3D Printing and RC Projects

bez · January 20, 2015

As a few of you know I have a bit of a RC addiction aside from my high speed project I have been working on several others where the UM2 has become a vital part of the build process especially when doing electric conversions to nitro/petrol chassis.

I thought it would be nice to try and start a thread with some examples of some on the RCs I have been working on

HoBao Hyper ST Brushless conversion

I wanted to build a nice tidy nitro to brushless conversion for a Hyper ST Truggy which didnt involve drilling the chassis and bodgeing parts all over the place. I designed and printed the following parts

Radio box mount: Retro fitted a Traxxas waterproof receiver box as the stock radio box lives where the brushless motor is installed. I designed a tidy bracket to mount to the top of the servo and the radio box screws down onto that. This part was printed in nylon.

Lipo Tray: This is always the most annoying part of any conversion as you are normally stuck with random generic options that never fit just as you would like and 9 times out of 10 require you to drill the chassis, which is pretty annoying if you get it slightly wrong. However this wasn't a problem for this project as I was able to design and print a Lipo holder that utilises existing spare mounting points on the nitro chassis while also making sure it was far enough away from the spur gear for obvious safety reasons. I also channelled the underside of the Lipo tray to allow wire routing which in turn made for a tidy install.

ESC Plate: Normally when doing conversions you are stuck with sticking the ESC to a extended part of a lipo tray then reinforcing that down with cable ties which can look messy. I desided to draw up a seperate block to mount the ESC to its secured via screws to the plate and the plate is then fixed to the chassis using the 2 left over nitro engine mounting holes.

The end result:

HPI Baja Brushless conversion

The main problem with this project was devising a way to secure the lipos into the chassis. Normally on a stock Baja chassis there are triangles cut all along the side and you can simply just use a couple of velcro strap to secure the lipos, but in this case the car has a carbon chassis which is enclosed ....... great for keeping crud out ...... bad for securing lipos lol

I eventually came up with a simple solution to the issue. I printed 2 securing blocks that slid over the rear chassis brace and then made an adjustable slider with velcro strap to hold them into place once fitted. What was even better is this could be done without having to modify the chassis

The end result looked like this:

I also made another bracket for another traxxas radio box, to mount to the fast eddy steering servo holder:

Other random RC parts:

I have been helping a good friend with some parts for one of his mini speed builds. We designed and printed some shock towers from Nylon bridge and some other parts for a pancar (pics to follow)

I will do my best to keep up to date with this topic with new stuff as I build new projects

Update:

I forgot to add one of my "insanity" (+100Mph) projects I'm working on currently. Its a Hyper GT chassis which is being modified to run 8cells. I will be using 3d printing to prototype all the parts and for manufacturing plastic components for the build.

Its not very exciting atm but it has a lot of potential (i hope my photobucket links work lol):