Well today I received this 3d printed 1/16 lowe from the same guy who Michael has been buying his from. Build time was 4 weeks then less then a week shipping from China so not bad at all. It was packed very well but oddly enough the box and packing definitely smelled weird.... so I'm sure that's good lol
The tank was packed very well with multiple bags of add on parts and a couple spares. Unfortunately I did notice quickly that my tank was missing a few acessories but nothing my spares or a cheap henglong KT accessory kit can't fix.
While looking over the tank I immediately noticed a very concerning issue. The hull was printed in "accurate" peices with the side plates being solid single parts. Unfortunately these should have been metal as the idlers mount on them and cause the hull sides ro flex and move a considerable amount. I'm worried this will cause both sides to snap but I'm sure I can fix it easily or just make new hull sides from some metal or something.
The rest of the tank is honestly perfect, I could only find 2 small broken detail parts and 1 printing issue on the entire tank, inside and out. Once assembled it's massive, putting the normal king tiger and even leopard 2a6 to shame. It's massive 128mm definitely sticks out and makes all the other tanks feel very inadequate.
I dont have any board to run it yet but the videos he sent me the tank looks to work flawlessly and I'm sure it will be fine. Having servo recoil and Elevation, henglong rotation, henglong speaker and henglong plastic gear boxes i can easily have Micheal install and set up a clark or I could use a henglong 7.1 in the meantime. The road wheels are 3d printed but could have used henglong ones, the drives and idlers are plastic henglong KT parts and the tracks will be changed from 3d printed with thin metal wire for pins to basic plastic henglong KT tracks with correct metal pins for more reliability. I'll probably upgrade the gearboxes with metal ones from mato or torro as the plastic ones will Definitely strip out.
All in I Definitely think these 3d printed tanks are worth it. The lowe cost me $461cad to my door. So for the price of a cheap henglong you can have a one of a kind tank. I do think it will be very important to have acess to your own 3D printer to not only get replacement parts but modify the designs and upgrade parts. My partner and I are already looking into printers and filimants so I can start buying the designs off cults 3d and having acess to parts and upgrade things like the soft plastic torshen bars or plastic suspension arms. Also with Michael and I buying so many we will both need parts depending on how much we run the tanks lol
I Definitely would reccomend these tanks. Who knows maybe one day we will end up with a normal world of tanks match full of "what if" and rare tanks Lol I know I've got some e100s on order and I'm really looking forward to them.