The OpenRC F1 car is a radio control car you can 3D print and assemble yourself. You make the parts, glue them together, and then add your RC gear. That’s all well and good, but could it be done… bigger? [3D Printing Nerd] decided to tackle this one at 4x scale.
It goes without saying that this took some work. The model has to be carved up into sections that would actually fit on the printers to hand. This can take some planning to ensure the parts still come out nicely, as they may be printed in different orientations or with different slicer settings than originally intended.
That’s just the start, though. Once they’re printed, the parts need to be accurately aligned and glued together, which is a whole extra set of challenges. Urethane, epoxy and superglue adhesives are all pressed into service here to get the job done.
It’s a multipart build, as it’s a huge undertaking to 3D print anything on this scale. It’s a great example of taking a fun project, and turning up the silly factor to 11. And of course, at the end of the day, you’ve got a gigantic RC car to play with. Perhaps the only bigger RC cars we’ve seen have been… actual cars.
Yeah, this is a good example of why you would want to extrude pellets instead of filament. A $200 print is no good.
That depends on what the alternative costs, no?
My guess is that I could carve and sand a buck, build a vaccume form table, do the vaccume forming and paint the body in the time it must have taken to print and glue this.
I love the idea of 3D printing, but there comes a point where time, cost and risk of a failed print begins working against you in the face of traditional options.
But applause to the guy for doing it anyway ;)
I know this argument well. I can often bang something out in the woodshop faster than I could print it.
But. If you can design it faster than you can build it, it’s a win. Printer time is free, human time is limited. The printer never sleeps, or at least it doesn’t need to.
But no one in the hobby is “there” yet. You’re talking about printing at a scale that’s pretty rarified. There’s one guy that seems to have a decent pellet extruderdesign, he’s had a beta run sent to users but actual production seems to have escaped him so far. Original production was slated October 2017. And IIRC his design would cost $280. haqnmaq’s design looks possibly serviceable but it hasn’t been attached to a printer yet. I think he’s got over $300 in parts into his. And these prices don’t consider what it takes to hold these heavy extruders stably.
It’s not even radio controlled yet, It’s still a rolling dummy.
Correct. Just got all the parts back home the other day. I and a few friends have a plan, and a sponsor, and it’ll be RC soon!
Yay! I was wondering what the plan was but didn’t hear about any updates until now.
Wow, you did not even announced this on video AFAIK!
Great news, would be a shame to let it just sit around when you’ve put so much effort into it.
4X or 1/4?
Seems to be 4X of 1/10 scale.
its 2/5 ths scale, its pretty odd but i guess it works. printing the model at 200% would have been 1/5th scale and 1/4th (250% of the model), both scale RC cars are a thing. taking it up to that scale by his claim should be 40% the size of the real thing which serems about right. I dont think it would be too hard to size the right electrical components even if they dont come from the standard RC hobby supply chain.
H/K merchandise has successfully powered Peter Sripol’s DIY plane…if it can fly a full size plane with a human pilot in it, it can definitely move a 2/5 RC car ;-)
What Mike says. OpenR/C F1 car is 1:10 (pretty common RC scale) and Joel decided to make a 4x scale OpenR/C. It doesn’t work out terribly great to an easy scale but there’s not a lot of people running in or around 40% scale anyway.
I’m a huge F1-fan. Great project. Since a long time I’m thinking of making an rc car with microcontroller so it has a differential, traction control, anti-collision, etc…
Maybe it will go this way.
thanks.