Scale-Master

Brake pad masters ready to have a mold made. My 3D files grown by Fraxional.

I made some design changes to the wheel centers and rather than wait for Fraxional to grow new ones for me I took a shot at it by doing a front first. (My impatience; they have good turn-around times). I can't get the quality that Fraxional does (at least at this time…) and so I had to spend a couple hours fine tuning it on the mill. Not sure if this will be the final master or if I will go back to my original plan of having Fraxional grow these wheel parts. Primer will help determine that path… Doesn't look too bad with my aluminum outer rim on it though.

The alternator parts were grown by Fraxional, but I neglected to send one of the part files so the clear piece is the inner/center section that I grew rather than wait.

Yes, Peter has the correct terminology. I use "printing" and "growing" to differentiate between decal art and 3D parts to avoid confusion since I do both for my clients. The valve cover was grown/3D printed with U.V. cured resin. Casting is yet one more process. I personally don't care for the look of clear cast or molded bodies as the various wall thicknesses and other internal features make for a distracting uneasy to see through product. It takes a lot of extra work to finish the inside surfaces too. So I have not looked too much into clear casting resins.

Thanks guys! I took a shot at growing some parts myself. Here's a valve cover. It's hard to capture the details in the clear resin in photos. I plan to cast copies in opaque urethane resin.

Half shaft yokes 3D printed by Fraxional. The shafts are brass; the larger one has already been treated with acid for the color. Just dry fitted together.

I got some more of my 3D parts from Fraxional over the weekend. All parts are raw as "grown", but I have cleaned off the supports. Here's a few. Flywheel with pressure plate & clutch. Small 153 tooth flywheel. Front side installed in bellhousing. New corrected Hewland rear transaxle cover. Engineered to mount with magnets. (I had the bosses for the magnets grown into the part.) Full engine & transaxle dry fitted together.

CNC would be nice, but I'm content doing my machining old school.

Thanks Bill, The wheel centers will probably be offered at a later date through Fraxional. They fit the kit tires. They should retrofit onto the the kit suspension too. While I made aluminum outer rims for my model, I will not be offering them for sale, (too time consuming to make); only the 3D grown versions will be offered.

Number two of the Silver ones finished. Almost a twin, but with a custom plate.

Not the same one, a near twin to it.

Thanks guys! Yes, this is a great kit; I recommended it highly when I built the first one for the SA review a year ago. Such a good kit in fact I just started another one yesterday and have plans (and kits) to build more.

No, I used acid. And thanks!

I acid treated them instead of using paint.

Thank you Angus! Very kind words indeed! I readily admit that I do things to Seven models I don't think I would do on real ones, ( and I have firsthand experience with 1:1s). While I try to stay in a realistic realm, I also enjoy building them in "very wrong" ways to the purists. I'll admit I was inspired by the S4 rear fenders, but wanted something softer and tied into a traditional Seven. The nose was inspired by the early 60's Gurney Eagles and the fairing on the hood (bonnet) just seemed appropriate. I too am deep into the 3D aspect of the hobby, but still enjoy old school metal working and machining. (As you may have noticed on my Lola T-70 project...)

These are the tie-rod ends with adjusters for toe. Brass and aluminum loosely assembled.

Thanks Tim! Here's some more... I've been working back and forth and back again with 3D designing, old school machining and basic hand building to facilitate better fitting of the soon to be grown parts to help the fit of the end results. I milled up caliper and rotor "blanks" out of resin to help check tolerances inside the software and to the physical parts I have. I also had to draw up in 3D some of the kit parts I modified for spatial orientation. Here's some screen grabs I took before sent the files off to Fraxional.

I decided a more modern set of calipers would not only look cooler, but also be more appropriate for the car with some of the other upgrades it is getting. I made the Wilwood retrofits for the C3 Corvette calipers I made earlier. They use the same pads.

Thanks Trevor! I added the radius/fillets and then polished them up. And a dry fitted front…

Thanks David! All five wheels, two rears and three fronts, (one for the spare).

Thanks guys. It's the Tamiya kit. It has poseable front wheels, but nothing else moves or opens on it.

These are great kits. The fit and engineering are exceptional.

Here are two rears and a front on the right.

This is a rear… Still raw and needs to be refined.

The start of the aluminum rims. Some T6-6061 stock and a wooden angle block with 22 and 27 degree angles cut into it. The block was indexed to the tilt-table as a secondary measure to ensure the angles were uniform on all the wheels. First round of cutting; this will be a rear.