3D Printed Tank Tracks

[Ivan] has been keeping his 3D printers busy with parts he’s experimenting with to build a tracked motion setup for a tank-like vehicle. His design uses several interlocking parts, so if you want to duplicate it, we hope your printer calibration is up to snuff. He’s still printing more parts and promises to release the files once the design proves out.

However, you can see he’s off to a good start. Small pieces fit together and accept a piece of filament as a sort of hinge. Some pins keep the filament from working out. Pads fit into the main parts and hold down with zip ties. The whole flexible tread locks into sprockets and a groove on a drive wheel.

 The initial test prints are in PLA, but he intends to print the final in durable nylon. By the first video, it is clear all the parts fit (with a little knife work on the first parts) and they move as you’d expect. You’ll see in the second video that it does work, it just takes a lot of parts. A whole lot of parts.

We wondered if [Ivan] had seen OpenWheel, which includes a tread you can print with flexible filament. Of course, there’s more than one way to create treads, too.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GwVgRI7A8gY

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CnwvDTgJU1k

10 thoughts on “3D Printed Tank Tracks

  1. It needs some suspention also the drive links will brake easaly. This guy always makes cool projects but bad enginering designes , fore sure if this guy made it it will brake in first run.

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