19.3.24

Elephant tank transporter

 I have been working on the new tank transporter. We need this as part of the filming requirements for the tank. The idea is that the tank transporter will pull up and the tank off loaded. It does not need to be a copy of any existing transporter, infact the brief is to make it look Sci-fi so I can have a bit of fun with this one.

What I did not realise is the size of this thing in 1/6 scale. I think the whole build will be nearly 3m long. 

It should be a fairly straight forward build. 

The hardest thing will be the suspension as it has to be set for the weight of the lorry but I am not sure what the final weight will be. The tractor will be made from 1.5mm steel and the chasis on both tractor and trailer will be steel box section. Tractor wheels will be 200mm pneumatic, tryes taken from a couple of old mountain boards. Trailer wheels will be smaller at 80mm keeping the trailer as low to the ground as possible making it easy to load the tank.






Four wheel steering linkage all made up from 8mm road and eyes.



Suspension is 18mm carbon steel used to create leaf springs all fully adjustable.





Cab is made from 1.5mm steel. Main tractor body is made from 2mm steel.








Starting to come together. This is just the basic structure in steel.
The 2 and 1.5mm steel is so nice to work with plus does not weight to much.





The whole truck was mocked up in cardboard first to get the overall look and dimensions.

The motor is a 350w 24v motor and transaxcel from an old mobility scooter which should be more than powerful enough to move the truck and trailer with the tank loaded. It wont go fast but that is not the point. The trailer  platform will be made from plywood edged with alloy keeping the weight as low as possible. 
Fifth wheel is very simple and will not be automatic so the trailer will have to be manually removed when needed.



14.2.24

Complete at last.

 The tank will soon have a staring role in a film, small independant film, but some interesting cinematography is planned using models. With that in mind the tank is now being dressed for its role. It has had a few items added that are needed plus a bit of netting camo. I will work on the rest of the dressing over the next few weeks, not demanding from a building point of view but definately good fun.

New sound system has been fitted and is awesome. I have managed to get lots of volume and bass from the speakers at last plus I have worked out how to map loads of sound samples onto the same track to create a very layered sound. I will go into more details about the sound system I build as I start on the Elefant transporter over the next few months.













5.2.24

New tank design is born

 

Thomas's new look. The main turret might be fixed but it now sports three guns all firing 209 blanks.
The main gun is stabilzed which makes it look so much better when driving plus the actuator that operates the gun elevator is mounted in a much better position providing much more power.


Hopefully the track issue has been solved with stronger motor mounts added.

The rear hatch is bolted on at the moment but I might change this hor hinges.













The turret dual gun system is now built and fitted to the tank. The servo that will power the turret rota system is not in yet but that should be a simple job. Fire system works well and when all three gun sounds together, very, very loud. Because the barrel is so short the flash and smoke are awesome, not need to add on FX here.
Sound system has been modified and works very well. I am using a ESS-Dual which has been modified to give me a louder sound and linked with my custom sound board so I can run multiple sounds at once, very cool.
Most of the main painting is done, just some detailing and tidying to do. Internally there is much more room which is great and makes it much easiler to access the main gun system.
Hopefully the tank will be complete in the next few days so I can then move on to the transporter.