Soviet-Era Tank Gets The 3D Printed Treatment

3D printers are celebrated for their capacity to replace missing or broken parts. How about an entire T-62 tank?

Now hold on a second — this is only a model replica. It is, however another expression of the myriad uses for 3D printers. Designed in Maya and requiring almost three weeks to print all 62 parts from about 70 meters of PLA filament.  The assembly is not terribly involved, made easier by printing a few large sections such as the crew section and hull while the parts don’t get much smaller than the turret hatches. Nonetheless, he final product is about as true to life as you can get when designing the parts from scratch.

The model for the tank is available for purchase here in STL format.

Model trains, ships, figures and so on have literally thousands of different offerings for the hobbyist, but for those with particular interests or taste, 3D printers — combined with some skill in a modeling program — will fill your niche. And, if you have some serious inspiration, how about a remote-controlled spider tank from Ghost in the Shell?

[via Yurii, of Gambody]

10 thoughts on “Soviet-Era Tank Gets The 3D Printed Treatment

  1. BUY FOR $39.99

    It’s been a while since I bought and put together injection molded model vehicles but $40 seems to be a bit steep for something that you then have to spend 3 weeks printing on your own printer. $40 feels a bit steep for a model kit for that matter, even though those are injection molded (and mass produced). It’s a very neat looking kit and undoubtedly quite a bit of work went into it. What do other people think?

    1. seriously???
      it must have been a long while!!
      anything in a lager than 1/144th is going to cost at least $40!!

      eg the Heller Camanche and 22Osprey in 1/35th cost me $48 and $56!

    2. $40 is well within the normal range for a 1:35 tank model, and actually pretty good for one with a full interior. The super hardcore kits–the kind with a wiring harness for the full-detail engine, and actual gears in the gearbox–get much more expensive, especially once you include aftermarket photo etch sets.

    3. It might depend on what you’re looking for. A 1:35 Tamia T-62 model appears to have a US SRP of $26.99. By the reviews it is an older model originally made to be motorized, so it probably doesn’t have interior detail or much exterior detail for that matter, I didn’t look further. A Trumpeter brand kit runs $48 on Amazon, which includes photo-etched detail parts, so I’d say that kit’s detail might exceed this digital model.

  2. Not remote controlled
    No raspberry Pi
    No Arduino with pointless modules
    No wifi router with pineapple to usb logger inside to steal passwords
    No Xbox kinnect hacked into it to act as a auto targeting tank
    No replication of Mechanisms on a miniature scale to amaze

    Where’s the Hack
    Buy a 3d printer Make a model import model print parts OMFG YOU’VE DONE EXACTLY WHAT SOMETHING WAS DESIGNED FOR.

    I used to make such things about 30 years ago, but really what does this have to do with anything other than demonstrating his handy crafting of snap together parts.

Leave a Reply to Blue Footed BoobyCancel reply

Please be kind and respectful to help make the comments section excellent. (Comment Policy)

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.