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Hi Brian,

I am looking forward to updates, a week and a half is going to seem like forever.

I will just have to be patient

Cheers, Dave.

I've been loving reading through this thread. I'm looking for an interesting 4WD buggy to replace an old Schumacher Bosscat works I sold a decade ago (it was classic even then!). This is very interesting especially now there are new re-releas RC10s out there.

Is Shapeways the only option as far as 3D print goes? We contract out a fair amount of 3D print stuff (medical mostly) and there are certainly some places better than others. I guess Shapeways provides a method to offload the ordering and manufacturing process (and generate a small income from the sales) but is it worth trying someone else like https://www.3dhubs.com/, or http://www.sculpteo.com/en-gb/, or https://i.materialise.com/materials. We actually used a 3D printer in California called Forecast3D for some unusual medical grade components we needed. There were the only people in NA that could get us a fully biocompatible material.

Secondly, it doesn't cost that much to go from a 3D print, to short-run moulded parts, but you'd need the orders for conversion kits up front I suppose. That solution would give you more control over the material, and likely more robust results.

I do a lot of 3d printing at work with our in-house machines (SLA, Objet, and DMLS), at home on my FDM with ABS, and have used Forecast, Fineline, GrowIT, Action, and others to outsource. The nice thing about shapeways is they are set up for you to offer a *product* which they sell and ship on your behalf. This is something I'm doing on the side because it's fun and because I like the community and want them to have something cool, and shapeways allows me to do that "on the side."
I'm not opposed to going with another vendor, but only as a last resort. But I think that anyone printing SLS nylon is going to have similar strength characteristics to what shapeways has, which is why I'm trying to design the part to be much stronger so it can survive when made of SLS nylon. The nice thing about nylon is that people can dye or stain it to get the color they want, a lot of other 3D printing materials you can't do that with. If these still break I'll start trying other materials, but I hope it doesn't come to that...
Molding parts has a lot of startup fees that I would most likely not be able to recoup. Realistically we will sell maybe 50 of these kits, so that's a very low production volume and the per part cost including tooling would be very high.

Good points there mk-Zero. Although we've never used limited-run moulding my understanding of that process is they use a 3d printed part to generate a mould quickly and cheaply, and then can mould with something that has better properties us to 100 times or so before the mould has expried. (I may be totally wrong). It looks a lot like the SLS nylon just doesnt have the resolution to fully bond each particle to it's neighbour. But as you say beef-it-up and it should be ok.
Can't wait to see the full testing videos!

That would actually be very cool. Machining them wouldn't be that bad either tho just not in their current form. They could be made more simple making for less work.

The evolution in 3D printing parts is to print 3D molds for molded parts, got my attention.

Yeah, we print molds at work, mostly for silicone rubber molding, it works pretty well. If the latest design still breaks then I'll look into other materials and low volume molding.

It just seemed like the right thing to do with the short arm car

Way cool Jeff. It would be awesome to make a tribute car and send to Mr Moore. I think he would appreciate the engineering and passion.

GoMachV wrote:It just seemed like the right thing to do with the short arm car

Though very cool. Short armed stealth tranny RC10 is a bit odd.

Yeah, and brushless too, but it was more about the cool chain sound once the body is on

The short arms, the Edinger gold and the chain goes hand in hand.

Hi Jeff,

Any chance of some video of it running without the body so I can see the chain in action.

Cheers, Dave.

Ok finally gone through this thread and wow!!! Guys forget Picasso, your artists in your own right. The castor blocks appear brittle so has anyone tried painting anything on like a resin or glue to strengthen it? Once your happy with them will you be doing various degrees ?

Once we are able to make the current version strong enough to handle abuse on the track i will be making other versions of the caster blocks with various amounts of caster as well as arm mounts that will change the kickup and work with the other Ten4 components.