I printed at .3mm layer height, so that probably contributed to the failed belts as well!

Re: Tank treads

Posted: Mon Feb 03, 2014 8:50 pm
by smiley
That looks amazing. did you ever try to get it to work again? I still don't have my retract calibrated 100%, but I am having pretty good luck printing out the 5x planetary gears. If I print them at 1.5x they work right off the table, I don't even need to "break" them loose.

Re: Tank treads

Posted: Tue Feb 04, 2014 11:31 am
by dpmacri
smiley wrote:That looks amazing. did you ever try to get it to work again? I still don't have my retract calibrated 100%, but I am having pretty good luck printing out the 5x planetary gears. If I print them at 1.5x they work right off the table, I don't even need to "break" them loose.
I haven't tried printing this again. I think if I increase the size (maybe 3/4 or even a little larger) it should print. I've also installed an E3D hot-end which might help with some of the problems I was having, but again, I just haven't given it another try.