Tank Turret in TurboCAD Deluxe

I'm beginning to get the hang of 3D in Turbocad Deluxe.

This is progress so far on the turret of a Vickers Light tank Mk V1b.

Looking really good, wish I could use a cad system like that.

Looking good Neil, can't wait to see your finished version of it in metal

It will be a VERY big lost wax casting

The original plan was to knock it all out of steel sheet/aluminium blanks and just print the tracks. But instead this poor printer is being beaten to within an inch of its life.

I printed the commander's cupola overnight, then comparing it to photos I found loads of annoying small errors. Hopefully the replacement will be more accurate!

Just hope I can do all the hard bits before they demand it back!

then back to metal before I et exiled to the Military Modelling website

Neil

Very impressive Neil - and several orders of magnitude better than I've managed thus far...

Regards,

IanT

VERY big -- -- a 1 : 1 scale ? ? ? perhaps.

Amazingly good. All mine look like wooden blocks glued together

That seems an expensive way to go about it, there are a couple of other options

1. As the turret looks round why not turn a bit of ali and cut the slope on the front, add a few dummy seams and dummy rivits ( remember someone will count them). Then have the cupolas and mantle etc done in wax or see below.

2. As a RTV mould will have to be taken for the wax why not just use PU resin into the mould and omit the lost wax casting. This would also allow you to cast more than one turret once you have tehe RTV mould should you want to. If you take option 1 then just the small bits can be cast in PU. This is the way just about all the after market turrets are made for the AFV model trade. It will also be easier to work on the PU resin casting to remove any printer layer marks that have reproduced from te pattern.

J

Very impressive Neil; I find it very difficult to think in 3D so, although I have a 3D CAD program I just use 2D mode. Maybe one day.....

1:6, I think 1:8 would have been more practical, although this does mean crew are easily available (Action Man - although his hair style isn't quite as 1940 as it used to be... )

It should be seen as an 'interpretation' rather than an exact version, to be honest, as done from photos and basic dimensions.

I've completely redone the commanders cupola now, took a whole evening

Sorry Jason, the Lost Wax bit was a joke, I'm 3D printing it. The cupola (small turret on top of the big one) is about 4" diameter not including the stops for the lid.

One interesting thing I've discovered is that every part is about 0.01mm oversize regardless of shape etc.

Most annoying this is missing rivets... fortunately it isn't hard or slow to print a few dozen rivet heads and superglue them on, but then you need to remember to add them to the model too!

Neil