RepRap Racing - 1/10 scale race series

Gents,

I am just testing the water to see if anyone here is interested in a 1/10 Radio control car design series.

My proposal is as follows:-

To design a basic car using reprap parts. The car will be 1/10 scale (similar to Losi, Tamiya, Schumacher single seat off road buggy) .

Suspension will be rubber cone based as its difficult to reprap coil over shocks. Probably will use pencil erasers cut to size.

Off the shelf tyres on reprapped wheels.

Rear 2 wheel drive including a differential.

2 channel Radio control, brushless motor, LIPO battery etc.....standard RC buggy gear

Single "540" type motor, or possibly two smaller motors if the differential design proves troublesome

Bodyshell in paper mache over a reprapped mould.

I have blocked out the basic car design, but it will take many months to get something up and running. I am pretty confident that I have the capability to design all the major parts to make them reprappable, including chassis, wheels, suspension, diff and driveshafts, but I'm sure I will encounter problems along the way.

If there is sufficient interest, I will also develop a basic set of design rules so that cars can be designed with innovation, but still be able to race together. (Rules to Limit wheelbase, make it open source, motors, weight and to restrict the use of purchased parts)

I have located a few CAD models and such online which are a good basis for the design and will post the progress on my website.

Is this of interest and could you see people meeting at conventions to race against each other?

www.HeliumFrog.com

It would an an awesome idea for a community competition

Once I get my build up and running, I'd love to take part.

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My Reprap blog

jds-reprap.blogspot.com

Fascinating idea! It think it might be too big a project for a design competition, but as a collaborative project, I think a lot could be learned about designing functional printed parts. For example, I've been wondering about using the self-tapping screws common to Tamiya kits on printed parts, rather than using screw+nut everywhere.

I'd be interested to see how a printed differential turns out. My Hornet's diff ring has been split for about a decade. Then I'd need a printed counter gear, then a printed pinion. I'm a little worried about a printed pinion. The 540 motors put a lot of torque on a 1/8" shaft.

That raises another question. Do you plan to start from scratch, or gradually replace the parts of an existing car?

I have an old Schumacher (an early Cat model). Looking at the parts they are too small to be reproduced exactly, so a gradual replacement with reprapped items would not work. It also raises copywright issues. I want to avoid using rod ends, turnbuckles and off the shelf items as much as possible as these are expensive and defeat the idea of a reprapped design.

The design will be completely new, but I have used the overall dimensions of the Schumacher to get the basic suspension geometry and wheelbase. This way I can be confident that the car will handle reasonably first off without any major changes. Ill dump the models online now and again so others can help with the development. I generally work in Catia V5, but could post iges, step or stl if required.

I hope to produce a complete car as a starting point, then much like the reprap project encourage others to develop it how they like (within the simple design rules). There are lots of areas for innovation, particularly in drivetrain and suspension. The design rule book will evolve as innovative designs make more and more possible on a reprap.

By the way, there is a complete CAD model of a TT-01 Tamiya chassis available online. Its not an off road chassis, but does give some models to get started with. See Tamiya TT-01 chassis

If you haven't yet, check out the Turtle Shell Racers on Thingiverse.

The High Power one pretty much only uses the wheels off a cheap $12 RC car from Walmart/Target and the rest is printed except for the electronics.

Turtle Shell Racers on Thingiverse

It might give you some ideas to get started as it has a printed gearbox, etc.

Having normed parts available in 1:1 for printing would definately help a lot. You could always scale them down to 1:10 (or any other scale).

Will the race only be open for cars or will there be classes for other vehicles too, e.g. trucks, boats, repraps on wheels, ... ?

Here is a picture of the design so far. You can download the models in .stp format from my website if you want a closer look.

Latest design image

Helium Frog Website

Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 10/30/2011 03:17PM by martinprice2004.

Hey,
i would go with a 1.10 pan car design, little front suspension, and rear is simple.
rear axle xontains diff, so really easy, and few parts,
nice project though, was thinking the same, so i found ya real fast