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Old 09-23-2010, 04:40 AM
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Vorcha Vorcha is offline
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build movable tank tracks with (almost) no friction

Hi everyone!

This is a tutorial on how to build movable tank tracks for very high performance, high speed and reliability, (relatively) fast and possibly most easy and with minimum cost!

The base for this is my (to this moment) ongoing project of a Terminator-HK-Tank-modification. To this moment iīm finished only with 1 of the 4 drive sections, but this single one is built with a

movable track that allows you to drive it like a matchbox-car with a speed you would normally use to kill a fly in your kitchen...

If you donīt believe me, watch this:



Now iīll tell you how i built it and what issues arouse in the process, so that after this you will be able to build even better tracks for whatever model you are working on and that needs good tracks which allow you to drive it with the speed you desire...
(or your destructive children are able to achieve... )

...and most important: almost completely out of cardboard and paper... almost.


So lets start!


I began with cutting out all the track links... together! I didnīt cut them out one by one, thatīs an idea i got when i saw "klebegold" building his track for his "DET 250" in a german modellers forum, he had glued all his links on two paper strips... and so i thought: "if i cut all the links in the position theyīll have in the track without separating them this will reduce the sources of instability and wrong assembly MASSIVELY, a problem i had, when i tried building movable tracks years ago...

so i cut the tracks out as a block with two additional strips on the sides...



the important thing is that i let out spaces between the links that would be filled with... steel rods, build out of straightened paperclips.

Next i cut out the spaces...



... you will see, that iīve done this not very good, the spaces are all different, which means, that your tracks will be much better than mine...

Now comes the really important part: How is the whole mechanism assembled?
I painted a very simple drawing in Paint, which will give you a very good overview...
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Last edited by Vorcha; 09-23-2010 at 05:06 AM.
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Old 09-23-2010, 04:40 AM
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Vorcha Vorcha is offline
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the red lines are paper strips,
the red dots are the pieces of the straightened paperclips and
the black lines are the track links...
yellow is the glue (I used "UHU" universal glue)



The thing you donīt see, but is the most important part is that you put on one link 2 strips of paper, while you put 1 on the next, positioned between the two...




Uploaded with ImageShack.us
(Of course you glue all the stripes on the back...)

the reason behind this is that this allows you to put in the steel rods, held by 3 paper strips, 2 from the one side and 1 from the other, while one link holds 2 strips to both sides, while the next holds 1 to both sides open, which makes it 2 times faster to make and 2 times more stable...



...and here i made the next big mistake: you can imagine, that if one link holds only one strip, it would become unstable to the sides, which you can avoid by making the middle stripes bolder and the side-ones thinner, making it more stable in the event...

...or you compensate the spared time and make it with 5 instad of 3 holding strips, making your life to hell, but achieving the ultimately strong track with no unstability and looking more realistic as well...
:(:(

Donīt forget to push the steel rods in the spaces, which should be a little bit wider than the rods, allowing them to move freely later...
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Old 09-23-2010, 04:42 AM
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Next you fold the strips all to the center of their track link, so that 2 hold a rod from the one side and 1 from the other...



...and now you can see the next mistake i made: the spaces between the stripes are too big, while they should be there, to allow the links to move, but not that big, which makes my tracks even more unstable...

Ok, if you survived till this stage, you are almost finished... you can see that the glue has made these typical lines everywhere, you can see the glitter on the surface... thatīs not a problem, unless they connect the stripes of two different links, or worse, the little space between folded stripe and the next link...

Donīt be too eager to remove them though, wait till the glue is hardened a little bit and then cut them with your cutter-knive or your scalpel very carefully to not cut the paper...

When the glue is hardened enouth you can go to the final stage: cutting out the 2 card stripes... But be careful: if you worked good the steel rods should be still free in the little tubes of paper stripes, so (if you worked really good) they could fall out to the sides... Well i didnīt work that good and saw the problem later: i had put little amounts of glue on the rods, which glued to the paper and after beginning to move the whole thing gave free the rods,
creating therefore an even better anti-friction , but because of the fact they didnīt fall out in the beginning they therefore began to go out constantly later. If you saw the video you didnīt see the whole story: i had to press the rods back in the tubes after every single take again and again and again...

Avoid this by gluing additional little stripes of paper on the little holes on the sides... a thing i just hadnīt the patience to do anymore, i had worked on the track about 7/8 hours to this point and just wanted to play with it...
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Old 09-23-2010, 04:45 AM
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:D

You should now wait, till the glue is hardened completely, let it lay down overnight or so to not damage the still wet paper...

And now, finally: The final stage!

After you close the last paperstripes over the last connecting steel rod, you have a perfectly rolling tank track... that rolls out of your tank almost immediately. So choose the form of the little parts in the middle of the track that hold the track on the wheels according to your preferrance/the look they have on the original model...



Uploaded with ImageShack.us

Actually, you could have applied them in the beginning, but then you couldnīt tear them off so easily, if they just donīt work...
I tested 3 different types of these parts till i got the final ones...


And the last thing: These parts are all of cheap cardboard, with the bigger parts thatīs no problem, but these brake into their layers constantly, actually after every yard or so of rollying i have to glue the layers together again on 3 of them...




In total i worked 9 hours or so on this track, but not én bloc, iīm shure you will succeed in less than 4 hours after this tutorial!

So good luck and a lot of patience!

Vorcha
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Old 09-23-2010, 05:56 AM
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PModel Rookie PModel Rookie is offline
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WOW,Gotta try that! A good guide for beautiful tracks(err,movable...but its still beautiful)!
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Old 09-23-2010, 07:02 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by PModel Rookie View Post
WOW,Gotta try that! A good guide for beautiful tracks(err,movable...but its still beautiful)!
Hahaha... !
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Old 09-23-2010, 07:08 AM
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Rubenandres77 Rubenandres77 is offline
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Wonderful, and inspiring.
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Old 09-23-2010, 07:22 AM
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Thanks for sharing your ideas with all of us. An excellent tutorial.
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Old 09-23-2010, 07:24 AM
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Quote:
Originally Posted by Knife View Post
Thanks for sharing your ideas with all of us. An excellent tutorial.
thank you!
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Old 09-23-2010, 09:15 AM
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Now I feel really inspired .

Thanks for sharing.
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Any criticism of my work is welcome.
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