7th-Apr-21, 08:04 AM
Reading through your post would say that you are where I was @3 years ago, wanting to take the plunge but wondering if my fossilised brain (I’m close to retirement age) would wrap round the CAD and the printing process. I to have some 2D CAD experience which was years previous and had held back from 3D CAD after dabbling with AutoCAD and struggling to achieve anything.
I dived in buying a cheap printer Annet 8 kit for £137 and downloaded Autodesk123D Design (no longer available) which is modelling software not CAD. Many trips to Youtube where there is plenty of tutorials and I was off and running designing chassis’. I have now progressed to using multiple packages which are more complex as my skill grew and the need to draw bodyshells, but there are many free CAD/modelling programs to try. The learning curve on the modelling programs is not steep as you can see straight away what you are drawing as usually based on pre drawn shapes i.e. boxes, spheres, pyramids etc which can be modified, added or subtracted from each other. These programs are ideal for drawing chassis’ as fundamentally a basic chassis is a collection of 3d boxes, i.e. a flat plate with 4 upstand boxes for axle supports, 2-3 tubes for posts and a hole for the guide and a cut out to take a Slot It pod. Thingieverse website has several slot car chassis you can download and print and with some practice these can be modified.
For the printers the cheap Prusa clone kits are great if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of printing but will say you will spend a lot of time keep it running and modifying. Better bet these days are the sub £350 printers like the Ender 3 or Creality CR10 , which only required the tower to be assembled and the plugs connected, these will be more accurate and run @50% faster than the cheap Prusa clones, last longer plus much online support. I moved from the Annet to Creality CR10 Mini then added a Creality CR10S (much larger print volume) which runs nearly twice as fast as the Annet did with a few mods.
For the chassis printing, typical times vary greatly as depends on the volume of filament needed, but to give some idea a 1/32 18mm wide F1 chassis is under 2 hours, a recent 1/24 design with integral motor pod was coming out at 6+ hours.
Cheers
JMay.
I dived in buying a cheap printer Annet 8 kit for £137 and downloaded Autodesk123D Design (no longer available) which is modelling software not CAD. Many trips to Youtube where there is plenty of tutorials and I was off and running designing chassis’. I have now progressed to using multiple packages which are more complex as my skill grew and the need to draw bodyshells, but there are many free CAD/modelling programs to try. The learning curve on the modelling programs is not steep as you can see straight away what you are drawing as usually based on pre drawn shapes i.e. boxes, spheres, pyramids etc which can be modified, added or subtracted from each other. These programs are ideal for drawing chassis’ as fundamentally a basic chassis is a collection of 3d boxes, i.e. a flat plate with 4 upstand boxes for axle supports, 2-3 tubes for posts and a hole for the guide and a cut out to take a Slot It pod. Thingieverse website has several slot car chassis you can download and print and with some practice these can be modified.
For the printers the cheap Prusa clone kits are great if you want to learn the nuts and bolts of printing but will say you will spend a lot of time keep it running and modifying. Better bet these days are the sub £350 printers like the Ender 3 or Creality CR10 , which only required the tower to be assembled and the plugs connected, these will be more accurate and run @50% faster than the cheap Prusa clones, last longer plus much online support. I moved from the Annet to Creality CR10 Mini then added a Creality CR10S (much larger print volume) which runs nearly twice as fast as the Annet did with a few mods.
For the chassis printing, typical times vary greatly as depends on the volume of filament needed, but to give some idea a 1/32 18mm wide F1 chassis is under 2 hours, a recent 1/24 design with integral motor pod was coming out at 6+ hours.
Cheers
JMay.
Mr Fit for Function.
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