Scratchbuilt(3D printing) WWI Male Mk IV (Toon Tank)

[ScanmanDan]

I like and have built quite a few of the Meng Toon Tanks.  I like the quick, no fuss, joy of build, paint and be done in a few weekends. I also just started playing about with a 3D printer.  Hmmm, I wonder if I can join the dots.  So...

Not to drive myself crazy I picked a project with mainly flat panels namely a Mk IV male tank.  Being it is a cartoon tank I do have to be selective in my details and try and stay within the 'design philosophy' that Meng has going.  This mostly involves squishing the subject in length and exaggerating some details while glossing over others entirely.

First stop was roughing out the shape in Fusion 360 to get something I found pleasing.  This took a few hours.

The challenge for me was how to break the model down into seperate parts I could conceivable print successfully on my Elegoo Mars printer.

After that I spent hours on and off working more and more detail into each part one by one.

 

I'm up to about version 50 at this stage.  There are a lot of details inside each part so the whole thing can slot together.

 

At this point I thought it best to do some test prints to see just how the design will look in the real world.





This was a good news/bad news moment.  Good in that everything fits and printed pretty much as designed, bad in that I can see a heap of changes to make to improve the design.  Now it's a matter of taking a few notes and getting to the design and massaging the details.  

It's been a fun interesting project so far and one that could allow for a lot of freedom in modelling in the future.  

Thanks for looking in and any comments and suggestions are welcome.
 

Edited March 7, 2020 by ScanmanDan

[Carius]

Different and interesting  project

[PF Naughton]

Looks great so far 

[Gorby]

That looks great.

 

Which doesn't help me when I'm telling myself I don't need a 3D printer.

[Gorby]

I thought this project reminded me of something: