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2021 AMG GT Black Series-An Adventure in 3D Printing


Jhedir6

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 So as stated in the title, this will be (fingers crossed) a 3D printed car in 1/24th scale. My plan is to use either a Tamiya AMG GT3 chassis for the base or a Revell AMG GT, I"m not sure which I'll use yet as I haven't officially started printing any of the files.

I bought the files for the body and wheels off of a couple different designers on the web, I'll link to each down below. I have software to design my own items, but I'm not there yet, still teaching myself how to use the different versions I have but the ultimate goal is to be able to design and print my own items.....eventually. 

So for starters we have the body for the 2021 AMG GT Black Series from HORA80 https://cults3d.com/en/users/hora80/creations

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So from this pic, you can see the basic model shape. The parts in blue are what will be printed and the red is what is outside of my printable field. My printer is an entry level printer and on the small side, larger printers would easily be able to print this file in one shot. I will definitely be buying a bigger printer down the road.

In order to print this car on my printer I needed to "slice" the file into two segments using a program called Meshmixer, sorry didn't take a pic of that, but here are the two halves imported to the printing software.

Front clip

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Rear clip 

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The blue grid is the actual printable area of my build plate. 

Apologies for the pics, I took some pics of my computer screen as I was slicing the files in Chitubox, which is the slicing software that comes with my printer. There are many other slicing programs out there, but I'm still working on learning them so I stuck with Chitubox for this project.

And for the wheels I am using a file from another designer, Black Box, https://cults3d.com/en/users/BlackBox/creations, the wheels are not exactly like the AMG GT's but they're really close, close enough for me right now.

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In this pic, you can see what the file looks like when supported. All the grey will be supports leaving the blue as the actual printed file to keep. I will try to remember to take pics of the actual prints when completed.

I am hoping to get to some printing later this morning, I ran out of resin and a new shipment is due to arrive today, knock on wood.

Comments, criticisms and questions always welcome.

 

 

Edited by Jhedir6
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Very cool David, I have stepped in to 3d printing recently as well, was maybe slightly over confident in my ability to design my own parts, I have the software and everything as well just not the experience, I will get there....someday! I have found myself buying files also, lots of good stuff out there both paid and free, you are much more ambitious than I have been, mostly small parts but have been pondering printing a full body.

I'm interested and will follow along with your progress. Thanks for letting us join for the ride

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Small update for tonight, 

First, thanks for the replies, second, my resin did come in this morning so I was able to set a print up before heading off to bed. 

First print was the front clip of the body, it's actually more like 3/4 of the whole body. I "sliced" the body at the back wheel arches, and across the C pillar and just below the top of the rear window to minimize and details being "cut" by the slice.

So the print took about 11 1/2 hours and finished about 5 mins before I had to run out the door to work, leaving me just enough time to remove it from the build plate, quickly wash it in IPA and then leave it to soak in some clean water over night.

There wasn't much time for inspection but I'm pretty happy with how it looks but tomorrow I will have time to go over it and see whats what. The only issues I see so far are that the panel lines are not as crisp as I'd like so they'll need to be scribed out some and I'm not 100% sure on the scale. I took published dimensions of the real car and then used a conversion calculator to get them into 1/24 scale. It looks close, but I didn't have a chance to set it up beside another car to see how close it really is.

Anyways, here are some progress pics of the first print. Sorry the pics aren't great as I was really rushing to get the second print set up and not be late for work.

Backside, man, I think there's more resin in supports than in the actual body so far...

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Here's the front end, looks good so far....if the scale checks out I'll be really happy even if it just ends up as a very underdetailed curbside, but my hope is to use the Revell AMG GT kit to detail it up.

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Some of the details are obscured because that is fresh resin coating the front I had just pulled it from the vat and had not washed of any excess resin. Ideally I should of let it hang overnight to allow all the resin to drip back into the vat but I really wanted to get the other half of the body printing overnight.

A shot of the hood, the vents on the fenders need to be opened up and the two at the front of the depressions on either side of the hood as well but over all the detail is pretty nice looking. I did not remove the headlight or taillights that the original designer left filled in as I want to use the glass from the Revell kit to sketch out what needs to be removed.

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More pics in the morning once I get home and check on the back end.

Thanks for looking in.

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Another update....much later than I had originally planned on, but it's here.

Finished printing the 3 files I have so far for this project this morning, and there's good, bad, and ugly.....

The good, all three prints went off without a hitch.

The rear clip printed up nicely, fresh out of the printer

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The detail is excellent and the print quality excellent as well. The panel lines are not as deep as I'd like, but I'll just have to scribe them later on.

The supports are a bit over done, I probably could have removed half of them and been fine, but I sided on the cautious and added in extra. The thickness on the rear wing is a bit too thick, and I might try to sand it down and thin it out at some point.

Now the bad. When I sliced the model in two in Meshmixer, I didn't account for the fact that when you prep the print in the printer software, it "lifts" the print off of the build plate and adds in supports. So when I cut the print, I cut it at the very maximum edge of the printable field, then imported it to the printer software which then lifted the print and shortened it by about 2mm, so now when I but the front and rear clips together, the rear of the front clip is too short giving the rear wheel well a weird look. Not the end of the world, I can fill the gap, but something I didn't account for.....lesson learned. The gap is over exaggerated in this pic, but you can see I really don't have to fill in too much, just two points on each side of the body. 

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Otherwise it shouldn't be too difficult to merge the halves back together.

And now for the ugly..... well it's not really ugly, the print was perfect, just way to small. I printed the wheels at 1/24 scale based off the actual wheel sizes for this car, fronts are 19x10 and rears are 20x12. I scaled them down put the measurements in the software and got a perfect print.....at around 1/28 scale for some reason. They look great but I'm going to have to reprint them unfortunately.

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As you can see in this pic, I put the rear wheel inside the front wheel well and it's way too small. It might just be the low profile tires but either way I'm going to have to resize them. Not a huge deal, but I hate that I wasted the resin. Another lesson learned.

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So, I had hoped to use the chassis and other bits from Revell's AMG GT kit and it looks like that might just work. Here's a shot of the body lined up with the Revell chassis.

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You can see that it lines up really well. There will have to be some chopping, the rear pieces on the Revell chassis needs to come off cause of the diffuser on rear clip will replace it and it does line up about perfect with the hard line on the chassis itself.

I'll have to add some flat stock to the front of the chassis, again, no real issue there.

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I'm not sure about the sides yet, in the above photo there are some gaps but the body isn't sitting 100% either. The inside of the front clip has some extra built in detail from the original designer that I can remove to allow the body to sit down better on the chassis better.

And finally a shot the body with the Revell AMG GT kit (still in progress). The scale of the car looks spot on and the details on the print are very good. Once painted and detailed I don't think anyone would know it was not an actual model kit. Please note, none of the parts have been sanded yet, so there are some rough spots.

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Plan is to get the body into one piece on the weekend, till then, thanks for looking in.

Edited by Jhedir6
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9 hours ago, Jhedir6 said:

 

Otherwise it shouldn't be too difficult to merge the halves back together.

And now for the ugly..... well it's not really ugly, the print was perfect, just way to small. I printed the wheels at 1/24 scale based off the actual wheel sizes for this car, fronts are 19x10 and rears are 20x12. I scaled them down put the measurements in the software and got a perfect print.....at around 1/28 scale for some reason. They look great but I'm going to have to reprint them unfortunately.

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As you can see in this pic, I put the rear wheel inside the front wheel well and it's way too small. It might just be the low profile tires but either way I'm going to have to resize them. Not a huge deal, but I hate that I wasted the resin. Another lesson learned.

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It's a simple fix. Load the car into your cad software. Then load your wheel, tire and brake into the software. Position them into the general location of the wheel well and scale them to fit. Things like this you learn with time and experience. Check the width of the tire to make sure it's not too wide. Your doing fine so far.

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39 minutes ago, my66s55 said:

It's a simple fix. Load the car into your cad software. Then load your wheel, tire and brake into the software. Position them into the general location of the wheel well and scale them to fit. Things like this you learn with time and experience. Check the width of the tire to make sure it's not too wide. Your doing fine so far.

Thanks Doug. Great tip.....where were you when I was trying to figure this out....just kidding. 

This was my first attempt at something like this so now I know for the next time. I found another file of another car I want to print now, and the plan is to work on it tonight at work ( covering for someone so I've got  a 12hr shift tonight), and maybe set it up for a print on the weekend. The file is in 1/20th scale so I'll have to scale all the pieces down to 1/24th. This new file has separate parts for wheels, tires, brakes, vents, grills, glass, pretty much everything on the outside of the car, but no interior. I'll either kitbash the interior or see if I can find some STL files for the interior. 

Should I have any questions could I toss you a message Doug?

 

3 hours ago, iamsuperdan said:

You're right, those wheels are much too small. Too bad, because the printing looks perfect. I'm sure you'll find another kit those will work just fine on.

 

Liking what I'm seeing so far.

Thanks Dan, yes, I'll save them. I have a couple 1/25th cars I want to do as restomods and I think they might be ok for a 1/25th car, the wheels anyways, I might still have to print up some tires with a bit larger sidewall to fill in the space. 

Thanks for looking in guys, appreciate all the replies.

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1 hour ago, Jhedir6 said:

Thanks Doug. Great tip.....where were you when I was trying to figure this out....just kidding. 

 

Should I have any questions could I toss you a message Doug?

 

 

Been right here. Are you following my "3d printed" posts? 

Message me any time. I'm here to help.

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