SaperPL

I wasn't keeping track, so I just noticed it now. This is a real beauty, the way how you assembled the body with Technic panels and how it looks under the body as well. Congrats on releasing such amazing set.

That's sounds like the speed you can drive it before it starts slipping :D

Another update on the chassis: After some designs in studio I had to increase the size of the whole thing because otherwise I wouldn't match the size of the bogies with the size of the hull and turret, so here we are - me, making usually small things now building this behemoth...

From my experience with TPU 95A, the TPU seems to not have really much more grip than PLA after the print and therefore I dropped the idea of printing tires after test on small scale. It does make sense if you want a neat static model as long as you can print tires neatly, but if you want an RC model, you might get disappointed in the effects. Unless you'll get special filament that is supposed to have grip maybe?

Slightly better, but the point with the open camera is that you can tweak the exposition value (the +- icon) so you can tweak how you capture the scene. The main idea is that you should want to cut away the background, make it even colour almost except for the shadows and some reflections of the photographed object. It both makes sense because it's like with presentation of the food - even if it's awesome, if you get it on a dirty plate or the place is terrible, it's not so much appealing, and also on white background websites it makes those photos blend with the background and the object pops out of it and it feels really professionally made. The render is doing that, but also it's important for the main icon to be an actual photo of real life object - this will probably bring more people to it as virtual designs may not necessarily have been tested and there's a lot of those on rebrickable. As an example what you could have done with the backgrounds in gimp: Using big radius eraser with soft edges can do this, but the lighter the background, the easier that will be to achieve and also if you have a lighting that's significantly different, it may feel really off. It should be doable with simple desk lamp if it has a good neutral white light bulb or you could try to make the photos in the daylight as well in well lit room - I did that in the beginning as well and all I had to have was to put a white background right beneath the window. For now you've got some noise in the photos because of slightly poor lighting, not really bad, but not ideal either. Also the resolution of 800x600 isn't perfect either, but I assume that's from bricksafe.

I'm following what @TechnicMOCer is doing, it's just that I'm often taking a peek at my mail while doing other stuff and then forgetting about it I like where you're going with your trucks, they are getting better and better. I'm still not digging those vertical antennas sticking out though :P The steering on the trailer is really cool, but it's limiting the angle of the trailer against the semi tractor? I feel stupid for using those custom steering hub attachments for so long that I've been using with those wheels as it can be done in many ways with basic elements. Also start using opencamera or some other camera app that allows you to tweak the light parameters of the photo and use gimp or photoshop to clean the background. Those photos could look amazing after cleaning.

The engine in the render looks really neat - will you make some photos of the details?

Thanks. And yeah, the model of Sherman M4A1 is in the making :)

I already know that there were multiple engines for Shermans and also Lee's & Grants and Rams. The thing is the radial engine was used by both types of the hull, while the cast rounded hull variant, which I expect to be actually easier to be done thanks to the curved panels that Technic has, was only with the radial engines. I know about the Chrysler A57 and while I'd love to make one, it doesn't make sense in this scale - I won't have a way for return of the pistons if I make them small with pins or axles - I would need to use rubber bands which would quickly get janky and add resistance to the engine, while building it with full size pistons would make this huge. As for the radial six I'm fitting in my build - it's not really a problem as it's barely sticking above the line of side skirts: I think I will have the proportions slightly distorted because of how tall the bogies are and I would have to stretch the whole thing by four or six studs, but then the bogies would look weird and I'd have to scale them up somehow horizontally. So the whole thing might end up slightly stretched vertically in comparison to real thing. The engine itself is not that much oversized in comparison to the real thing, but the angled mount is taking sone space. But note that the placement is as correct as I could make it - the piston line pivot is over the rearmost drive wheel and the pivot of the frame of the engine, which kind of represents visually the big fan that this radial had in front of it, is over the centre of the bogie. In this context I feel like I should be okay with it.

Is there a corresponding steering hub that has pivot in the middle of the rim? Also This is only for wide 3L wheels and even when there would be ones for 2L wheels, they'd still have the pivot away from the middle. Here's a simple comparison of that: From the left - standard Technic rim, the Creator Expert rim in the middle and my custom 3d printer rim on the right: With that said, we could still have a steering hub for this type of Creator Expert rim if the hub went over this sticking out axle socket by half stud to have the ball connectors in the middle of the rim. But then the pin axle without friction would be sticking out to the inner side along its attachment pin hole on the hub in a way that it'd reduce amount of space for the steering linkage in that plane and shifting linkage up by one stud to avoid this collision would mean lower steering angle. Anyway the rim you showed doesn't solve the problem but just mitigates it partially and they could just copy the real design of a basic wheel rim like this: With that said, the car actually has some photos where it has rims that are really closely matching the Technic rims, and we get to a point where we can think about whether the outer look of the rims is more important than how the steering works and how much space need to be additionally left for the steering because of that:

While I can appreciate that they squeezed in the mini engine there which is definitely nice, what annoys me is that there's still no steering hubs and corresponding wheel rims that would have inner steering pivot. I'm hoping that if those car-transporter-fitting sized cars are going to gain traction like the Speed Champions, they will start addressing such limitations of parts for this scale. I investigated this topic with custom printed parts some time ago and we could either have perfect pivot steering like this: Which could mean better wheel arches construction and maybe following this we would better wheel arch pieces for the specific size. Also with dedicated steering elements they could've definitely fit a full size engine blocks in this scale: Obviously steering assembly in my model is not as rigid as the Lego set would require it to be, but I was working with what is there so far. If they designed steering parts for such scenarios, we could get sets with full size engine blocks and perfect pivot. Sorry for shameless plugs, but with how many new pieces we see coming out for the shape of Speed Champions models and some licensed Technic models, they could start doing something about the steering and suspension parts at this scale as well. Btw - isn't the HOG steering knob in an awkward position? It feels to me like it makes sense for it to be at the back OR if it's supposed to be on top, it should be in the middle of the car.

Thanks to CADA micro motors and some rubber bands I managed to fit tank turret mechanisation in really small space: The core of the problem is that we don't want to put the cables through the tank turret as this means limit in number of turns and also using linear actuator for gun elevations means the elevation changing during rotation of the turntable. My previous attempts:

Thanks. As stated in the video, I found out that most of the designs lack both solid frame and proper crankshaft. It's just that people make those for the video and run it for a moment in optimal conditions and that's it. I built it with just centre crankshaft on 24T gear and it was getting stuck from time to time and worked with significant resistance. But the double crank is kind of obvious solution, but I'm pretty proud of myself for this frame design.

Radial 6-cylinder, kind of like Sherman M4/M4A1 R-975 which was actually a 9-cylinder:

The thing about the Sherman with radial R-975 is that this engine was at an angle: I ended up with a bit steeper angle, but I'll tweak that and maybe I'll shave off some space there. The problem is that I want the engine to be roughly in the correct place as historically and there simply is not enough space in front of it for the motors and the gun elevation mechanism. At the same time, I feel like using micro motors may not be optimal if I'm going to move them away, and still I have to figure out what to do with the cables. The biggest disappointment for me so far is that I couldn't figure out a way to have small enough double two-way-to-one-way rotation mechanism that would connect the engine to the drives - this way the engine would rotate even with neutral drives and also there would be same rotation speed in all scenarios. I had an idea to do it with four T8 gears swinging on a 3L liftarm and switching onto two T20 gears, but it was a bit too big and had really low RPMs anyway. Also the problem with fitting this radial engine inside the frame is that while the engine's frame is 8 stud wide, the pistons are sticking out for slightly more than half stud so it won't fit within 9 studs of space within the frame.

Thanks, I'll have another video coming with the build of the engine tomorrow, so stay tuned. I'm kind of wondering why is Lego still using the same old engine block design for Technic after shifting to liftarms instead of studded beams. At some point when I was thinking about this radial engine and trying to figure out how would this be possible to assemble, I was thinking about 3d printing custom engine blocks like this: Or even cutting off that bottom portion of the sides completely.

Another update:

I'm close to finishing the design for this tank chassis. I managed to squeeze in the mechanization for turret rotation and gun elevation: The tricky part that is left is how to connect the fake piston engine to the drive shafts while keeping it shifted up so the frame can be closed/ribbed at the back.

I changed my approach to this steering to reduce the footprint of it. Steering with one side being slower can be achieved without clutch/gearbox switching:

Twin inline 6 GM 6046 - Sherman M4A2 tank engine:

I'm often ordering specific parts rather than complete sets for the parts. I know that I'm overpaying for those parts on their own, but it costs less in general when I'm building a model that has a lot of unique parts in it.

Thanks! I actually keep forgetting about those pieces. I don't have those in my parts collection and thus I tend to go with that 2L liftarm camshaft style.

I made a fake piston engine that looks fairly cool for my Sherman tank project based on the engine that was used in M4A2 Sherman: https://www.theshermantank.com/about/the-sherman-tank-engine-page/the-gm-6046-page/ Nothing revolutionary here, but I haven't seen such detailing recently at this size of cylinders, so I hope this is interesting.

I managed to make a compact version of this kind of steering that does not completely break one side of the track but sets a fixed ratio between the two tracks: Here's a video that shows a bit how it drives, but I'll make a full showcase once I complete the model: