3D printing an entire kit - Suzuki Kei Micro-Truck

[CabDriver]

I’ve been 3D printing parts for a few weeks now and have KINDA got a handle on the basics, but I’ve been wanting to try one of the many 3D printable kits that are available online and see what challenges this new avenue of the hobby has in store.

This cute little Japanese micro-truck (known as a ‘kei’ truck in their terminology) caught my eye, so I sent my order thru and had the files sent to my inbox like magic 🪄 

This is a curbside kit (the 1:1 is a cab-over with a tiny little 3 cylinder engine hidden under there) with probably 60-70 parts all in, allowing a couple of different building options.

Everything’s nicely designed, has good attachment points for gluing just like a ‘real’ kit and it even came with an instruction manual (admittedly, only a couple of pages long, but that’s all AMT gave you with a lot of kits too 🤪)

So, this project isn’t REALLY on my bench as such, but I’ve been printing parts over the last few evenings and started messing with them so I figured it was time for a WIP…

I’m building a stock rendition of the Suzuki Carry, which looks like this:

Toughest part of the printing process for this kit is the body, just because of the height and size, so I set the printer running this morning and let it roll for a few hours.  I haven’t really printed much in the way of whole bodies yet, so this is a learning experience…

A view of how it looks in the software, with the internal supports to hold it all together whilst the resin prints:

And a couple of them fresh off the machine:

As you can see, I needed some more supports in the very top of that windshield at the front there, but it’s so quick and easy to fix that I’ll make use of these couple of bodies and tweak my print file for future examples (I’ve got SO MANY ideas for these…)

The frame, and the stock tires printed and ready for clean-up and primer:

As you can see, there’s plenty of opportunity to replace some of the ‘moulded in’ detail, but I’m going to TRY and at least build one of these as the designer intended.

Tiny steelie wheel!

And some of the option parts, that will end up on a future build…

One of the criticisms I see of 3D printed parts is the printing lines, which aren’t super visible on these little pieces, but become more visible on parts with larger gently-curved areas, like hoods and doors.  What I’ve discovered though is that 3D printing resin, at least the AnyCubic stuff I use, responds to light sanding really nicely…it’s more like sanding a coat of filler primer than styrene, and you can clean up parts in a snap and get a nice ready-to-paint surface:

Compare the prepped body on the right to the untouched one on the left and you’ll see that sanding revealed where those lines are pretty clearly, but all the surfaces are smooth to the touch now and ready for primer (once I’ve fixed that windshield, anyway…)

Still finishing up printing all the parts, got a few more to do tomorrow, and I’d like to tweak the design of the bed a little to make it easier to print (it’s all one piece currently, which makes it more awkward than if it was a separate bed, sides and tailgate), but soon as I print the interior pieces I can start on step one of the build manual!  Here’s a lil’ center console in the meantime…

Thanks for looking, hope y’all find this interesting…more soon!

[Rusty92]

I like what I’m seeing!!

[NOBLNG]

Wow, this 3d printing is definitely the wave of the future. You can download a file and get started quicker than a trip to the hobby shop. Your parts are looking great by the way!👍

[stitchdup]

I'll be watching. I recently got a load of printed kits so it'll be interesting to see any pit falls

[Ace-Garageguy]

Looks like the future's here...almost. Great stuff.  

[Oldmopars]

As I am also a bit new to the whole 3D printing thing, I am no expert. However I have found that many times it is better to print your parts/bodies at an angle, even compound angles. If you have a flat surface, the thick resin will flex and move the "Cured" parts and give bad results. 

Also, what is the size and resolution of your printer? I have a large 4K printer and I get very very little layer effect. 

I am very excited to do as you are doing. I plan to print an entire kit soon.

Where did you get that "kit" file from?

 

[Jhedir6]

Nice start, and welcome to the world or 3D printing your own stuff at home! I've been going for just about a year now and I can warn you, it's addictive. I find myself loving the editing and printing of the files, more than the building of the kits....at least right now anyways. 

Some things I've learned along the way...Temp....resin does not like cold temps, you need to print around 20C or higher. Pending on the resin you use, some of them are pretty smelly so make sure to have ventilation. I use Elegoo's ABS like resin and I find it doesn't have too much of an odor, but other brands I tried definitely do. Supports....I tend to over support probably but once you have a 12-14hr print fail on you cause you didn't use enough supports you'll add in more, the cost is a few $$ in wasted resin but alternatively you're not throwing out a huge print file cause part of it failed and is now stuck to your print bed. If you do have a failed print, make sure to drain your tank, clean it and filter the resin to make sure you dont have any floaters in there, I cracked my LCD screen when the plate came down and pushed a failed support threw the FEP......an $80 mistake.

For your body with the layer lines, what layer height are you printing at? I do all my prints at 0.03mm layer height, and yes I get those lines too but they clean up, like you said, very easily, but at 0.03mm look a lot less defined than yours ( I originally started at 0.05mm and they were much more noticable.) For your window frames, add in a line of supports along any large opening to keep the edges from fading, like you have on that little truck, and if it's a bigger truck/car add some rows in the middle as well or the roof can "sag" I've got a couple truck bodies where I hadn't figured that out yet.

Looks like you've got the bug.....enjoy the ride. If you like BlackBox's files, check out Pixil3D on Cults too, he's got some interesting files as well. And this guy here  has a lot of newer cars/trucks with nearly full kits (no engines and not always full suspension) that make into nice kits that are not on the market but are very much OEM looking vehicles. I've got several of his files and all of them are very nice (Ram TRX is baller) 

[CabDriver]

On 3/20/2022 at 7:49 AM, NOBLNG said:

Wow, this 3d printing is definitely the wave of the future. You can download a file and get started quicker than a trip to the hobby shop. Your parts are looking great by the way!👍

Exactly!  The printing is the slow part right now (definitely slower than a trip to the hobby shop, unless your shop is a few hours round trip) but it certainly beats ordering online and waiting a week…

9 hours ago, Oldmopars said:

As I am also a bit new to the whole 3D printing thing, I am no expert. However I have found that many times it is better to print your parts/bodies at an angle, even compound angles. If you have a flat surface, the thick resin will flex and move the "Cured" parts and give bad results. 

Also, what is the size and resolution of your printer? I have a large 4K printer and I get very very little layer effect. 

I am very excited to do as you are doing. I plan to print an entire kit soon.

Where did you get that "kit" file from?

 

You’re absolutely right - angling the bodies gives better results.  In this case though, I could JUST squeeze two bodies on one build plate if I didn’t angle them…so I took a shot and let the machine do two at once, seeing as it was going to take a few hours.  I’ve got the little Anycubic 4k printer - largest print size is about 6” X 5.5” I think.  This kit came from a seller on Instagram: https://instagram.com/blackboxstl?utm_medium=copy_link

 

@Jhedir6 - good insight, thank you!  I’m printing at 0.05mm layer height right now, which was the default in Lychee for my particular printer.  Question - do you notice a large increase in printing times at that higher resolution?  Although the layers LOOK really noticeable in that pic where I’d been sanding on the body, it’s really not bad at all - just a few minutes work to clean up.

Thanks too for the links to those Cults3D sellers…some GREAT stuff in there!  I think I found my next couple of projects 😍

 

Tiny bit of progress this evening…printed the interior pieces and the last couple of little parts that I needed:

This kit is really well thought out - the parts almost just snap together!

I had been trying to figure out the best way to print the bed, which was modeled as one piece and looked somewhat tricky to print.  
 

Challenges were that it had underhangs (rear fenders, primarily) various underside detail, and details on the outer sides and back that I didn’t want to ruin or obscure with supports.  The most obvious solution would be to invert it and put all the supports on the inside with braces so it printed square and true, but that would make cleanup of the inside of the bed harder; and also printing something taller takes a lot longer than something flatter.  

So, I just split the part into five pieces and printed it like so…took 30 minutes to print this way rather than the 3 hours the bed would’ve taken as one piece.  Just gotta glue those five parts together and we’re golden!

(I know there’s only 4 pieces here…I’d already printed the other part on another layout I had done)

And that’s about my progress for this evening…I would’ve done more but a 20 minute nap after work got out of control and I lost a couple of hours there.  Quick mock-up of what we’ve got so far…more soon!

Edited March 22, 2022 by CabDriver

[MrObsessive]

That's a neat looking little kit! 👍

Yes, I print at 0.03mm layer height, and while it takes longer..........the resolution is much better as you don't have what can be those wicked layer lines to get rid of. At best, your sanding won't be as intense trying to get rid of them.

[iamsuperdan]

Excellent!

Black Box' parts are so good. I've purchased a lot of his wheel/tire sets, interior pieces. Been eyeballing some of his Porsche body parts too.

 

And further to the discussions above, my Elegoo printer's default print height was .05. I changed that to .04 and noticed a significant improvement in terms of layer lines. Takes a little longer, but I have much less prep time after printing to fix things. Am going to change it up to .03 and see how that goes.  

[Jhedir6]

@CabDriver you're definitely going to get longer printing times with .03mm layer heights cause you're increasing the number of layers. Pending on what your cure times are set at, that determines the time each layer "cures" before lifting to the next. Lift speed will also affect the time but layer height will be the biggest change in time as with that higher level of resolution ( lower number of height in mm) the layer count goes up, but by a guess I'd say we're talking mins overall, again pending on how "tall" your z axis is for each print. A print that uses the full z axis might take 30-40mins longer. For me, I just put my long prints on at night before bed or before I go out to work and let it go while I'm gone. 

For your parts on your print bed, if the part has a flat surface, like your interior pan, make sure to angle it about 30 degrees or so, that way resin wont pool on the bottom side (build plate side) and will drain as the print rises, saving your resin when you clean the parts. 

So far the prints look good, and like I said, super addictive knowing that you organized and set up the prints to print and ended up with workable parts you made...I'm sure designing and printing will be even better, but it's still a bit of a rush seeing those prints clean up and looking pretty much perfect. I got like 8 printed projects to finish up but I'm constantly looking for the next one to print.  The one guy I link, Andrey, who's Ukrainian, is hopefully working on a newer Ford F450 dually I've been bugging him for. He's safe where he is, last I heard, but with what's going on there I can understand him having other things to worry about aside from posting new 3D print files. 

[AmericanMuscleFan]

I really like the project and the 3d technique discussed on this thread, this method offers almost infinite possibilities and the contribution of judicious advice from those more advanced in this field can only make this technique more attractive!

As we often say, the important thing is to be different and obviously it is!!!

Thank you for your good advice gentlemen! 👍

[Bainford]

Great project. Very impressive that you can print your own, credible kit. Cool little subject, too. Everything is looking good. Very interesting, I'm tuning in.

[Rodent]

Ballpark, what would the file and materials cost to print something like this?

[bobthehobbyguy]

On 3/25/2022 at 4:25 PM, Rodent said:

Ballpark, what would the file and materials cost to print something like this?

I'm curious about this also.

[Jhedir6]

On 3/25/2022 at 7:25 PM, Rodent said:

Ballpark, what would the file and materials cost to print something like this?

Files vary from creator to creator but generally you're looking at $15-30 range (take that with a HUGE grain of salt...cause sometimes you can find cool stuff for free), but "full" kits are near the top end price wise. 

As far as resin goes, again, it will vary based on where you live, what you buy and the quantity you buy. I live in Canada so prices for me are higher than the US and I live in the country, about and hour from a major city, so I order all my resin from Amazon. A 1L bottle runs about $50 CDN. Now, the next question, how long will that last...depends on what I print. For car parts, wheels/tires/seats, detail parts it will go a LONG way. Small parts use very little resin and have very small supports which wastes very little resin in the printing process. The larger, more complex and intricate a part is, the more supports you have thus the more resin you use. A full rollcage for example will have a lot of resin used up for supports which is garbage after the print but its not like a vast amount of wasted resin, but it does add up. 

So for example, I have a full curbside kit of a TRX ( no engine, no drive shafts, other than those items the kit is complete and the cost for that would probably be in the neighborhood of $65-70 for the files, and the resin which for basically amounts of a Hobby Design kit (minus decals and any PE it might have) is much cheaper. Hobby Design's new venture, Alpha Models is making high end resin kits of super cars and modern sports cars and those generally run around $200 CDN (with shipping). Also with 3D printing you're able to get files to print of vehicles that no one else has. For example, my TRX, I know of no one that is making the TRX. I also got, From the same designer, a 2020 Ram 3500 Dually, again no engine or drive shafts but the rest is there and to print that will be pretty close to the TRX, and that kit is not on the market either. More than a plastic model kit, sure, but worthwhile to me to get things no readily available. 

[CabDriver]

Thanks for all the nice comments everyone, and the tips on 3D printing.  Very helpful - and I’m just messing with some parts at 0.3mm print resolution this weekend…

On 3/25/2022 at 6:25 PM, Rodent said:

Ballpark, what would the file and materials cost to print something like this?

8 hours ago, bobthehobbyguy said:

I'm curious about this also.

I’m glad someone asked these questions, because I wondered about them myself when I started this project…so, as I was printing, I totaled up the volume of resin used for each set of parts so I could see:

File one was TWO bodies, which cost $1.08 total, then all the subsequent files are everything else (plus some of the option parts, when I had a gap left on the machine’s plate to print them).  Total came to $2.61 for the resin cost, and the kit was $12…so under $15 to print, assuming you get a good print first time around.

Of course, the second version of this truck I make will cost me less than $3, seeing as I have the file already…

 

(Edit, note: this is based on using standard Any Cubic gray resin, at $25 per 1kg bottle, delivered)

Edited March 27, 2022 by CabDriver

[bobthehobbyguy]

Thanks for the info. Not a bad cost. 

[CabDriver]

1 hour ago, bobthehobbyguy said:

Thanks for the info. Not a bad cost. 

Not a very complicated kit either, so you’d definitely be looking at a lot more for something more involved…but yeah, I was pleasantly surprised at how little MATERIAL you need…but as you can see from my Post-It there, the machine takes a few hours to do it’s thing.

 

Made some little bits of progress on this thing this week when I had a few minutes, mostly on fixing the flaws on the body that came from it sagging a little where I didn’t give it enough supports.  

Lesson learned for the next ones, but also I wouldn’t really say I had to put more effort into this ‘failed’ print than I would any standard kit body - it’s just instead of filling sink holes and sanding parting lines I had to get the surfaces perfectly flat.  I know how to fix that for next time though now so that they’ll print a lot better.  You can see some of the little fixes I had to do, and now this body is about ready for primer:

More soon!

[CabDriver]

Still tinkering away with this one - realized I hadn’t posted an update so here’s how it sits now…

Got the body painted, and added some lettering:

Shot black to try and generate some shadows under the frame to stop it looking too toy-like, and then overlaid some white to match the body…I’m going for a lightly weathered kind of look here but not totally ruined, so I’m going to use this shading to help build realism (hopefully)…

Cleared that, and masked to paint some metal tones under there:

Went with a mix of Vallejo and acrylic craft paints - I’m not going crazy with the underside, but you can see the rear suspension and driveshaft on the 1:1 trucks pretty easily so I’m just trying to capture that…

And finally for this update, shot some metal colors on the steelie wheels and got the tires painted…these will receive some further weathering too:

And that’s where I’m at so far…more soon, soon as I’ve done more!

Edited May 21, 2022 by CabDriver

[Cool Hand]

Coming together nicely Jim. Can barely tell its a 3D print after paint has been applied. Looks like it was built from styrene kit parts.

Sure wish I had a nice chassis like that under my Game Box Kei truck, would have made lowering it so much easier and I could have got it slammed.