3D Printing

[frank9129]

3D Printing has been around for a while now. Has anyone tried to copy a chassis? An Artin 1:32 chassis would be quite useful.
I could use a few myself.

[HomeRacingWorld]

[frank9129]

I'm sorry to say that I have tried to deal with Becky. There was never any follow through on her end.
I'm thinking of a 3D printer. I just have some investigating to do.

[DAVE]

A friend made some 1/24th chassis, which we raced with vigor on a commercial King track. They
did not break, but were pretty light so we had to add quite a bit of lead. Unless you can find
someone to do it free, the cost is just too prohibitive.

[frank9129]

I'm looking for someone who is willing to build two and keep one. I'll supply the supplies.

[pfuetze]

i designed some 1/43rd chassis in 3D, one to fit the Kyosho Dslot parts.
Bill already got 30 of them running. The chassis works good. Designed one fixed chassis and one motor pod chassis. They are alvailable on shapeways.
But sorry, no 1/32nd chassis.
Designing them in 3D is more work than building the chassis out of sheet styrene, so. I did both and like my scratchbuilt styrene chassis more than the printed ones.

[ElSecundo]

Building them with a 3D printer is pretty expensive, and there's no 'economy of scale'. Building two takes exactly twice as long as building one, and uses axactly twice as much material.

A decent, relatively low-end 3D printer is about $5,000, but that doesn't include the support materials or plastic cartridges. The cartridges probabably contain enough plastic to make 40-45 chassis, and each cartridge costs around $300 apiece. The support materials are consumed with every print job. And somebody still has to do the time-consuming work of developing the .STL file.

Bottom line, it isn't cheap. Shapeways may be able to help, though.

[DAVE]

And be carefull. Some companies are listing FDMs in with their 3D printers. These are not the same, and
use an entirely different process. They are not suitable for making chassis.

[chappyman66]

My ladder chassis is based on the old Dynamic pattern. Make one, make a mold, cast as many as you want. Front and rear are separate sections, and a little glue or a few drops of resin make it whatever wheelbase you need. Cheap and easy, you can hang pans on it later if you want/need. It's not 3D printed but did I mention it's easy?