TOPIC:

Someone happy to find files to repair a Nichimo Luminous contacted me recently to ask me for my mail address... 
And yesterday, I got a nice surprised in my mailbox


An sticker sheet, original, from a 44B Rock'n City. I will have to plan for a paintjob at some point (likely during spring, as temperature is too low for this currently). I'm thinking about gun metal or dark gun metal...
In anycase, I sent a mail back to the sender to thanks him as this is great. And it is also great to see printed parts on a repair car when people take the time to send you pictures and tell you they are happy with it.

That’s a great story Marc, I love the fact someone did a lovely thing by way of saying thanks.

The amount of 3D print files you’ve been producing has been amazing.
👍

I wish this kind of gestures happen more frequently... My free files have a lot of downloads but not much feedbacks, unfortunately...

That’s people, lazy and just think everything in life is free.

I also think the way the files sharing site such as Printables are working is also contributing to the situation... You may gain more prusameters by posting makes or remix of exitsitng files than you do when you publish original files... This vehiculates some bad messages in my opinion...

The red bodyshell from the second Hilux was sent to my friend at Loisirs Creations RC so he can do a reproduction of it...
He made a mold from it and few weeks ago he sent me a picture he published also on facebook while he was adjusting the depressions here and there to make it work...

Few days ago, when coming back home a big box was awaiting for me, with two bodyshells in it... I trimmed the first one, it's not prefect: I followed what was cut on the original bodies I had in hand, but I could have done better. I'll do better on the second one (and the two others that will come later).



I still need to position the holes for the mirrors and finalise the front end, and also print the other version of the roll bar... I'll do the paint after all of this (it's too windy today to do a paintjob anyway )
 

Had to reorder some Black PETG as I finished a roll quite a few weeks ago to print some stuff for the Hilux bodyshell

The front end is now fine, as well as the roll bar (original version, just modified for the interface between the main parts and the side bars, and the exhausts. The mirror are lijely to require some mods...




Roll bar was printed splitted with adaptative layers, and the result is good.
I need to rework the mirrors and make those files available both as cluster and for home printing...

I printed the mirrors twice. Support removal is a pain, whatever the orientation of the print. Powder base process will be definitely better, with potentially the possibility of relying on polypropylene which would give a lot more flex to the part.


The cluster files are already good to go. I also prepared some masks for the windows, I'll probably share the file somewhere (cults3D with the stl files?).Next : clean the body, masking and paintjob. I'm not sure to be able to do this within this week-end. But i'm targeting to have this done soon...

nice result. This truck is very funny

Now that I have the insurance to have bodyshell for this car, the next is to make sure I can pull parts easily (specially the one which tends to break easily). The way the design is done does not make room for many possibilities to split and fix splitted parts... This ran in my head for a few weeks...
And if the solution was not to split but to do something else?

I decided to add two small triangle at the front to ease printing stability in an optimal position. And went for some test print...
Auto orientation in slicing with tree supports...


I launched a test in PETG... Here is the results


After support removal : 


Last step was to removed the sacrificial added parts and to see



The result is quite satisfactory, and it opens quite a few possibilities. I'll order PC for those parts as this is the material known with the better layer adhesion. On the arms, I may think about PP or PC to build a reliable 44B runner...